Completely Wrong Mitt Romney, Is Google Showing Its Political Colors?

As we reported yesterday, googling “completely wrong” brings up a slew of links relating to Mitt Romney, prompting many to ask if Google is giving Mitt the old GWB treatment.

Which is to say, the “completely wrong” Google search calls to mind the old “miserable failure” Google bomb of the mid-to-late 2000s, when googling the phrase “miserable failure” brought up links to a biography of then-president George W. Bush. (Remember him?)

The “completely wrong” Mitt Romney search seems like the work of anti-Romney forces, and, indeed, the “miserable failure” thing was deliberate — though not on the part of Google.

And now that googling “completely wrong” returns Romney-related results, politically-minded folk are concerned Google is somehow trying to smear or slander the candidate through the search results, though what happened is actually quite organic.

While the GWB “miserable failure” situation was indeed what is known as a “Google bomb,” it was perpetuated by users and not the search giant itself. This is important to understand in a climate where much political reporting is seen as unreliable and allegations of partisan preference fly readily.

A few Google jokes persisted for several years, and, aside from the “miserable failure” one, also googling “weapons of mass destruction” and clicking “I’m Feeling Lucky” returned a “404 not found” page for obvious humorous reasons. Both were the work of Google users and not Google workers, but the “completely wrong” Mitt Romney thing is something else entirely.

Addressing his controversial 47 percent remarks, Romney used the distinctive phrase “completely wrong” in condemning them. And all the coverage subsequent to his remarks became linked with the phrase — again, organically — linking his image and content about Romney to the phrase on Google. As is standard.

So while googling “completely wrong” yields Romney pics, no one at Google or even on the web as a user did it on purpose — which has not stopped Romney dissenters from enjoying a laugh at Mitt’s expense.

Did you try googling “completely wrong” yet to find Mitt Romney?