Search Engine Optimization

Newly appointed US president Barrack Obama is getting a lot on his hands. A war in Iraq and Afghanistan. A collapsed financial system with millions of lost homes, jobs and dreams. Millions of angry people with zero faith in the system. Though not his creation, he is getting the fire for all Bush’s mistmatches.

If you search for “miserable failure” on Yahoo.com, G.W.Bush shows at #1 spot, followed by Obama.

Google Bomb and Obama Rankings Explained

The reason Obama ranks #2 for “miserable failure” is due to an old prank pulled on Bush back in 2003. Here’s the story.

In order to understand why official government website ranks for that phrase, we need to know basics of how search engines operate. Both Google and Yahoo look at links as votes for the website. Search engines also look at the anchor text of links, and use it as an indicator of relevancy. If 10 websites link to another site with anchor text “failure”, then search engines will show it on search results for that key phrase. Those are the basics of search engine optimization.

In 2003 SEO’s were not happy with Bush’s march to Iraq so they had some fun with links. They pointed a bunch of links to washington.gov with anchor text miserable failure and as a result mr Bush ranked #1 for “miserable failure” in few weeks. Major news outlets such as BCC picked up the story.

Google diffused this issue, but it still works on Yahoo.

Now that Obama is in the office and links are still in tact, he comes up for the phrase, even though it was meant for Bush. Let’s hope that Yahoo corrects this or / Obama serves past this legacy.