[Rebelbase]

Ok, Web detectives get started. Is it a liberal mole in the White House messing with the website or is it someone at Google?

[Rebelbase]

ping.

[hellinahandcart]

Oh my goodness.

[Petronski]

I would think it is someone at Google. Neither 'miserable' nor 'failure' can be found on the official web page, nor in its source code.

[Damocles]

That smells a bit fishy.

That particular query returns a government site outlining W's presidency.

Yeah, I'd say someone has tied some unkind keywords to that site...

[AppyPappy]

It's not in the source. Must be Google.

[general_re]

You have to look at the cached version that Google has for the answer, and the answer is:

"These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: miserable failure"

And here's the page that's responsible:

http://www.blah3.com/graymatter/archives/00000654.html

[Prodigal Son]

It's not someone at google, it's someone who understands google.

Here's your explanation. If you look at the source code for that article in the header before the html body begins you will find the meta tags:

"keywords" content="jack beatty, bush, miserable failure, re-election, swing voters, Atlantic Unbound, Atlantic Monthly"

meta name="description" content="Jack Beatty on why Bush is a miserable failure"

The Website, The Atlantic Online is considered relevent by google's bots. The bots crawl that sight on a regular basis. Some of the things the bots look for are whether the search term appears in the meta tags of the code and if those words then appear in the document's body. If so, it considers it relevent to the search.

I've scored quite a few number one hits on google for different websites. It's not that hard if you know how to set the web pages up.

In addition, if a lot of other sites are linking to that particular article, it's relevence gets raised a great deal as well.

[Prodigal Son]

Which site is it in particular that you are referring to? The second return for me was the Atlantic online article.

[arete]

Now that's funny.

[JesseHousman]

Here's the second link:

Politics & Prose | by Jack Beatty "A Miserable Failure" Will Bush be re-elected? Only if voters wittingly ignore his long list of failures while in office ..... With one phrase Dick Gephardt has defined the issue to be decided next November. Can a "miserable failure" of a president win re-election? Bush's victory would testify to a civic failure more dangerous to the American future than any policies implemented or continued during a second Bush term. A majority would have demonstrated that democratic accountability is finished. That you can fail in everything and still be re-elected president.

What a cart load of cow manure! This is one of many reasons I never read the Atlantic.

[Prodigal Son]

Here's some more of your answer here:

http://mithras.blogs.com/blog/2003/12/miserable_failu.html

Looks like there's been a concerted effort. We could do the same.

[cookcounty]

This is from that "amon-hen" blog site: (number 6 and 7 on the Google return for "miserable failure"):

____________________

Miserable Failure

Here's a nifty idea for a new web project from Blah3.

From this day forth, I will refer to George W. Bush as a Miserable Failure at least once a day. Why, you ask? Well, someone came up with this great idea to link George W. Bush and Miserable Failure in popular search engines. If you have a blog or web site, help raise the link between George W. Bush and the phrase 'miserable failure' by copying this link and placing somewhere on your site or blog.

Thank you very much for your participation. [Politics] | Comments (1) | Link (Date added: Mon 27 Oct 2003, 22:17)

[El Jorhe]

Many would rightly consider President Bush a great success for taking the initiative of removing a miserable failure or two, among other things. But, while we're on the subject of miserable failures, it would be relevant to mention a few more, like this miserable failure, this miserable failure, and this miserable failure.

I've been inspired by this miserable failure thing, however. From this point forward I will be linking to great successes and miserable failures. I think you should to, after all, saying "miserable failure" and "great success" over and over is quite fun, in a childish sort of way.