Santorum (neologism)
Encyclopedia
In response to comments by U.S. Senator Rick Santorum
criticized as anti-gay by gay rights groups and some politicians, sex columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage
began a campaign in 2003 to associate Santorum's surname with a sexual innuendo. Savage's effort led to the creation of a derogatory word association.
In a segment of an April 2003 interview with the Associated Press discussing a recent United States Supreme Court decision
striking down an anti-sodomy law, Santorum argued that consenting adults
do not have a constitutional right to privacy, and that the recent court decision effectively was legalizing bestiality, polygamy
, adultery
, and sodomy
, all of which he believed undermined society
and the family. Savage subsequently asked his readers to coin a definition for "santorum" which would offend the Senator. He announced the winner as "the frothy mixture of lube
and fecal matter
that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex
." He created a web site to promote this definition, which became a prominent search result for Santorum's name on several search engines. He offered in 2010 to take the website down if Santorum donated US$5 million to Freedom to Marry
, a group advocating legal recognition of same-sex marriages.
In June 2011 Santorum said of the situation that "There are foul people out there who do horrible things. It's unfortunate some people thought it would be a big joke to make fun of my name. That comes with the territory." In September 2011 he asked Google to remove the definition from its search engine index. Google refused, claiming that it would compromise the integrity of its search results.
involves accepting any adult consensual behavior in the privacy of people's homes, even if the behavior might otherwise be thought deviant. Santorum believes this attitude leads to an unhealthy culture.
He said that, while he had no problem with homosexuality, he did have a problem with homosexual acts: "As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual." He continued: "We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does."
He said he was arguing against any relationship other than marriage between a man and a woman, the basis in his view of a stable society: "That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be." The interview triggered an angry reaction from gay rights activists and some politicians. A spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
described the views as divisive and reckless while conservative activists saw them as a "principled opposition to same-sex marriage."
American sex-advice columnist Dan Savage responded to Santorum's comments in an op-ed in The New York Times
on April 25, 2003, arguing that they amounted to an overt Republican appeal to homophobic voters. A reader of his column, "Savage Love
", suggested he organize a contest to create a definition for "santorum." Savage had previously sought to coin several sexual neologisms, including "pegging
." He wrote: "There's no better way to memorialize the Santorum scandal than by attaching his name to a sex act that would make his big, white teeth fall out of his big, empty head."
He said on May 29 that he had received 3,000 suggestions, and posted several for readers to choose from. On June 12 he announced the winner as "that frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." He set up a website, Spreading Santorum, to spread the definition, featuring the term over a brown splattered stain on an otherwise-white page. Savage also set up another website that displays the same content in a whole-page frameset. The Philadelphia Inquirer
reported in July 2006 that the site appeared at the top of a Google search for Santorum's name. When asked whether he was concerned about the effect on Santorum's children, Savage responded that gays and lesbians have children too, yet their children are required to listen to gay relationships being compared to incest and bestiality. He said the people worried about Santorum's children were "left-leaning trolls
": "The only people who come at me wringing their hands about Santorum's children are idiot lefties
who don't get how serious the right
is about destroying us."
Savage offered in May 2010 to remove the site if Santorum donated $5 million to Freedom to Marry, an advocacy group for same-sex marriage
. In August 2011, the term was still the top result for Santorum's name on several search engines, including Google, Bing
, and Yahoo.
In February 2011, Savage said he would resume his campaign. In a 2011 Funny or Die
video, Savage proposed to redefine Santorum's first name if Santorum did not stop criticizing homosexuality. Later, in the August 17, 2011, edition of his Savage Love
column, a reader suggested a redefinition in response to the video: "rick (v): to remove santorum orally. ("He was so grateful for the lay that he ricked his partner.") In the column Savage said: "Santorum hasn't laid off the gay bashing, as it's all he's got, so it looks like I'm going to have to go ahead and redefine his first name, too." He gave his apologies to "Rick Dees, Rick Fox, Ricki Lake, and all the other innocent Ricks out there" for the impact of this new definition, and then adopted the suggested redefinition.
chose "santorum" as the winner in its "Most Outrageous" category in the society's 2004 "Word of the Year" event, as a result of which several newspapers reportedly omitted that category from their coverage of the announcement. Some observers characterized the definition as "obscene", "unfit to print" or "vulgar."
Google Current
and Philadelphia Weekly
's columnist Liz Spikol reported in 2006 that the word had inspired punk rock and blues songs, and it began appearing on bumper stickers and t-shirts. Jon Stewart
mentioned it on The Daily Show
more than once; his reference to it in May 2011 caused the word to be one of the most queried search terms on Google the following day. Stephen Colbert
of The Colbert Report also referred to it on more than one occasion.
