Googlebomb?

Been over at Political Animal just now, and Kevin's bummed. I hear you, man. We all are. Though, in his defense, Kevin is rereading 1984, and, as he's come to realize, while it might ring bells and strike chords, but these days it's a particularly depressing read.

But, while explaining some of the other roots of his depression today, he wrote something that, well, made me go, "hmmmmm." Here, you see:

So I gave up. I'm just not meant to face the world today. But I will say that there's one ray of sunshine in the unremitting stream of bad news that's assaulting us daily in this, the fourth year of George Bush's regency: Instapundit. He's been posting like a madman, as though he's decided to take on the task of bucking up the flagging morale of his fellow war supporters single-handedly. 35 posts yesterday and 17 so far today! And this is one happy world he lives in: things in Iraq are going splendidly, all the problems you hear about are mere inventions of the liberal media, Nick Berg is still topping Google searches, the press is paying way too much attention to all that Abu Ghraib stuff, and the insurgency in Fallujah is well under control.

It's a virtuoso display. But what I wonder is this: has he actually convinced himself that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, or does he know better and is just pretending otherwise? And which would be the more impressive performance?

Which led me to thinking about Googlebombs. Basically, it's a way to push whatever the desired search result may be to the top of the listings on Google, the world's most used Internet search engine. It comes in handy. Mobius, the proprietor of Jewschool, a hip, young, and, well, Jewish, blog, used the technique to successfully dislodge a neo-Nazi site from the number one slot on Google when one searched for the phrase "Jew."

In any case, Kevin's bemoaning the fact that in Instapundit's world everything is peachy because Nick Berg's beheading is still the most searched for snuff flick online had me wondering why. I mean, aside from the horrid nature of humanity in general, why would the entire world be searching for one man's execution so ferociously?

Like many people who run web sites of one sort or another, I tend to view the statistical reports on my visitors with great interest. One stat that always interests me is from whence y'all come; what link brought you here, if any. And, I guess since I'd quoted the title of the video as posted on the initial internet site, I've been on the receiving end of dozens (this is not a widely known blog...yet. Dozens is a large, large percentage of my hits on a given day) of Google searches for the video itself. From all over the world, too, not just the States. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why.

Until Kevin's post. Well, I can't say I've figured it out just yet, but it seems to me that in much the same way that by hot linking a specific keyword on multiple locations to one common end-result-site can propel that result to the top of the charts, it seems only logical that there would be some sort of analytic on Google's end that would figure the reverse-flow as well. What I mean to say is, the most common denominator on the way out of Google, to multiple sites listed within the results. That would work into their calculations as well, in determining what lands where.

In essence: the more sites that Googlers successfully link to a search term, the higher that term rises as well.

Am I saying there are bots crawling the web, using Google as their starting point? To keep Nick Berg (or what have you) on the top of the charts? I don't know, but I can't help but wonder. Who would benefit by spreading the meme that this, this, is what truly matters to the Googlers of America, and not those sordid porn shots from Abu Ghraib?

So, as I said, it made me go "hmmmm."