….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.

The search engine can be manipulated by a fairly small group of users, one report suggested.

Newsday newspaper says as few as 32 web pages with the words “miserable failure” link to the Bush biography.