Google Bomb: You Don’t Find Chuck Norris

When you type Chuck Norris into Google and click “I’m Feeling Lucky” the phrase “Google won’t search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don’t find Chuck Norris, he finds you” comes up in a new page that mimics a Google search result page.  (shown below)

Chuck Norris Joke Google Search

This practical joke is a prime example of the fun people are having with Google and the “I’m Feeling Lucky” search option. People can influence search engines like Google to rank a page higher than others so that their joke page comes up as the top result when someone uses the search option “I’m Feeling Lucky”.  Officially known as “Google Bombing,” this practice can be dated back to 1999 when a search for “more evil than Satan himself” landed you on Microsoft’s homepage.  Google Bombing is becoming a long-standing tradition on the web as more and more people find ways to manipulate Google’s search results to put up hoax and joke pages. Another great example is when people Google Bombed President George W. Bush in 2003.  If you were to type “miserable failure” and click “I’m Feeling Lucky” it brought you to the President’s biography page on the White House website.

Google Bombing won’t always work for everyone. This can be the result of one of two factors. The first factor that can make your Google Bomb a dud is the location of where you are searching.  When someone enters a query in Google for example, the search results become more specific to the user’s location.  The other factor that can affect the results of a Google Bomb from working is personalized search. Google’s personalized search option generates search results that are partially based on a user’s recent search history.

Even though “I’m Feeling Lucky” quirks won’t always work for everyone, they are still out there and still very funny. On that note, Rise Interactive asks you to contribute other “I’m Feeling Lucky” examples or any other Google Jokes or quirks found on Google. Remember to keep it clean and have fun!

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ashish.guglani01 5 pts

OK,,google bomb,,,nice article,,,, Ashish <a href="http://www.wikiuncle.com">wikiuncle.com!</a>

Just as a follow up, and to conclude: the former analysis indicates that Google still has a lot to improve in its suggested keywords, specially now that Google Instant has converted those keywords in prime real estate.

Cheers,

Antonio

Congrats, amusing post.

This reading took me to try a few searches and realize that, due to the introduction of Google Instant, the only keywords for which you can choose the "I'm feeling lucky" option are the ones that Google suggests in its auto-complete. Do the test, and you will see that "I'm feeling lucky" appears at the right of any suggested keyword when you mouse over it. If you keep typing until your keyword doesn't generate any suggestions, you will have no way of going to the "I'm feeling lucky" page for that keyword. This is a limitation on the functionality of Google Instant, which personally doesn't affect me but might be disappointing for the fans of the "I'm feeling lucky" feature. For those users: you just need to turn instant off and enjoy the traditional Google interface.

While playing with this, I tried the following searches:

- Query: rise interactive (just typed it in the search bar, without pressing enter)
- Suggestions: rise interactive, rise interactive salary, howard diamond rise interactive, nicole banks rise interactive.
- Evaluation: all 4 suggestions were related to the company, which is not bad. Is still far from the ideal result though, which would be obtaining more relevant suggestions such as: rise interactive internet marketing, rise interactive seo, rise interactive e-mail marketing, rise interactive careers, rise interactive facebook, rise interactive linkedin, etc.

Finally, I decided to go on and click on "I'm feeling lucky" for the suggestion rise interactive salary. Interestingly enough, I ended up in this page: http://www.riseinteractive.com/chicago-marketing-c..., which is the job posting for the Interactive Marketing Intern position. Although job seekers looking for an internship might be really thrilled to see that this query takes them directly to the job posting that they were looking for, I don't think the rest of job hunters will be very excited.

Great blog,

Antonio

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