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Google's Greatest: Stephen Colbert

by Terrence O'Brien on April 26, 2007 at 01:00 PM

greatest living american
Comedy Central's political shaman Stephen Colbert is undeniably hilarious. But is he the greatest living American? According to Google, yes he is. And here's why. Colbert recently told an audience before a taping of his show, 'The Colbert Report,' that he wanted to be the first result pulled up for a Google search of the phrase, "giant brass balls". It just so happened that a group from the search engine optimization firm, Alchemist Media, were present at the taping -- only, they felt "giant brass balls" would be too easy. Why not go for something bigger? And so began the Google bombing campaign to put Colbert on top for a search of the phrase, "greatest living American."

Google bombing is the practice of getting tons of people on the Web to direct massive amounts of links to a page using particular keywords. For example, a few years ago some Google bombers landed George W. Bush's biography on the top slot for a search of the phrase, "miserable failure." In response Google tweaked its ranking algorithm slightly. It'll be interesting to see if the company agrees or disagrees with this most recent exaltation.

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Tags: bombing, breaking+news, google, stephen colbert, StephenColbert, top, TV

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