Miserable failure
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"Miserable failure" is a term applied to any project, undertaking, or entity that underperforms to such a dramatic extent that, in the opinion of the individual using the phrase, it might as well not have been undertaken at all.
The term was applied to the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush by Dick Gephardt. Later, George W. Bush's biography page [1] (http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html) was arranged to appear as the #1 Google hit for that specific search query [2] (http://www.google.ca/search?q=miserable+failure&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&meta=).
The trick is possible because Google searches more than just the contents of web pages - it also counts how often a site is linked to, and with what words. When such a tactic is taken to a large scale, as in this case, is is called Googlebombing.
Weblogger Adam Mathes is credited with inventing the practice in 2001, when he used it to link the phrase "talentless hack" to a friend's website.
In retaliation, Bush supporters Google-bombed Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton, and Michael Moore with the same phrase.
Some of Google's newer features, Local and Maps, also provide miserable failure results in Washington DC [3] (http://local.google.com/local?sc=1&hl=en&q=miserable+failure&near=washington+dc&btnG=Google+Search&rl=1).
On an interesting note, "Miserable failure" on other various popular search engines have yielded similar results:
- Altavista (http://www.altavista.com/web/results?q=miserable+failure)
- HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com/default.asp?query=miserable+failure)
- LookSmart (http://search.looksmart.com/p/search?qt=miserable+failure)
- Lycos (http://search.lycos.com/default.asp?loc=searchhp&tab=web&query=miserable+failure)
- MetaCrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com/info.metac/search/web/miserable%2Bfailure)
- Yahoo! (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=miserable+failure)
- MSN Search (http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=SRCHWB&q=miserable%20failure)