Church of Scientology "Bombed" on Google

Apparently Scientology foes have detonated a "search bomb" on the Church of Scientology. Coming soon after a video was posted on YouTube stating opposition to the Church and it's control over it's members, we have to wonder if this is related to the message delivered by "Anonymous".

Though you probably weren't aware of the term, you may have even seen results of these "search bombs" or "Google bombs" as some call them. Google has become the search engine of choice for many. Google is so popular that their name is commonly used in our everyday vocabulary as a verb, as well as a noun.

The Google bomb, or search bomb, is the result of collective efforts on the parts of multiple website owners to get a website in the top of Google search results for certain search phrase. Google delivers search results by using algorithms that work largely on what they call page rank. If your site is linked to by other sites, they get higher rankings and come up closer to the top of the search results. Keywords and topics on sites lends to the rankings, but if multiple sites link to your site, and they use a certain phrase to link to the site, then they can elevate you to the top for certain phrases.

The very first instance of the search bomb was instigated by Adam Mathes who linked to a friends site using the phrase "talentless hack". Other famous Google bombs were "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that linked to a joke page, "French Military Victories" that also linked to a joke page, "McDonald's" was Google bombed to a page about the film "Supersize Me" that was a film that was extremely critical of the restaurant chain.

Scientologists have become the latest casualty of the search bomb. Try it out. Google the term "dangerous cult" from the Google website and the first result on the page comes up as scientology.org. The results of these bombs will usually fade with time as links are taken down or are no longer on the front page of blogs. Google is supposedly taking steps to stop the search bombs, but this is apparently not working yet.

What will you find in the search engines?

Credit: scyza

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