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BBC MUNDO RADIO
Google Trends is a powerful tool that many media companies (us included) rely upon for a sense of what new topics people are searching for at any given time -- at least, when it's not getting hacked with racial slurs, which is exactly what happened early this morning.
At around 9 a.m. Eastern, instead of the normal list of the hottest new search terms of the hour, visitors to the Google Trends website were greeted with the phrase "lol n------".
In addition, the following list of 19 search terms was also utterly random and nonsensical, including such generic items as "pet stores," "dentists," "gift shops," "gyms," "dry cleaning," "malls," and, of course, "fried chicken." The terms are almost always far more specific, listing famous or newsworthy topics and celebrities' names.
Although Google was quick to remove the offensive first phrase, the other seemingly random ones remained over the course of the hour. Meanwhile, the "Hot Topics," section of the website was seemingly unaffected, showing more relevant items such as "Vuvuzela."
While unfortunate, the event was not without precedent: Trends has been hacked on several notable occasions since the service first launched in 2006, including a one-two hack in 2008 in which a swastika (Nazi sign) appeared on as the top term followed by "f--- you google," in mirror or reverse characters one week later.
And yet while these blatant hacks are easily spotted, there's a danger that a more subtle hack could lead to completely unfounded rumor-mongering.
Case in point: This week, many celebrity blogs have been circulating rumors of tween-heartthrob singing sensation Justin Bieber allegedly contracting syphilis.
As Gawker discovered, that was actually a deliberate prank on Google Trends orchestrated by the users of 4chan.org [WARNING EXPLICIT CONTENT], the notoriously vile and anarchistic image-message board that spawned many an Internet trend, including Rickrolling and LOL Cats.
The anonymous 4chan users are also infamously clever and employ such programs as "autoclickers" to flood Google with a specific search query, thus putting that term at number one on the list, even though it is completely fabricated. A cursory search through 4chan found no mention of today's Trends incident, but then again, the board refreshes constantly and deletes old posts quickly, so that's not surprising.
At around 9 a.m. Eastern, instead of the normal list of the hottest new search terms of the hour, visitors to the Google Trends website were greeted with the phrase "lol n------".
In addition, the following list of 19 search terms was also utterly random and nonsensical, including such generic items as "pet stores," "dentists," "gift shops," "gyms," "dry cleaning," "malls," and, of course, "fried chicken." The terms are almost always far more specific, listing famous or newsworthy topics and celebrities' names.
Although Google was quick to remove the offensive first phrase, the other seemingly random ones remained over the course of the hour. Meanwhile, the "Hot Topics," section of the website was seemingly unaffected, showing more relevant items such as "Vuvuzela."
While unfortunate, the event was not without precedent: Trends has been hacked on several notable occasions since the service first launched in 2006, including a one-two hack in 2008 in which a swastika (Nazi sign) appeared on as the top term followed by "f--- you google," in mirror or reverse characters one week later.
And yet while these blatant hacks are easily spotted, there's a danger that a more subtle hack could lead to completely unfounded rumor-mongering.
Case in point: This week, many celebrity blogs have been circulating rumors of tween-heartthrob singing sensation Justin Bieber allegedly contracting syphilis.
As Gawker discovered, that was actually a deliberate prank on Google Trends orchestrated by the users of 4chan.org [WARNING EXPLICIT CONTENT], the notoriously vile and anarchistic image-message board that spawned many an Internet trend, including Rickrolling and LOL Cats.
The anonymous 4chan users are also infamously clever and employ such programs as "autoclickers" to flood Google with a specific search query, thus putting that term at number one on the list, even though it is completely fabricated. A cursory search through 4chan found no mention of today's Trends incident, but then again, the board refreshes constantly and deletes old posts quickly, so that's not surprising.
