Google Bombs Jon Swift

As I have said before, I do not approve of any bombs that are not being dropped on our enemies or those civilians who are unlucky enough to get in the way. So when I informed my readers as a public service of a "Googlebomb" that was designed to guide searchers looking for information on Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism to this piece of mine, I was not endorsing it in any way, as I pointed out at the time. A "Google Bomb" according to Wikipedia, is an "attempt to influence the ranking of a given page in results returned by the Google search engine, often with humorous or political intentions" by associating a word or phrase with a particular web page. For example, one famous Googlebomb linked the words "miserable failure" to the White House homepage. I believe that any attempt to manipulate Google's search results, which are a sacred institution, should be against the law if it is not already. What if terrorists got their hands on a cache of Googlebombs? None of us would be safe.

And yet it appears that Google has decided to punish this modest blogger despite the fact that I am actually a victim of this nefarious attempt to hijack Google. Google has now erased all traces of my piece "Jonah Goldberg's Shining (Liberal Fascism with LOLCats)" from search results for the phrase "Liberal Fascism." While it was once in the Top 10 of results for a search on the words "Liberal Fascism" it is now missing from that search entirely. Despite the fact that my piece has 94 links, according to Technorati, Google has decided that after the Amazon page for the book, the most informative links for the words "Liberal Fascism" include a Think Progress piece from two years ago that is not really about the book, with 9 links; a piece from The Corner (0 links) about all the great reviews the book has received; a piece by Cactus from the Angry Bear (1 link), who, like me, has not actually read the book; another piece from two years ago by Brendan Nyhan (4 links) ridiculing the book; and a page from the Urban Dictionary (27 links) defining a word that I cannot repeat here since this is a family-safe blog. (Update: The Urban Dictionary page has now moved into the Number One slot ahead of the Amazon page.)

It turns out that this page in the Urban Dictionary was actually the subject of another Googlebomb by quite a large number of liberal blogs. Despite the fact that until recently the words "Liberal Fascism" did not appear on this page and Google's claim that Googlebombs no longer work, it has risen high in the search results. So why was my page removed and not the Urban Dictionary page? I believe it may have something to do with this post: "What If a Googlebomb Is a Googledud?" which referred to the attempt to Googlebomb "Liberal Fascism" by linking to my piece but did not mention the Urban Dictionary Googlebomb. Both Jonah Goldberg and Instapundit linked to that post, which no doubt resulted in a number of complaints sent to Google. The only explanation I can come up with is that Google responded to complaints by manually editing the results, something they claim they try never to do.

And yet the Googlebomb linking to my page is not really a Googlebomb at all. My piece is highly relevant and informative. It is certainly more relevant than the Urban Dictionary page. It actually praises Jonah Goldberg's ideas and even offers to help him with his project. By removing my page from the search results, Google is suppressing my point of view, engaging in the kind of censorship that ironically might be termed "fascist." The fact that Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, two people who are outspoken in their support of free expression, apparently aided in this attempt to muzzle my free expression, pains me to no end. What, one wonders, are they afraid of?

I hope that Google will restore my page to its search results. I worked very hard on researching this piece and creating the illustrations for it, as did a number of readers who offered their own contributions. Judging by the number of links it has gotten, many bloggers have found it to be highly edifying. If Google is going to manually edit results to ban sites whenever it receives complaints, where will it end? Will it ban sites that negatively review books whenever an author complains? Will it ban sites that criticize corporations when their CEOs complain? Will it ban sites that criticize governments when their leaders complain? Today, Jon Swift was banned. Tomorrow, it may be you.

Update: Jonah Goldberg himself offers some support for this modest blogger. Thank you, Mr. Goldberg.

Update 2: The inscrutable Google gods have returned the page to the search results where it now sits at #11. From Google there is only silence.

Illustration created by SlipperyBrick.

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