It's a good thing Google's Matt Cutts wouldn't claim an algorithm tweak was "100 percent perfect" against googlebombing. If so, we'd be making fun of him right now. The oft-ridiculed Church of Scientology is the latest target.
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.
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The CULT of $cientology
brainwashing & mind control techniques
1) HYPNOSIS - Inducing a high state of suggestibility, often thinly disguised as relaxation or meditation.
2) PEER GROUP PRESSURE - Suppressing doubt and resistance to new ideas by exploiting the need to belong.
3) "LOVE BOMBING" - Creating a sense of family through physical touch, thought & feeling sharing and emotional bonding.
4) REJECTION OF OLD VALUES - Accelerating acceptance of new lifestyle by constantly denouncing former beliefs and values.
5) CONFUSING DOCTRINE - Encouraging blind acceptance and rejection of logic through complex lectures on an incomprehensible doctrine.
6) METACOMMUNICATION - Implanting subliminal messages by stressing certain key words or phrases in long, confusing lectures.
7) REMOVAL OF PRIVACY - Achieving loss of ability to evaluate logically by preventing private contemplation.
8) DISINHIBITION - Encouraging child-like obedience by orchestrating child-like behaviour
9) UNCOMPROMISING RULES - Inducing regression and disorientation by soliciting agreement to seemingly simple rules which regulate mealtimes, bathroom breaks and use of medications.
10) VERBAL ABUSE - Desensitizing through bombardment with foul and abusive language. (Physical abuse, such as torture, is the more extreme form of this.)
11) SLEEP DEPRIVATION AND FATIGUE - Creating disorientation and vulnerability by prolonging mental an physical activity and withholding adequate rest and sleep.
12) DRESS CODES - Removing individuality by demanding conformity to the group dress code.
13) CHANTING OR SINGING - Eliminating non-cult ideas through group repetition of mind-narrowing chants or phrases.
14) CONFESSION - Encouraging the destruction of individual ego through confession of personal weaknesses and innermost feelings of doubt.
15) FINANCIAL COMMITMENT - Achieving increased dependence on the group by 'burning bridges' to the past, through the donation of assets.
16) FINGER POINTING - Creating a false sense of righteousness by pointing to the shortcomings of the outside world.
17) ISOLATION - Inducing loss of reality by physical separation from family, friends, society and rational references.
18) CONTROLLED APPROVAL - Maintaining vulnerability and confusion by alternately rewarding and punishing similar actions.
19) CHANGE OF DIET - Creating disorientation and increased susceptibility to emotional arousal by depriving the nervous system of necessary nutrients through the use of special diets and/or fasting. Also applying drugs for these purposes fall in this category.
20) GAMES - Inducing dependence on the group by introducing games with obscure rules.
21) NO QUESTIONS - Accomplishing automatic acceptance of beliefs by discouraging questions.
22) GUILT - Reinforcing the need for 'salvation' by exaggerating the sins of the former lifestyles.
23) FEAR - Maintaining loyalty and obedience to the group by threatening soul, life or limb for the slightest 'negative' thought, word or deed.
Three Principles of Re-Education
1) REPETITION - Going through the same subject over and over again until it is known by heart.
2) ACTIVITY PEDAGOGICS - The subjects are never left alone nor give any private time of their own, they are always in activity.
3) CRITICISM AND SELF-CRITICISM - The subjects are supposed to feel uncertain; under the constant threat of being humiliated and despised.