Google bombing: the next web game

If you missed the 'googlewhack' bandwagon, a new craze is sweeping the web log community - 'google bombing'.

Yet again, the search engine Google has become the centre of a crazy web game.

In recent weeks web users have been searching for the ultimate, elusive 'googlewhack', two words without quotes that bring up a single solitary result when punched into Google.

'Google bombing', on the other hand, is the art of bringing up a certain site in the number one slot on the search engine by weight of links alone, even if the linking words or phrases are totally unrelated.

The method works by taking advantage of Google's search algorithm.

In what has been labelled "a bizarre surreal bow to the power of perception on the web," by weblog Uber.nu, what you say about a page becomes just as important as the actual content of the page.

Google adheres to the rule that what people say about a website is what the site actually is.

Effectively, if a multitude of pages have a link to another page, using specific text in the hyperlink, the page will appear at the top of the Google results. But this same power can be harnessed for good or for evil.

As is often the case in the web log community, there's a lot of infighting and bitching.

So while typing in "internet rockstar" in Google will bring up Uber.nu, the website where 'google bombing' apparently originated, typing "talentless hack" brings up the website of a guy called Andy Pressman who seems to have made an enemy of the guys at Uber.nu.

Google bomb away.