By the "failure" Googlebomb

May 29, 2007 06:15 GMT  ·  By

The search giant Google is again affected by a Googlebomb as a regular search for the term "failure" returns you a picture with the president of the United States, George W. Bush. As far I can see, the picture appears only when the user searches with the recently introduced features for Google Image Search that enable them to search for certain parts of the subject's body. Yesterday, I presented you some tricks discovered by blogger Ionut Alex that allow you to search only for photos showing the face of a person. All you need to do is to add the code "&imgtype=face" at the end of the search URL.

Today, Googlified discovered that if you add the above code in the search URL and type "failure" in the search box, the Google search engine returns you the picture of the presidents of the United States. In the past, Google encountered this problem several times, most of the users reporting that typing "failure" in the search box brings you the picture of George W. Bush.

If you didn't know, this modification of the Google search results is called Googlebomb, an action that is strictly prohibited by the Mountain View company. Basically, a Googlebomb can be created with ease because it is based on the algorithms used by the search technology to index and rank the information. Usually, the changes are made with a photo published on the Internet that is then linked to numerous websites. As you know, Google calculates the number of the backlinks and places a picture on top of the results, bringing the malicious pictures among the first results.

Obviously, this action is strictly prohibited by the search giant, but the Google employees struggled to create a technology to block the bombs without any result. Perhaps the only improvement that can be made to avoid Googlebombs concerns the algorithm of the search technology.