Savage's campaign was widely discussed in the media, but the word itself did not gain wide acceptance, according to The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English in 2006. The 2007 update of this work, The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, does not contain an entry for "santorum."
Stephanie Mencimer wrote in Mother Jones in 2010 that several commentators said the campaign had contributed to Santorum's 2006 defeat by Bob Casey
. Savage tried to contribute $2,100 to Casey's campaign, but Casey's spokesman said in July 2006 that the check had been returned because of Savage's "vulgar" remarks in his column and on the santorum website. When he heard Santorum might run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Savage said he would "have to sic [his] flying monkeys on him"—i.e. encourage bloggers to start linking to his website again.
Noam Cohen of the New York Times describes this situation as a hijacking
of online identity. He questions whether automatic search algorithms should be entirely devoid of human discretion.
: "It's one guy. You know who it is. The Internet allows for this type of vulgarity to circulate. It's unfortunate that we have someone who obviously has some issues. But he has an opportunity to speak." After announcing he might stand for the 2012 presidential nomination, he told The Daily Caller
in April 2011 that he had not hired anyone to help move Savage's website lower in search results, but hoped his possible run for president would shift his own site to the top organically. In a June 2011 interview, Santorum said, "There are foul people out there who do horrible things. It's unfortunate some people thought it would be a big joke to make fun of my name. That comes with the territory." Santorum says that news coverage of this matter would be very different if he were liberal instead of conservative: "the Mainstream Media would hit the roof – and rightly so!"
s to link the names of several American politicians to what it called unprintable phrases, including George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Rick Santorum. Bloggers linking to Spreading Santorum caused it to rise in Google's rankings.
Michael Fertik of ReputationDefender
, a company that helps people influence their Web presence, described the search engine issue as "devastating" and said it was "one of the more creative and salient Google issues" he had ever seen. Mark Skidmore of Blue State Digital
said Santorum will find it difficult to shift Savage's site, because Savage has over 13,000 inbound links
against 5,000 for Santorum's own site. Chris Wilson in Slate
described the situation as a "classic 'Google bomb'."
should step in to prevent the definition appearing so prominently under searches for his name, he said they should intervene only if they would normally do so in this kind of circumstance. In September 2011 Santorum asked Google to intervene by altering the indexing of the content. Santorum stated, "If you're a responsible business, you don't... allow that type of filth to be purveyed through [your] website..." In response to Santorum's request, a Google spokesperson asserted that Google does not "remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines."
According to Talking Points Memo
(TPM), "Google did crack down" on google-bombing in the past. In an interview with TPM, search engine expert Danny Sullivan
stated that Santorum mischaracterized the campaign as a Google Bomb, when it was actually a successful redefinition of Santorum's name. Sullivan argued that, in a Google bomb, pranksters persuade Google's algorithm to send the wrong results for a certain term (e.g., when pranksters caused the search term "miserable failure" to point to George W. Bush's website). In Santorum's case, on the other hand, the term "santorum" still points to a web page about a "santorum" — which happens to be Savage's neologism instead of the Senator from Pennsylvania. Sullivan concluded that, "for [Senator Santorum] to say Google could get rid of it would be like him saying, 'I don't like the word unicorn and I think that that definition should go away.'"
Sources that characterize the neologism campaign as "Google bombing", as well as sources that do not characterize it that way, describe the neologism campaign as a prank
. Observers noted that search engines Bing
and Yahoo have been presenting the offending links second behind Santorum's web site.
Rick Santorum
Richard John "Rick" Santorum is a lawyer and a former United States Senator from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Santorum was the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference -making him the third-ranking Senate Republican from 2001 until his leave in 2007. Santorum is considered both a social...
criticized as anti-gay by gay rights groups and some politicians, sex columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage
Dan Savage
Daniel Keenan "Dan" Savage is an American author, media pundit, journalist and newspaper editor. Savage writes the internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column Savage Love. Its tone is frank in its discussion of sexuality, often humorous, and hostile to social conservatives, as in...
began a campaign in 2003 to associate Santorum's surname with a sexual innuendo. Savage's effort led to the creation of a derogatory word association.
In a segment of an April 2003 interview with the Associated Press discussing a recent United States Supreme Court decision
Lawrence v. Texas
Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 , is a landmark United States Supreme Court case. In the 6-3 ruling, the Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by proxy, invalidated sodomy laws in the thirteen other states where they remained in existence, thereby making same-sex sexual activity legal in...
striking down an anti-sodomy law, Santorum argued that consenting adults
Consenting Adults
Consenting Adults is a 1992 American thriller film, directed by Alan J. Pakula. It stars Kevin Kline, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Kevin Spacey and Rebecca Miller. The original music score was composed by Michael Small...
do not have a constitutional right to privacy, and that the recent court decision effectively was legalizing bestiality, polygamy
Polygamy
Polygamy is a marriage which includes more than two partners...
, adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
, and sodomy
Sodomy
Sodomy is an anal or other copulation-like act, especially between male persons or between a man and animal, and one who practices sodomy is a "sodomite"...
, all of which he believed undermined society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
and the family. Savage subsequently asked his readers to coin a definition for "santorum" which would offend the Senator. He announced the winner as "the frothy mixture of lube
Personal lubricant
Personal lubricants are specialized lubricants to reduce friction between body parts, or between body parts and other objects...
and fecal matter
Feces
Feces, faeces, or fæces is a waste product from an animal's digestive tract expelled through the anus or cloaca during defecation.-Etymology:...
that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex
Anal sex
Anal sex is the sex act in which the penis is inserted into the anus of a sexual partner. The term can also include other sexual acts involving the anus, including pegging, anilingus , fingering, and object insertion.Common misconception describes anal sex as practiced almost exclusively by gay men...
." He created a web site to promote this definition, which became a prominent search result for Santorum's name on several search engines. He offered in 2010 to take the website down if Santorum donated US$5 million to Freedom to Marry
Freedom to Marry
Freedom to Marry is a non-profit organization leading the campaign for same-sex marriages to be recognized nationwide in the United States of America...
, a group advocating legal recognition of same-sex marriages.
In June 2011 Santorum said of the situation that "There are foul people out there who do horrible things. It's unfortunate some people thought it would be a big joke to make fun of my name. That comes with the territory." In September 2011 he asked Google to remove the definition from its search engine index. Google refused, claiming that it would compromise the integrity of its search results.
Santorum interview
In a segment of an interview with the Associated Press on April 7, 2003, Santorum said there is a relationship between the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal and liberalism and relativism. He argued that moral relativismMoral relativism
Moral relativism may be any of several descriptive, meta-ethical, or normative positions. Each of them is concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different people and cultures:...
involves accepting any adult consensual behavior in the privacy of people's homes, even if the behavior might otherwise be thought deviant. Santorum believes this attitude leads to an unhealthy culture.
He said that, while he had no problem with homosexuality, he did have a problem with homosexual acts: "As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual." He continued: "We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does."
He said he was arguing against any relationship other than marriage between a man and a woman, the basis in his view of a stable society: "That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be." The interview triggered an angry reaction from gay rights activists and some politicians. A spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is the Democratic Hill committee for the United States Senate. It is the only organization solely dedicated to electing Democrats to the United States Senate. The DSCC's current chair is Sen. Patty Murray, who succeeded Sen. Robert Menendez following...
described the views as divisive and reckless while conservative activists saw them as a "principled opposition to same-sex marriage."
Campaign by Dan Savage
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
on April 25, 2003, arguing that they amounted to an overt Republican appeal to homophobic voters. A reader of his column, "Savage Love
Savage Love
Savage Love is a syndicated sex-advice column by Dan Savage. The column appears weekly in several dozen newspapers, mainly free newspapers in the US and Canada, but also newspapers in Europe and Asia...
", suggested he organize a contest to create a definition for "santorum." Savage had previously sought to coin several sexual neologisms, including "pegging
Pegging (sexual practice)
Pegging is a sexual practice in which a woman penetrates a man's anus with a strap-on dildo. The neologism "pegging" was popularized when it became the winning entry in a contest in Dan Savage's Savage Love sex advice column, held after an observation was made that there was no common name for the...
." He wrote: "There's no better way to memorialize the Santorum scandal than by attaching his name to a sex act that would make his big, white teeth fall out of his big, empty head."
He said on May 29 that he had received 3,000 suggestions, and posted several for readers to choose from. On June 12 he announced the winner as "that frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." He set up a website, Spreading Santorum, to spread the definition, featuring the term over a brown splattered stain on an otherwise-white page. Savage also set up another website that displays the same content in a whole-page frameset. The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...
reported in July 2006 that the site appeared at the top of a Google search for Santorum's name. When asked whether he was concerned about the effect on Santorum's children, Savage responded that gays and lesbians have children too, yet their children are required to listen to gay relationships being compared to incest and bestiality. He said the people worried about Santorum's children were "left-leaning trolls
Troll (Internet)
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response...
": "The only people who come at me wringing their hands about Santorum's children are idiot lefties
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
who don't get how serious the right
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
is about destroying us."
