Web search algorithms, such as PageRank or HITS, rely on hyperlink analysis to rank the relevance of web pages in the world wide web. As mentioned in class, the principle these algorithms rely on is that the presence of an in-link onto a page indicates a human approval of its content. Consequently, studying the link construct of the web gives us a sense of which pages are important.

The link analysis, however, can be intentionally manipulated to give some pages higher ranking using link bombs, commonly referred to as Google bombs. A link bomb works by generating significant number of pages with cleverly crafted links to a specific target web page, thereby increasing its PageRank such that googling a specific keyword results in seeing the target as a first hit. The nature of link bombs can range from silly and humorous to highly political.

On January 25, 2007, Google announced a change in their search algorithm to combat link bombings. In their blog entry, Google mentions that “people assume that [bombed pages] are Google’s opinion” simply because they are ranked higher by PageRank. While this is not true, it is natural for Google to stop link-bombings as they can skew the integrity of their ranking algorithm. Instead of displaying linked-bombed pages as first hits when bombed keywords are queried, the modified Google algorithm now attempts to display pages about the link bomb instead of the actual bombed pages. Political link bombs see immediate effect by the change; however, it did little more obscure bombs. The “miserable failure” link bomb directed at President Bush’s biography page from the White House’s web site, for example, no longer works on Google, even though it can still be seen in other search engines such as Ask. Other the other hand, a less known bomb of “awful announcer” on Fox’s baseball announcer Tim McCarver is unaffected.

In Tatum’s paper, which did a case study on the “miserable failure” bomb, political link bombs can be seen as social movements. The “miserable failure” bomb is a response of disconnect of President Bush’s policy, while the consequent counter-bombing (in a attempt to redirect the bomb to liberal political figures as Michael Moore, Jimmy Carter, and Hillary Clinton) is a protest in response to the bomb itself. While adaptive refinement of search engines might eventually make link-bombing a thing of the past, the practice has served a mean of waging protests and political wars on the Internet.