海角大神

As some Google Maps users discovered this week, typing certain racist search terms into the popular online mapping service will return one of the world's most recognizable addresses: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

This probably wasn鈥檛 a programmer鈥檚 racist Easter egg, nor was it a hacker breaching security. More likely, it was a form of algorithmic sabotage called a 鈥淕oogle Bomb.鈥�

Google Maps users took to Twitter and other social media this week to express their reactions to the discovery that when variations on a word used to attack African Americans are typed聽into Google Maps' search box, the results were a view of the White House.

According to published reports Google has issued a public apology for the bug.

"It鈥檚 not a traditional hack in the sense that it鈥檚 from inside Google, or that somebody has penetrated the security of Google it鈥檚 that people are sort of manipulating the natural behavior of these machine learning and search indexing algorithms,鈥� says Princeton University鈥檚 Computer Department Chair,聽Andrew Appel聽in an interview.

鈥淚t鈥檚 people outside Google manipulating the search as a prank, or for political purposes,鈥� says Dr. Appel, an expert in computer security and privacy. 鈥淭he term for this practice of exploiting the algorithm's vulnerability is, 'Google Bomb'鈥�

It would appear that somebody swayed the algorithm by influencing the volume of words and web links it was fed from the outside.

鈥淭he way Google works is that it uses machine learning and indexing algorithms to gather words and phrases from all the websites in the world so that when you search for those words or phrases it can show you all the websites that contain them,鈥� Appel says.

Once common way for a standard Google search 鈥� not specifically a maps inquiry 鈥� to be swayed is for a specific Web page to be targeted to rank in the top spot in the search engine results pages for a particular phrase, so that when that phrase is typed in Google it brings the desired results.

To make that happen, a very dedicated person or group of people need to build a vast quantity of links that point to the desired page and its anchor text so that the target website will rank number one on Google.

鈥淭he nature of those algorithms is that if enough people out there deliberately put two different words or phrases next to each other the algorithms will think that lots of people advocate those things,鈥� Appel says.

This is related to聽search engine optimization, or聽SEO, the practice of improving the聽search engine聽results for relevant results.

鈥淚 know that Google adjusts its algorithms to try and prevent that [Google Bombing] and giving people free advertising they don鈥檛 deserve,鈥� he says. 鈥淚鈥檓 sure Google adjusts but it鈥檚 hard to do a perfect job. It wouldn鈥檛 surprise me if when they become aware of specific Google Bombs they try to disable them.鈥�

Appel points to a previous case of political Google Bombing in 2007, when people were linking the words 鈥渕iserable failure鈥� to George W. Bush.

Here are a few other famous Google Bombs: Typing in 鈥榗ompletely wrong鈥� as a Google Image search and getting images of former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a result and in 2005 Bill O鈥橰eilly鈥檚 website began ranking in 1st position on Google for the phrase 鈥渢errorist sympathizer.鈥�

One humorous result was when users typed in 鈥榝ind chuck norris鈥� and then hit the 鈥業鈥檓 Feeling Lucky鈥� button, they would be taken to聽Arran Schlosberg鈥檚 site NoChuckNorris.com聽which looked like a Google results page, but displayed the false error message, 鈥淕oogle won鈥檛 search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don鈥檛 find Chuck Norris, he finds you.鈥