Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Polish Man Allegedly Arrested for Googlebombing

Ludwik Trammer translated an article from “Gazeta Wyborcza”, calling it the biggest Polish quality newspaper:

Young internet geek is facing up to 3 years in prison. The man is accused of insulting president Lech Kaczyński.

23 years old Marek W. from Cieszyn has written an amateur piece of software for so-called “website positioning.” After typing the given keyword into a search engine [Google, it turns out] the positioned website pops up as first item.

The man used the official website of Polish president Lech Kaczyński for testing the software. When internet users typed “kutas” ["penis"] they got the official president’s site. Furthermore – it was the first result. They played with this for couple of months – right up to March this year. That’s when the 23 years old was traced by investigator from the Katowice police office.

Finding him wasn’t difficult – the man used his home computer, which police easily traced by its IP address. The computer amateur confirmed that he wrote the program. “I just wanted to verify my skills and check if the software works” was his his explanation during the hearings.

Earlier this year, Google claimed to have neutralized the impacts of Googlebombs... though that mostly covers those bombs which use keywords not available on the target page. (Marek’s googlebomb may have been planted before the alleged Googlebomb defusion.)

[Thanks Ludwik!]

Polish Man Allegedly Arre ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (26)

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