I have always been amazed how the biggest-and-the-best search engine on planet earth could be so literal. Google only has ever given you what you have asked for, literally. Currently, if you search for ‘online PR‘ you won’t get any returns for ‘digital PR’ unless that page explicitly has the keywords ‘online PR.’  Surprisingly Boolean and limited, honestly requiring an SEO specialist, to be sure, just to make sure you think all of your keywords through.  Well, according to Alana Semuels in her article Google makes changes to search results, this is about to change!

The technology, from Google’s acquisition of search company Orion in 2006, essentially tries to recognize the broader idea of what someone is searching for, rather than the specific words. Someone who types “principles of physics,” for instance, will see a related search bar listing topics such as “special relativity,” “big bang” and “quantum mechanics.”

According to hhavensteincw over at Slashdot, there’s a new Google Bomb campaign to get liberal bloggers to associate John McCain with a number of posts and articles that highlight “ugly” things about the Republican Presidential candidate:

“A liberal blogger has launched a ‘Google bomb’ project aimed at boosting Google search results for nine news articles showing Sen. John McCain in a negative light. The Computerworld article notes: ‘Chris Bowers, managing editor of the progressive blog OpenLeft, is launching the Google bombs by encouraging bloggers to embed Web links to the nine news stories about McCain in their blogs, which helps raise their ranking in Google search results. Bowers is reprising a similar Google bombing effort he undertook in 2006 against 52 different congressional candidates. “Obviously, it is manipulating, but search engines are not public forums and unless you act to use them for your own benefit, your opponent’s information is going to get out there,” Bowers said.’”

Via Slashdot, Computer World, and  OpenLeft