Type "dangerous cult" into Google and you’ll likely see, until Google disables it, that Scientology.org is the top result.

A year ago, Google’s spamfighters took measures to prevent Internet users from manipulating the search results via googlebombing, which involves mass-linking to a website with specific anchor text. The most famous examples of googlebombing include the White House website as the number one result for "miserable failure" and Senator John Kerry’s site as the number one result for "waffle."

Now, according to Google’s results, Scientology is a dangerous cult, and we should hope for Google’s and sanity’s sake the hypersensitive church doesn’t sue for defamation, though few would put it past them.

It’s difficult to tell who’s behind the googlebomb, but the odds-on favorite is likely a group called Anonymous, labeled by some as hackers with an axe to grind. The group has posted videos on YouTube, and messages around the Net protesting Scientology and waging a kind of cyber war against it.

One message called for Londoners to meet outside Scientology’s British HQ for a storming of the Bastille, so to speak. Doubtlessly, Scientologists will get little sympathy from Germany, where lawmakers proposed a ban of the religion.   
 

Update: A reader points out that a December 2007 report from the Associated Press was incorrect about the German government taking measures to ban the religion of Scientology.The AP issued the correction on January 2, and though it retracted some of the previous assertions, reasserted that parts of the government were gathering evidence against the church with the aim of a ban.

To be fair, Paul Boutin was well ahead of the curve, writing on Friday, "On Gawker, Nick Denton’s mirror post of Tom Cruise’s Scientology promo video is closing on 1.5 million views – comparable traffic to all of Valleywag so far this month."  But of course, Boutin operates under the same Gawker Media umbrella, so Hitwise’s follow-up is still worth seeing.

Heather Dougherty states, "After posting a copy of the video, the market share of visits to Gawker.com increased 178% on Tuesday, January 15th from the previous day.  Traffic also increased another 72% on the next day (from Tuesday), where traffic peaked surrounding the event . . . .  The Scientology website also experienced a spike in traffic, where the market share increased 450% on Tuesday, January 15th from the previous day."

So how can the average eBusiness site duplicate these numbers?  Well, aside from pissing off rich religions and carrying celebrity news, there may not be any easy way.  Still, blogs can take a shot, and it seems likely that staying up on current events and tossing in references when possible will make any site look a more flexible and modern.

Links to Scientology information on the Internet that do not end up at the Church’s official website frequently hit a "Page not found" error. The group regularly claims material about it falls under copyright, leading to a DMCA takedown request.

The latest episode of this took place when a video taken of Cruise discussing Scientology showed up on YouTube. Its appearance coincided with the release of a book by Andrew Morton, Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography.

Google took the video down after receiving the Church’s DMCA notice. The News.com AU site said Google denied having "buckled under pressure" in complying with the legal request.

That report also noted the video, running about nine minutes in length, had been culled from a three-hour piece available to Church of Scientology attendees. The Church claimed the clip had been pirated from a DVD.

Those who missed the clip on YouTube can still view it at Defamer. A takedown notice promptly followed, but Defamer’s parent firm, Gawker Media, replied to that stating the piece was being used "in the context of news reporting and critical commentary."