John Key has joined George W Bush and Tony Blair as the target of a Google bomb.
It is an online phenomenon first seen in England at the start of the millennium. This week it reached New Zealand.
Type “clueless” into a New Zealand google search right now, hit ‘I feel lucky’ and you will be directed to John Key’s personal website.
Key has been given the dubious honour of being the first New Zealand politician to be google-bombed and a 22-year-old programmer from Parnell is responsible.
A google bomb is essentially a manipulation of the search engine to improve the rankings of particular webpages that ensures a site is at the top of the results for particular search phrases.
Some of the more famous google bombs are also expressions of political opinion – “liar” leading to Tony Blair, or “miserable failure” leading to the White House’s biography of George W Bush are two that made headlines around the world.
The election campaign is only three hours old and already it’s both silly and dirty. And the silliness and dirt is coming from Parnell – is that a hot bed of political activism?
The Standard, surprise, surprise had posted on this before 9:00 am this morning
What did they know and when?