# New Romney Google bomb, or is it organic? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 10, 2012, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-romney-google-bomb-or-is-it-organic/637311 "2012-10-10T14:56:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-romney-google-bomb-or-is-it-organic/637311/1 "2012-10-10T14:56:00Z")
Go to Google images and type “completely wrong”. [http://www.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1268&bih=560&q=completely+wrong&oq=completely+wrong&gs\_l=img.3..0i3j0i24j0i5i24l2.5250.10894.0.11527.26.21.4.1.1.0.189.1820.15j6.21.0...0.0...1ac.1.0ObJfX12kPA#hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&sa=1&q="completely+wrong"&oq="completely+wrong"&gs\_l=img.3..0i24j0i5i24l2.157303.157947.0.158270.2.2.0.0.0.1.913.1183.2-1j6-1.2.0...0.0...1c.1.CWeqdBPU-Iw&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r\_gc.r\_pw.r\_qf.&fp=d64d6f06eb5b70e6&bpcl=35243188&biw=1268&bih=560](http://www.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1268&bih=560&q=completely+wrong&oq=completely+wrong&gs_l=img.3..0i3j0i24j0i5i24l2.5250.10894.0.11527.26.21.4.1.1.0.189.1820.15j6.21.0...0.0...1ac.1.0ObJfX12kPA#hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=%22completely+wrong%22&oq=%22completely+wrong%22&gs_l=img.3..0i24j0i5i24l2.157303.157947.0.158270.2.2.0.0.0.1.913.1183.2-1j6-1.2.0...0.0...1c.1.CWeqdBPU-Iw&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=d64d6f06eb5b70e6&bpcl=35243188&biw=1268&bih=560) Not every picture is Romney, but pretty damn near. It seems hard to believe that people could successfully intentionally Google bomb that many different pictures of the same man. On the other hand, would an article saying some quote of his was “completely wrong” cause an accompanying picture to show up for that phrase? Is Google now smart enough that if the same phrase occurs near a name in enough articles, and that name is associated with enough pictures of a man, that many of those pictures come up when the phrase is Googled? What’s going on here? ETA: I’m not trying to make a political statement. There’s plenty of that in other threads. I’m just curious as to why this is happening with Google. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-romney-google-bomb-or-is-it-organic/637311/2 "2012-10-10T15:18:03Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > It seems hard to believe that people could successfully intentionally Google bomb that many different pictures of the same man. On the other hand, would an article saying some quote of his was “completely wrong” cause an accompanying picture to show up for that phrase? Why not? If the White House spokesman states that Romney was “completely wrong” in some speech, and then every news organisation that has a website (pretty much all the major newspapers, TV stations, radio stations) puts that statement (with accompanying picture) up on their website as a legitimate news story, it’s gonna look like a large presence to Google. Heck, some times the Dope appears as the first hit in a google search because of a thread in the forum. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-romney-google-bomb-or-is-it-organic/637311/3 "2012-10-10T15:32:23Z")
True, but it’s not just one picture. It’s many many different pictures of Romney. I don’t have the time or inclination to check to see if everyone actually has “completely wrong” on every page, but I assume that they must. Even so, it seems like the exact same picture would have to occur many times in conjunction with that phrase before Google would make the connection and it seems hard to believe that every one of those pictures occurs numerous times with that phrase. But I suppose that must be the case. Either that or Google’s algorithms have gotten very intelligent. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-romney-google-bomb-or-is-it-organic/637311/4 "2012-10-10T15:35:57Z")
Think about how many times the phrase “completely wrong” must occur on the internet, totally unconnected to Romney, and many many of those occurrences must be accompanied by one or more pictures. So why is Romney so prominent, unless Google has somehow made a connection between his name and that phrase? I’m sure that part of the answer is the date of the pages, with newer ones showing up first. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-romney-google-bomb-or-is-it-organic/637311/5 "2012-10-10T15:42:30Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > True, but it’s not just one picture. It’s many many different pictures of Romney. I don’t have the time or inclination to check to see if everyone actually has “completely wrong” on every page, but I assume that they must. Like mlees said - it doesn’t have to be the same picture. It’s from a quote in a story that many news outlets published and published with their own photo of Romney. The story could feature any picture of Romney and every news outlet published their own photo. It’s also very popular to link to and share political stories online right now. The more times your story gets linked, the more you move up in Google search results. Plus the “completely wrong” words from the quote are being used in titles not just text. That gets you more search results. Search “completely wrong” in the non-image search. What do you get? All articles about Romney. And they all presumably have accompanying photos of him. Search “I love big bird”. All the results are political related. You mean no one said they love Big Bird online before last week??? Yes, they did. They just didn’t get as much traction as the recent story. ---
**Author:** ![Nancarrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c37758/32.png) [@Nancarrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nancarrow)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-romney-google-bomb-or-is-it-organic/637311/6 "2012-10-10T15:46:29Z")
Romney recently said he was ‘completely wrong’ in making his 47% statement. Given its infamy and current importance in political punditry I think that accounts for the Google Images results. Also note similar statistics if you just type ‘completely wrong’ into the standard search engine. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2012, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-romney-google-bomb-or-is-it-organic/637311/7 "2012-10-11T03:25:52Z")
[Related story from Yahoo.](http://news.yahoo.com/mitt-romney-google-bombed-himself-213100629.html) > [@](#): > > Mitt Romney has managed to achieve something other politicians only got after having cajoled pranksters into doing it for them: He has his very own Google bomb… that he created himself. A Google image search of the term “completely wrong” brings up images of Romney, implying that his face most represents “completely wrong.” Romney is not the first politician to get his name associated with something unsavory on Google—Rick Santorum and George W. Bush had bombs of their own. But, unlike those men, Romney did it to himself, as this is not an intentional Google bomb, a Google spokesperson told Slate’s Will Oremus. The search results, instead, are the result of Romney’s comments last week about the 47 percent. “I said something that’s just completely wrong,” he told Fox News last week. ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2012, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-romney-google-bomb-or-is-it-organic/637311/8 "2012-10-11T04:41:21Z")
Personally, I think it’s the first evidence of Google reaching the [singularity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity) point. Any day now, I expect robots from the future to show up and take care of Mitt.