Anthropology 295: Anthropology of Media

After we discussed the term “Google bombing”, I further researched the topic. Upon typing “Google bombing” into the Google search engine, my top hit was for Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb . As so many individuals are linked to the site, this came as no great surprise. Wikipedia defined “Google bombing” as, “A Google bomb (also referred to as a 'link bomb') is Internet slang for a certain kind of attempt to influence the ranking of a given page in results returned by the Google search engine, often with humorous or political intentions.” The second result was some random website called “Word Spy” http://www.wordspy.com/words/Googlebombing.asp , which I have never heard of before and quite possibly has used the “Google bombing” technique to increase its ranking status. The third result was a BBC news article from 2002 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1868395.stm , which I found intriguing. This article points out a very good point, “If a few hundred blogs host the same link and describe it in the same way then, as far as Google is concerned, the page they refer to is likely to be a good resource on that subject.” Therefore, you must still exercise some level of common sense when using the Internet as a resource. The top results from search engines like Google may not always be the most credible sources for information.