Chances are that even if you're unfamiliar with the term, you've experienced a Google bomb in action somewhere on the internet. Once, they were a rarity, a novelty even, but now there are hundreds of them out there on the web. Many are politically motivated and most include some kind of derogatory reference. An explanation for those to whom this is alien: a Google bomb is a cooperative endeavour undertaken to manipulate the Google search engine into returning a particular web site as the first result when a specific word or phrase is searched for. Because Google generally ranks web sites by the number of other pages that link to them with the same anchor text, the results of a search can be influenced by having even only a few sites link to the target page -- although obviously the more the better. The anchor text that fuels the bomb can be left in many places around the web: message boards and article or blog comments all add to a link's popularity. Recent changes to the way Google works have made it more compliant with sites like Digg, Wikipedia and YouTube, which can be used to create a 'buzz'. Even the simple volume of searches for a specific term can affect a bomb's success or failure. 10. Nicolas Sarkozy: T rou du Cul du Web? In September 2010 a large group of disgruntled bloggers linked a crude French phrase ("trou du cul du web" or "The Asshole of the Internet")