Pop Culture dictionary

French military victories

[french mil-i-ter-ee vik-tuh-reez]

What does French military victories mean?

I’m sorry, no results were found. Did you mean French military defeats?

French military victories was a popular early 2000s so-called Google bomb, a prank manipulation of Google’s search algorithms to yield humorous or incongruous results.

Related words

Google effect, google it, I'm feeling lucky, đŸ‡«đŸ‡· Flag For France emoji, lmgtfy, Blue Waffle

Where does French military victories come from?

www.screamingfrog.co.uk

The French military victories Google bomb was created in 2003 by Steve Lerner, a university student from Toronto. Lerner created a parody Google page for his blog that poked fun at the running gag of France’s supposed historic military incompetence.

www.screamingfrog.co.uk

Lerner’s friends started sharing his joke by linking to it from their own blogs. Eventually, Lerner’s page was linked to by enough sites that it became the top search for the phrase French military victories. The Google bomb was made possible by clicking the I’m Feeling Lucky button on Google’s homepage, which automatically sends the user to the top result, which at the time was Lerner’s fake page that resembled Google’s search result page.

The first Google bomb was created in 1999. Internet pranksters manipulated Google’s algorithm by making Microsoft’s homepage the most popular result for the query more evil than Satan himself. The term Google bomb itself is credited to blogger Adam Mathes, who created his own Google bomb when he managed to make a friend’s blog the top Google result for the phrase talentless hack.

Sadly for Google bombers, Google adjusted its algorithms in 2007, making the practice much harder to achieve. Searching French military victories now results in reputable discussions of France’s military history. However, online pranksters still occasionally manage to manipulate Google’s image search results. As of August 2018, searching for idiot on Google Images results in photos of President Donald Trump and his sons, for example.

Examples of French military victories

that's almost as funny as an"I'm feeling lucky" google search for "French military victories" :)
@anocelot, April, 2008
In 2003, Steven Lerner created a special webpage titled "French Military Victories," which jokingly asked visitors if they meant to search for "French military defeats." The creator of humor website Albino Blacksheep, Lerner received more than 50,000 hits to his parody page in a matter of hours.
Nicholas Jackson, The Atlantic, February, 2011
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Who uses French military victories?

French military victories was a fun joke shared online while it lasted. (Sorry, France.)

French military victories has become synonymous with Google bomb. Several other Google bombs were popular during the mid-2000s. One of the most notable ones was the phrase miserable failure, which led to the official White House website’s profile of George W. Bush if the I’m Feeling Lucky button was clicked. And then, there was the whole matter of Santorum 

searchengineland.com

Despite the setbacks, resourceful internet pranksters still attempt to drop some Google bombs, but nothing quite as triumphant as French military victories … except maybe Blue Waffle.

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Note

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