The folks at Google are so helpful to the Obamas that when you Google "Laura Bush," you get a link to First Lady Michelle Obama|White House right there on the very first page.
There's no escaping those people, not if Google has anything to say about it.
Disclaimer: For those people who read "those people" as a racist phrase, it's intended here to disparage the current administration and its enablers regardless of race, color or creed.
George, at the risk of being lumped with "Those people," I'm wondering if we might give Google a pass on this one.
You're right, it DOES appear on the first page of search results ... though it WAS at the bottom of my page when I did the search. I'm wondering if there might be some residual meta tags on the White House-First Lady web page, that would still attract search engines to that page, even though there is a new First Lady.
Of course, it is possible that there may be another "Google bomb" effort, like the one that targetd President Bush in 2003 ... though the results of that effort were far more blatant than in the Laura Bush/Michelle Obama case.
Speaking of 2003, my recollection is that Googe developed and applied a fix for it.
Posted by: Jeff | April 29, 2010 at 01:43 PM
Would meta tags show up in the "Page Source" view? If so, there was nothing there about Laura Bush, and I doubt if the previous WH occupants had need to put Laura Bush meta tags there anyway.
Posted by: Geo | April 29, 2010 at 04:35 PM
George, of course the previous occupants of the WH would have put "laura" and "bush" in the meta tags for Ms. Bush's, along with a slew of more generic terms.
BUT, the CURRENT occupants may not have been thorough in updating that page for Ms. Obama, and may have glossed over the meta tags field ... which is a common mistake in maintaining web pages ... and why you will occasionally notice an off result to a serach, ot a line of "alt" text that doesn't seem to relate to the content of that page.
What we need is some heavyweight on website design and maintenenace to weigh-in on this and - if necessary - set me straight ... are you out there, Eric?
Posted by: Jeff | April 29, 2010 at 04:46 PM
The Obama folks have used the internet very efficiently, and Google has a history of cooperation with them.
I'm not buying any carelessness theory.
Posted by: Geo | April 30, 2010 at 06:01 AM