A new campaign tactic: Manipulating Google data

Politicians are targeted in "Google bombing" campaign intended to game the search engine's ranking algorithms.
The New York Times

The story "A new campaign tactic: Manipulating Google data" published October 26, 2006 at 6:35 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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Here's a radical idea....

How about getting votes based on the superiority of ones ideas? Wouldnt that be nice for a change?

I suspect the dems in this country have to resort to these types of tactics, because, quite frankly, they know that voters dont particularly favor their leftist views. Thats why they usually run against their opponent, instead of really promoting their own views.

[All American Boy]

But what if...

What if the original news story that all these bloggers are linking to gets removed? Does Google count links to a non-existant page?

Or worse still, what if the negative news story gets replaced with a positive one about the politician?