If you do an image search for Idiot, you will see a long series of pictures of Donald Trump. This is a case of Google bombing. Sort of.
The perhaps most famous Google bomb in the past was when a number of search engine optimizers linked to the White House website with anchor text mentioning Miserable Failure during George W. Bush’s time in office. Anyone searching for that phrase would then see the White House’s presentation of Bush. What has happened today with “Idiot” is more or less the same thing.
Just like in a genuine Google bomb, links have been made to pictures of Trump with the anchor text (a strong ranking factor in Google’s algorithm) Idiot. But the majority of the images shown are actually published either with filenames containing idiot or in articles that mention the word. Strictly speaking, this is not what is usually called a Google bomb but rather standard search engine optimization, where someone has optimized these images to appear in that specific search result. Something similar was done in Sweden a number of years ago, where the search results for Erik Hellsborn included pictures of feces.
The background is said to be an attempt to connect Green Day’s American Idiot to Trump’s visit to the United Kingdom. We haven’t been able to find proof of this, but it sounds plausible.
A true Google bomb therefore means that images or pages that were not optimized for a particular result suddenly rise to the top. That’s not exactly the case here, but it’s pretty close.
Magnus Bråth
Consultant & Adviser
Magnus is one of the world's most prominent search marketing specialists and primarily works with management and strategy at his agency Brath AB.