Some GOPers are googlebombing John Kerry's site with the word "waffles," and Kerry's supporters are fighting back with a Google AdWord buy for "waffles" that goes to a page on Bush's waffling.
I think that this googlebombing stuff is highly overrated. For starters, who googles the word "waffles?" What should be the canonical link for "waffles?" It's really self-reflexive: the nominal point of a googlebomb is to hijack a common search-term to misdirect searchers (i.e., the neo-Nazis who bombed the string "jew"), but in fact, a single-word query for "jew" is a pretty weird thing to punch into Google: "Hmm, I wonder why my neighbor takes every Friday night off and lights a candle. Wonder if it's cos he's Jewish? I know, I'll type 'jew' into Google and see if there's anything about Friday nights and candles in the top ten results."
In fact, the point of a googlebomb is to acheive the googlebomb and then publicize it: "Look, if you search for 'more evil than satan,' you get the Microsoft home-page, hardy-har-har." But those who argue that they've scored some kind of victory here are nuts: no one searches for "more evil than satan" — unless someone tells them that there's a funny googlebomb on the other end.
When I was a kid, we had all these "calculator games" — addition, subtraction and multiplication routines that would yield a string on the LCD, that, when inverted, would spell out a word. I remember one "dirty" one that spelled out "BOOBLESS" (55378008). At the time, it felt like we'd really gotten one in against The Man, by somehow convincing a pocket-calculator to kinda-sorta spit out a word we weren't allowed to say in polite company, but the joke got old fast. For starters, "BOOBLESS" isn't a (very) dirty word, and more importantly, it just didn't make the calculator dirty to get it to spit this out.
By the same token, "WAFFLES" isn't that common a naked query, and convincing Google to spit out John Kerry's homepage (or an AdWord for an anti-Bush page) isn't gonna score you any points with the people looking for info on waffles — the most it can acheive is the (very) faintly humorous spectacle of the Kerry homepage coming up on this improbable query.
Hardy har har.
The campaign has purchased Google AdWords, sponsored links that come up beside results when certain words are searched. The short links also refer to Kerry's website, but suggest users "read about President Bush's Waffles."
"When we heard people were linking the word 'waffles' with John Kerry, our thought was, 'This is ridiculous,'" said Morra Aarons, Internet grass-roots coordinator for John Kerry for President. "But our solution was to fight fire with fire."
