With the presidential election approaching, computer geeks on a mission are having fun playing spoofs on search engine Google. Since Thursday, the top result on Google from typing in "waffles'' has been Democratic candidate John Kerry's official campaign site. The phrase appears nowhere on Kerry's site. But conservative bloggers skewed the search engine results by posting the phrase on their own Web pages and linking it to the Kerry site, in a technique called Google-bombing. (Google's search results are partly based on how many times the searched-for word appears on sites around the Web.) It was started by a 23-year-old first-year Pennsylvania law student Ken Jacobson, who scattered the word ``waffles'' throughout his blog, Esoteric Diatribe, back in April -- all linking to Kerry's site. He contacted a few other conservative bloggers and within 10 days, more than 50 other bloggers had done the same on their home pages. His conservative leanings were one motivation. But Jacobson said he also wanted to call attention to how vulnerable Google is to special interest groups wanting to control public opinion. "I see Google being exploitable in a bad way,'' he said. "It's dangerous, even from a national security point of view.'' Other bloggers didn't waste time getting even. Liberal bloggers apparently succeeded in making the Bush-Cheney campaign site come up as the third result when "waffles'' was entered on Yahoo's search site. Their efforts weren't enough though: The conservatives created enough links to Kerry's site that they kept him in first place even on Yahoo. Even the Kerry campaign weighed in. It purchased Google AdWords, text ads that come up beside Google search results when certain words are typed in. The links referred to Kerry's Web site, and reportedly suggested that users "read about President Bush's Waffles.'' Google had no comment on the pranks. Experts say there is little the search engine can do to combat such a concerted effort by many people to skew results. It's just the latest in a string of spoofs played by tricksters on a political mission. After France refused to join the coalition forces fighting Iraq, a Google search for ``French military victories'' brought up a spoof page that said no documents were found and asked, ``Did you mean `French military defeats?' '' Source: SiliconValley.com