Google's Role As A Grassroots Tool

Another appealing feature, SooHoo said, is that campaigns can limit their ad word spending in advance to $100, $1,000, or any other amount. "It just turns off when you're done," he explained.

Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a think tank that publishes advice on new media for Democratic candidates, is equally enthusiastic about the effectiveness of ad words. "Very few politicians do buy those ads, so you can buy them very cheaply and be sure your site is seen," he said.

That Bowers spent just $326 to steer nearly 1,000 people to an article critical of Allen shows how inexpensive the tactic can be. The Allen race was one of about 50 that Bowers tried to influence using ad words. Total cost: $500. "We had something crazy, like 14 voter contacts [visits to pages containing his ads] for every cent we spent," Bowers said.

Bowers' efforts to influence the 2006 election went beyond purchasing Google AdWords. Using a technique known as Google-bombing, he also attempted to move certain news articles higher in the search results when computer users typed in the names of particular congressional candidates.

Bowers used MyDD to ask for readers' help in compiling negative mainstream news articles about 50 Republican congressional candidates. Next, MyDD posted a list pairing each of the targeted candidates with one negative article. Bowers then asked like-minded bloggers to create a link from their blogs to the chosen negative article for each candidate. (Conservative bloggers tried to counter Bowers's Google-bombing with a similar campaign that linked Democratic congressional candidates to negative articles.)

Search-engine operators object to efforts to manipulate search results, because they undermine the engine's credibility. But many businesses have tried for years to ensure that their Web site appears on the first screen of a relevant Google search. These companies pay consultants for what's known as search engine optimization; there's even a Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization.

SEMPO member Brian Easter, who is CEO of NeboWeb, helps companies raise their profiles in Google searches. But he says that only certain profile-boosting techniques are regarded as fair, or "white hat."

"Google-bombing is considered a 'black hat' search-engine-optimization practice," Easter said. "It's not considered one of the best practices, but a lot of people [use] that in short-term campaigns."

Easter said that one reason he would not recommend Google-bombing is that it can be traced and reported to the search engine's operator. And the bombardiers could find their company or client stricken from search results as punishment, he warned.

Easter added that in his line of work, "it is a lot easier to try to push a message forward on a search engine than to push something down."

The most famous case of successful political Google-bombing happened in late 2003. Washington state blogger George Johnston took credit for initiating a six-week campaign in which Internet pranksters successfully linked the term "miserable failure" to President Bush, so that Bush's official biography was the first result listed when anyone did a search on that phrase.

Once that connection was created, it survived until last month, when Google updated the formula it uses to produce search results. Now a Google search on "miserable failure" returns news articles about the infamous Google-bombing.

Blogger Tim Tagaris used the Web site GooglebombCT to launch a Google-bomb campaign against Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut before last year's Democratic primary. And other bloggers tied the surname of then-Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., to a scurrilous definition that gained the top spot on Google searches on "Santorum" weeks before the November election.

The MyDD Google-bombing campaign that began a little more than two weeks before the 2006 election was anything but the flop that some had predicted because of its late start.

When it was launched, only a few of its chosen articles ranked in the first 100 search results for any of the 50 targeted Republican congressional candidates. In less than a week, those articles appeared on the first page of the search results for 36 of the 50 candidates. In a report to fellow bloggers, MyDD's Lucas O'Connor called that achievement "mind-blowing."

According to Leyden, getting on the first page of search results is important because studies -- including one by the Pew Internet and American Life Project -- have found that most Internet users never reach the second page. And a more recent Pew study last September found that 26 million Americans, or 19 percent of the adult population, were using the Internet to get information on the upcoming midterm elections.

A Google-bombing campaign led by John Hawkins of Right Wing News tried to reach some of these potential voters by countering the MyDD-led attack. Right Wing News encouraged conservative bloggers to Google-bomb 45 Democratic congressional candidates about the same time that the liberal effort began. Less than a week later, conservatives reported that 35 of the 45 negative articles it was promoting were popping up within the first three pages of Google searches.

Google does not condone Google-bombing, but the company fears creating worse problems if it tries to block it. "Objectivity remains at the core of our mission, so we're reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent items from showing up," said Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes.

The popularity of a given Web link plays a role in how high the link is listed in a search result. But, Reyes noted in an interview, other factors come into play, and a page connected to a mainstream news organization would rank higher than a blogger's.

Reyes said he is not convinced that the results reported by the bloggers mean that their Google-bombing succeeded in manipulating search-engine results because rankings change for many reasons. "We constantly update our search algorithms," he said. Reyes added that search engines will likely do more updates ahead of the 2008 election in an effort to keep search results objective.

In the meantime, a few bloggers are uneasy about Google-bombing, but O'Connor isn't among them. He insists that MyDD was performing a public service. "Fighting back is not inherently the same as fighting dirty," he said. "This is the system in which we've been forced to operate for the time being.

"If these legitimate and relevant issues were already being discussed in a press which was more concerned with facts than giving equal time to opposing opinions, this wouldn't be necessary, and I'd sit back and watch," O'Connor continued. "But reporting [by mainstream news organizations], by and large, is nothing more than he said/she said at this point. And that doesn't serve the public interest."

O'Connor is already strategizing for the 2008 election. He wants to release his next round of Google bombs earlier.