Swastika Tops Google Hot Trends

A new method for gaming Google results has emerged.

At some point on Thursday, a member of 4chan's "b" channel posted a simple two-part instruction. First, Google "卐". Second, enjoy.

This had the double effect of getting the search query into Hot Trends, and also showing a symbol instead of words. Very clever indeed.

While not having the same long-term implications of Google bombing - which depends on links and link text and can take months, the nature of this makes it almost impossible for Google to counter, unless they do it manually. There's no way Google can tell if people are searching for something due to a news item, or searching because a news item, blog or forum post told people to.

I wouldn't be surprised if this behaviour took off, and Google changed the Hot Trends to a longer-term sampling.