Origins of "Google bombing"
According to this BBC news story:
Thus, members of an online community can affect the results of Google searches - called "Google bombing" - by linking their sites to a chosen one.
Weblogger Adam Mathes is credited with inventing the practice in 2001, when he used it to link the phrase "talentless hack" to a friend's website.
And according to the New York Times story (registration required) the effort to connect the phrase "miserable failure" and George W. Bush's official bio came about as follows:
In late October, Mr. [George] Johnston, a self-described "lefty,'' started a Google bomb to tie Mr. Bush's biography to the phrase "miserable failure," watchwords used by the presidential campaign of
Representative Richard A. Gephardt, Democrat of Missouri, to describe Mr. Bush's tenure.