In a move some say was politically motivated, Google has moved to limit and in most cases eliminate the so-called “Googlebombs”, those first-link prank results on a given topic that lead the reader to a funny and often inflammatory target. For example, previously if you put “miserable failure” into a Google search the first link led to President George Bush’s bio on the White House Website. Now the first results will be to commentary, discussions, and articles about the Googlebombs instead.

These Googlebombs are better described as link bombs because any search engine is vulnerable to such manipulation. For instance Yahoo! can be manipulated in the same way. However, Google holds such a commanding lead in the search market that anything related to search is generally related to Google explicitly.

Google has been accused of reflecting its opinion via these search bombs as Google is thought to be a liberal leaning organization and one of their biggest competitors is of course Microsoft. However, until recently Google has defended its position that the bombs are a small side effect of its search algorithm and that the algorithm is generally correct but subject to some manipulation. Google has, probably correctly, considered them harmless pranks for the most part and not worth dealing with.

Lately, however Google had decided to undertake the task of fixing the Googlebomb problem because of the negative publicity and ill will they cause.

Then again, if this fix takes people to commentary and articles on the googlebomb subject anyway, does it really make a difference? Isn’t the point of the bombers still made?