‘your favourite artist’s favourite artist’ takes over search engine

It’s likely that you have encountered a Google bomb online, even if you’re not familiar with the phrase. There used to be only a few, if any, of them on the internet, but now there are hundreds of them.

Sometimes they are used to humiliate a well-known person.

The term “liar” was used against Tony Blair in 2005 during a Google bombing operation that targeted Google.co.uk. The bomb was a critique of Blair’s military presence in Iraq and the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, and it was connected to an official biography of the UK prime minister at the time. Another Google bomb attempted to associate Blair with the term “poodle” – a reference to the notion that he was US President George W Bush’s lapdog.

For example, when you typed Chuck Norris into Google, it used to return with, “Google won’t search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don’t find Chuck Norris, he finds you.”

American singer and songwriter Chappell Roan has become the latest victim to the Google Easter egg.

But what happens when you type Chappell Roan into Google and what exactly is a Google bomb?

What quirk has appeared in Google search?

Google will return the message, “Did you mean: your favourite artist‘s favourite artist?” if you search for “Chappell Roan”. Likewise, when you search for “your favourite artist’s favourite artist”, the same thing occurs in reverse.

The phrase was hooked from a TikTok Roan shared of her performance. Introducing herself to the cameras, she says, “My name is Chappell Roan, I am your favourite artist’s favourite artist.”

What is a Google bomb?

Google bombing is the technique of heavily connecting to a website in order to make it rank highly for irrelevant, unconnected, or off-topic search phrases

Google said in 2017 that common inquiries are extremely rare to experience Google bombs since part of what makes a Google bomb effective is the dearth of relevant results for that particular term.

In order to prevent the Google bombing to have an impact on the artist, Google added that that the team got together and came up with an algorithm to minimise the impact on many Google bombs.

It is unclear whether there is any deliberate work being done to try and influence Google’s search engines to change the appearance of search results for ‘Chappell Roan’, or if it is simply a fun accident.

What have her fans said about it?

Fans on Reddit seem to have caught on to the Easter egg.

One fan wrote in a thread on the topic: “omg, what!! i had to try it for myself and yes it did that for me too!”.

Another fan, obsessed with the Easter egg, made sure they would be able to see it all the time by making it their phone wallpaper.

“It’s now my iPhone wallpaper haha.”.

While another added: “I love this so much. And also, my overly-literal autistic ass would die happy if she was, in fact, the favorite artist of The Chicks, American Aquarium, or Lori McKenna (my musical taste contains multitudes)”.

What has Chappell Roan said about it?

Roan spoke about the Easter egg on the Jimmy Kimmel show earlier this year, saying: “I didn’t do that … It’s this random twink that works at Google! I know it’s just some assistant that’s like, ‘We love her’.”