As Internet pranks go, "miserable failure" was a rousing success.

Now the joke's over.

Google announced on its official blog last week that the search engine has improved its "analysis of the link structure of the web," to help prevent the practice known as "Googlebombing" — a way to manipulate a search for a phrase (usually an obscure one) to give a specific Web site a higher ranking.

The most famous bomb was for "miserable failure." The top search result: President's Bush's page on the White House site. As of this writing, the first link is to a BBC article about the Web-savvy trickery. .

Bush wasn't the only target. Many of the more popular bombs were done for political or comic effect — a search for "waffles" once sent searchers to John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign site.

The company's initial stance on the topic was to leave the tactic alone because it didn't have much affect on the search engine's work. But Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Webspam team and author of last week's post, said that an increasing number Google users have accused Google of being partial to the bombs, even assisting in their execution.

The decision has raised the suspicions of at least one person: Offered a chance to give feedback on the topic, one user raises the question of censorship. Last year Google agreed to censor its site in order to remain running in China.

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asap reporter Howie Rumberg is based in New York.

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