In November 2004, National Geographic published a new edition of their
World Atlas. In it, they had used the bogus name of Arabian Gulf in addition to the correct name Persian Gulf, to mark the body of water in southern Iran. Furthermore, they had used Arabic names on a few Iranian islands.
Being a sensitive issue among Irainans, this quickly became a hot topic of discussion. Iranian officials condemned this but that did little in convincing National Geographic to correct its mistake. This is where we, the bloggers, came in.
I had heard about and seen google bombs before. In short, a
google bomb is a way to influence search results for targetted keywords. I decided to implement one for this issue since everything seemed to be in favor of making it a success; it was an issue that thousands of Iranian bloggers felt strongly about, the term 'Arabian Gulf' was suitable for making a google bomb, and it was a civilized and creative way to voice our objections.
So I made a mock page (
+), resembling a 404 error message which said 'the gulf you are looking for does not exist'. I
asked other bloggers
to link to that page. The response was simply overwhelming. Within a week, hundreds of blogs and websites had taken part and the google bomb
exploded, creating a frenzy of media hype. It appeared on an AFP article and Yahoo! News, It also made the first page of BBC news page.
With the help of this media buzz, along with lobbying of Iranian Americans (
NIAC) in the US and their meetings with the National Geogrpahic, they finally retreated and removed the 'Arabian Gulf' phrase from their maps and fixed the other errors as well. This was a huge victory, and was perhaps the first time Irainan bloggers united to really make a difference.
Today, a year on, the google bomb is
still working, and it is still used as an example of the power of blogs whenever there is a discussion on Iranian blogs.
I have gathered all the news coverage regarding the google bomb below. If the original link is no longer active, you can read the transcript. If you know of any other articles regarding this, please
let me know.
Media Coverage in Other Languages
04-13-2008
نام خلیج فارس را نجات دهیم
حالت ترکیبی
