So, is Scientology a 'Dangerous Cult'? Was George Bush a 'Miserable Failure'? Or did Google's attempts to stop Google Bombs result in a miserable failure? Right now if you type 'Dangerous Cult' into your google search box, the number 1 result returned in the scientology home page - while I'm not interested in making a religious point, I am interested in questioning the supposedly 'democratic' principals of google's search engine rankings.

So, Google Bombs have struck back. What happens when a bunch of people get together and decide to try and raise a page to the top of the rankings for a strange phrase? Well, you end up with George Bush's page appearing top for 'Miserable Failure'. (Essentially each link counts as a vote, so put enough links on enough reputable sites and you get a result). That's old news, as google "solved the problem". Essentially when the anchor text in links doesn't appear on the target page, then google thinks, aaaah maybe it's dodgy, lets not count that one. Clever eh? So, as George Bush's site didn't contain the words 'miserable failure' (hardly surprising!), then all the links made to it with that anchor text were disregarded. Actually the word failure did appear briefly on the site, and the page shot back up for a while.

So, have google bombs come back? In a way yes - or rather google's quick fix didn't work... Scientology warns us of living in a 'dangerous' society and bang, because of that they can be labled a dangerous cult! The 'fix' in my mind was a bit like a 1st year programmer might make, but I guess it works most of the time. Incidently I can't find the word 'brainwashing' on the page, yet Scientology ranks 3rd for 'brainwashing cult'.

Ultimately my problem stems from the pagerank algorithm used in ranking pages in search engine results. It relies on a democratic process where the ballot boxes are stacked by the webmasters - it's not trully democratic. On the up side, it does mean the web is still a fun place to roam!