Savage offered in May 2010 to remove the site if Santorum donated $5 million to Freedom to Marry, an advocacy group for same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage is marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender. Supporters of legal recognition for same-sex marriage typically refer to such recognition as marriage equality....
. In August 2011, the term was still the top result for Santorum's name on several search engines, including Google, Bing
Bing
Bing is a web search engine from Microsoft.Bing may also refer to:* An onomatopœia of a bell sound* Bing cherry, a variety of cherry* Bing , Chinese flatbread* Bing , a German company that manufactured toys and kitchen utensils...
, and Yahoo.
In February 2011, Savage said he would resume his campaign. In a 2011 Funny or Die
Funny or Die
Funny or Die is a comedy video website founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's production company, Gary Sanchez Productions with original and user-generated content. Funny or Die contains exclusive material from a number of famous contributors and also has its own Funny or Die Team, which creates...
video, Savage proposed to redefine Santorum's first name if Santorum did not stop criticizing homosexuality. Later, in the August 17, 2011, edition of his Savage Love
Savage Love
Savage Love is a syndicated sex-advice column by Dan Savage. The column appears weekly in several dozen newspapers, mainly free newspapers in the US and Canada, but also newspapers in Europe and Asia...
column, a reader suggested a redefinition in response to the video: "rick (v): to remove santorum orally. ("He was so grateful for the lay that he ricked his partner.") In the column Savage said: "Santorum hasn't laid off the gay bashing, as it's all he's got, so it looks like I'm going to have to go ahead and redefine his first name, too." He gave his apologies to "Rick Dees, Rick Fox, Ricki Lake, and all the other innocent Ricks out there" for the impact of this new definition, and then adopted the suggested redefinition.
Reception and political impact
The American Dialect SocietyAmerican Dialect Society
The American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society publishes the academic journal, American Speech...
chose "santorum" as the winner in its "Most Outrageous" category in the society's 2004 "Word of the Year" event, as a result of which several newspapers reportedly omitted that category from their coverage of the announcement. Some observers characterized the definition as "obscene", "unfit to print" or "vulgar."
Google Current
Google Current
Google Current is a brief, once every half hour, television program on the channel Current TV . Selected episodes are also available on the Internet. The series tracks not necessarily what the news is, but what people are searching for on Google....
and Philadelphia Weekly
Philadelphia Weekly
Philadelphia Weekly , is an award-winning alternative newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, published every Wednesday.The paper was founded in 1971 as a sister publication to the South Philadelphia Press. In 1995, the paper became Philadelphia Weekly...
's columnist Liz Spikol reported in 2006 that the word had inspired punk rock and blues songs, and it began appearing on bumper stickers and t-shirts. Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart is an American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian...
mentioned it on The Daily Show
The Daily Show
The Daily Show , is an American late night satirical television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. The half-hour long show premiered on July 21, 1996, and was hosted by Craig Kilborn until December 1998...
more than once; his reference to it in May 2011 caused the word to be one of the most queried search terms on Google the following day. Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...
of The Colbert Report also referred to it on more than one occasion.
| "An example of deliberate coining is the word 'santorum'... In point of fact, the term is the child of a one-man campaign by syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage to place the term in wide usage. From its appearance in print and especially on the Internet, one would assume, incorrectly, that the term has gained wide usage." |
| The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2006 |
Stephanie Mencimer wrote in Mother Jones in 2010 that several commentators said the campaign had contributed to Santorum's 2006 defeat by Bob Casey
Bob Casey, Jr.
Robert Patrick "Bob" Casey, Jr. is the senior U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and a member of the Democratic Party. He previously served as Pennsylvania Treasurer, and Pennsylvania Auditor General. He is the son of former Governor Bob Casey, Sr..He is the first Democrat elected to a full term in...
. Savage tried to contribute $2,100 to Casey's campaign, but Casey's spokesman said in July 2006 that the check had been returned because of Savage's "vulgar" remarks in his column and on the santorum website. When he heard Santorum might run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Savage said he would "have to sic [his] flying monkeys on him"—i.e. encourage bloggers to start linking to his website again.
Noam Cohen of the New York Times describes this situation as a hijacking
Page hijacking
Page hijacking is a form of search engine index spamming. It is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites...
of online identity. He questions whether automatic search algorithms should be entirely devoid of human discretion.
Santorum's reaction
Santorum discussed the issue in a February 2011 interview with Roll CallRoll Call
Roll Call is a newspaper published in Washington, D.C., United States, from Monday to Thursday when the United States Congress is in session and on Mondays only during recess. Roll Call reports news of legislative and political maneuverings on Capitol Hill, as well as political coverage of...
