I’m not sure Google will ever wake up, but this article prods them in the right direction. Liberal activists are manipulating Google search data to make Republican names bring up negative articles.

A little bit of background on the “Google bomb.” Google doesn’t simply match what you type in to a variety of Web pages. Rather, it ranks the pages in their popularity and relevance to your search to create the order one sees on Google.com.

One of the ways it establishes popularity and relevance is by incoming links. For example, the link at the bottom of this post (if you’re reading on Blogger News Network) contributes to my blog’s popularity, and its relevance to the term “Robert’s Rationale.”

Two friends discovered that, by putting links up on enough Web sites, you can make a certain Google search return a certain result. One friend made the other’s page come up with a search for “talentless hack.”

That’s all well and good, and kind of amusing. As is the fact that “miserable failure” returns the Web site of George W. Bush. The problem arises when people use the glitch to hurt others’ reputations (full disclosure: I am myself a victim). Google has steadfastly refused to do anything about it, even when specific cases are reported with evidence.

Maybe a high-profile incident like this will force Google to retool its search engine to de-emphasize links, especially when there’s a suspicious pattern — or at least repond to complaints by removing bombed pages from the index. Judging by the spokesman’s quotes in the article, though, that’s unlikely.

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.