In 2006, Google altered its searching algorithm to make massive link farms less effective, making search results less politically slanted.

First political Google bomb of George W. Bush

U.S. President George W. Bush has been the subject of a variety of Google bombs. "Miserable failure" was the first. In October 2003, an effort was launched to create links of "miserable failure" to the official White House biography of President Bush. In about 6 weeks the link to George W. Bush's biography became the first result for "miserable failure" on a Google search. A blogger from Washington has since taken credit for starting this tactic, though the phrase had been in heavy use following its adoption as a catchphrase by the Dick Gephardt campaign.

For a time, Bush's official biography had also become the top result for both "miserable" and "failure".

First political Google bomb of John Kerry

Senator John Kerry has also been the target of Google bombs. The first of these is the "waffles" Google bomb. In April 2004, Ken Jacobson, then a law school student at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh launched the "waffles" Google bombing of Kerry, in part to retaliate for Democrats' Google bombing of George W. Bush. He encouraged linking of "waffles" to John Kerry's official site.

The term "waffling" is used to describe the back and forth motion of the wings of water fowl prior to landing and is often used to describe a person who cannot decide on a particular course of action. Throughout the campaign, Kerry detractors accused him of changing his position on various issues.

Impact

By creating links to the official presidential biography page with text reading "miserable failure", a relatively small number (possibly as few as 32) of website owners and bloggers was able to make the site appear as the first result when searching for miserable failure.

Political blogger George Johnston of Old Fashioned Patriot has claimed to be the coordinator of this particular Google bomb, which began a month after the Dick Gephardt campaign began using the catchphrase "miserable failure" to attack the Administration.

The bomb has proliferated beyond the Google web search: "miserable failure" returns images of Bush on Google Images and Local and Maps return the "US Executive Mansion" and the White House as the first two results for "miserable failure" in Washington, D.C.