: "It's one guy. You know who it is. The Internet allows for this type of vulgarity to circulate. It's unfortunate that we have someone who obviously has some issues. But he has an opportunity to speak." After announcing he might stand for the 2012 presidential nomination, he told The Daily Caller
The Daily Caller
The Daily Caller is a news website based in Washington, D.C., United States, with a focus on politics, original reporting and breaking news, founded by journalist and political pundit Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel, former adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney...
in April 2011 that he had not hired anyone to help move Savage's website lower in search results, but hoped his possible run for president would shift his own site to the top organically. In a June 2011 interview, Santorum said, "There are foul people out there who do horrible things. It's unfortunate some people thought it would be a big joke to make fun of my name. That comes with the territory." Santorum says that news coverage of this matter would be very different if he were liberal instead of conservative: "the Mainstream Media would hit the roof – and rightly so!"
Google-bombing
The New York Times reported in 2004 that people had tried to use Google bombGoogle bomb
The terms Google bomb and Googlewashing refer to practices, such as creating large numbers of links, that cause a web page to have a high ranking for searches on unrelated or off topic keyword phrases, often for comical or satirical purposes...
s to link the names of several American politicians to what it called unprintable phrases, including George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Rick Santorum. Bloggers linking to Spreading Santorum caused it to rise in Google's rankings.
Michael Fertik of ReputationDefender
ReputationDefender
Reputation.com is a company located in Redwood City, California that sells online reputation management and internet privacy. Company CEO Michael Fertik has criticized review websites that don't monitor comments or require users to register...
, a company that helps people influence their Web presence, described the search engine issue as "devastating" and said it was "one of the more creative and salient Google issues" he had ever seen. Mark Skidmore of Blue State Digital
Blue State Digital
Blue State Digital is a Washington, D.C.-based Internet strategy and technology firm. The company was founded in early 2004 by four former staffers of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign: Clay A. Johnson, Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Joe Rospars, and Ben Self...
said Santorum will find it difficult to shift Savage's site, because Savage has over 13,000 inbound links
Backlink
Backlinks, also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links, are incoming links to a website or web page...
against 5,000 for Santorum's own site. Chris Wilson in Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
described the situation as a "classic 'Google bomb'."
Santorum's request that Google intervene
In June 2011 when asked whether GoogleGoogle
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
should step in to prevent the definition appearing so prominently under searches for his name, he said they should intervene only if they would normally do so in this kind of circumstance. In September 2011 Santorum asked Google to intervene by altering the indexing of the content. Santorum stated, "If you're a responsible business, you don't... allow that type of filth to be purveyed through [your] website..." In response to Santorum's request, a Google spokesperson asserted that Google does not "remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines."
According to Talking Points Memo
Talking Points Memo
Talking Points Memo is a web-based political journalism organization created and run by Josh Marshall, journalist and historian covering issues from a "politically left perspective,". It debuted on November 12, 2000...
(TPM), "Google did crack down" on google-bombing in the past. In an interview with TPM, search engine expert Danny Sullivan
Danny Sullivan (technologist)
Danny Sullivan is the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, a blog that covers news and information about search engines, and search marketing.Search Engine Land is owned by Third Door Media, of which Danny Sullivan is partner and chief content officer...
stated that Santorum mischaracterized the campaign as a Google Bomb, when it was actually a successful redefinition of Santorum's name. Sullivan argued that, in a Google bomb, pranksters persuade Google's algorithm to send the wrong results for a certain term (e.g., when pranksters caused the search term "miserable failure" to point to George W. Bush's website). In Santorum's case, on the other hand, the term "santorum" still points to a web page about a "santorum" — which happens to be Savage's neologism instead of the Senator from Pennsylvania. Sullivan concluded that, "for [Senator Santorum] to say Google could get rid of it would be like him saying, 'I don't like the word unicorn and I think that that definition should go away.'"
Sources that characterize the neologism campaign as "Google bombing", as well as sources that do not characterize it that way, describe the neologism campaign as a prank
Practical joke
A practical joke is a mischievous trick played on someone, typically causing the victim to experience embarrassment, indignity, or discomfort. Practical jokes differ from confidence tricks in that the victim finds out, or is let in on the joke, rather than being fooled into handing over money or...
. Observers noted that search engines Bing
Bing
Bing is a web search engine from Microsoft.Bing may also refer to:* An onomatopœia of a bell sound* Bing cherry, a variety of cherry* Bing , Chinese flatbread* Bing , a German company that manufactured toys and kitchen utensils...
and Yahoo have been presenting the offending links second behind Santorum's web site.