search engine attack on GWB

Reese reeza at flex.com
Fri Jan 26 15:20:42 PST 2001


Formatting fixed

At 01:44 PM 1/26/01 -0500, Blank Frank wrote:
 >If you type "dumb motherfucker" (unquoted) in Google, the first hit is
 >http://www.georgewbushstore.com/
 >
 >which is not a parody site and includes this:
 >
 > (Note: If you have arrived at this site through
 > inappropriate references via a search engine, please
 > be assured that we did not utilize this language in our
 > site, our HTML,  nor in our internet promotion of
 > this site. What happened was the result of a malicious
 > act and we are pursuing remedies through the efforts
 > of our staff and attorneys.)
 >
 >Anyone have any idea how that was done?

<paste>

<http://www.hugedisk.com/story.asp?ar_id=57>

                      You ain't huge. You ain't nothin'!

          ) 2000 HugeDisk Enterprises. All rights reserved.

HugeDisk Helps Confirm G.W. Bush's Reputation

     The on-line reputation of a celebrity -- from a television star to a
     high-stakes politician -- can have a dramatic effect on that person's
     career. Hate and worship sites, a slanted news media, or on-line
     chat-style commentary can all have either a positive or negative
     influence. Because an on-line reputation is something that's created
     through the mass consciousness of the Internet, it can often be
     difficult to judge exactly what a celebrity's on-line reputation may
     be. Every once in a while, however, something magical happens that
     makes it possible for a reputation to be validated through the simple
     click of a button.

                         Press Generated By This Story

                              Wired Magazine[1]
                            The Register (UK)[2]

       [1] http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,41401,00.html
       [2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/16334.html

     We at HugeDisk Men's Magazine are proud to report that, although
     entirely unwittingly, we have done our part to cement Texas Governor
     George W. Bush's on-line reputation as that of a "dumb motherfucker".

     How did we contribute to so dubious an achievement? It was easy! On
     the first installment of our Ask Hester HugeDisk column we innocently
     ran a link from the words "dumb motherfucker" to George W. Bush's
     on-line campaign store. The search engines noticed that we, along with
     a few other websites, endorsed George as a "dumb motherfucker" and
     adjusted George's search engine rankings accordingly.

     Follow the directions below to see proof that George W. Bush is the
     Internet's premier dumb motherfucker.

      1. Click here[3] to open the Yahoo! search engine in a separate window.

      2. Type the words "dumb motherfucker" into Yahoo!'s search term box.

      3. Click Search, or press Enter.

       [3] http://www.yahoo.com/

     Who owns the first site listed there? The Internet's most popular dumb
     motherfucker, that's who. Thank you America!

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