Mitt Romney's backpedaling on the sentiments he expressed in his infamous "47 percent" video may have backfired on him.
A current Google Image search of the term "completely wrong" pulls up several pages of photos of Mitt Romney.
Last week, while addressing the comments he made to a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser vilifying nearly half the country as incorrigible takers, Romney said, "Clearly in a campaign with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question-and-answer sessions, now and then you're going to say something that doesn't come out right."
Romney ended with, "In this case, I said something that's just completely wrong."
And that final phrase caught on, quoted in news articles, blogs and social media chatter. It became such a popular term that Google Search algorithms, unbiased judges of the internet zeitgeist, determined that anyone searching for "completely wrong" must be looking for Romney.
The search quirk was discovered by a writer at the tech site Mashable on Wednesday.
In the past, Google's algorithms have been manipulated to make certain search terms return particular results, as when "miserable failure" returned the George W. Bush presidential home page.
Sex columnist Dan Savage also orchestrated a well-publicized and still-successful campaign to identify the last name of anti-gay Senator Rick Santorum with a fake definition for a byproduct of sex acts. The term has stuck, and since then has become a real word.
After those instances of search result manipulation, Google modified its algorithms, so it seems that Romney's current issue is just the result of the random fluctuations in cyberspace.
Once searches for the term and Romney die down, searches will likely return to normal.
Of course, as long as writers and reporters continue to cover this story, and readers continue to verify it, the cycle continues and the connection between Romney and "completely wrong" is reinforced.
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