Rick Santorum came up short in Michigan on Tuesday night, but it was of no matter. After months of turmoil he'd achieved a primary goal of his presidential campaign: his Google problem. That's right. When normal, God-loving Americans direct their web browsers to Google and type in the former Pennsylvania senator's last name they are no longer greeted by spreadingsantorum.com as the first result.
Created by sex columnist Dan Savage in response to Santorum's comparison of homosexual relationships to man-on-dog sex, the Web site coined a sexual neologism, redefining Santorum's last name as "The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex." Thanks to enthusiastic fans, the simple webpage sat atop the Google rankings for years, bedeviling the politician at every turn. "Savage and his perverted sense of humor is the reason why my children cannot Google their father's name," Santorum wrote in a letter last year, and his eldest daughter Elizabeth told The Huffington Post that Savage's campaign "just makes me sad. It's disappointing that people can be that mean."
The page maintained its prime spot even after Santorum finished first in Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado. But it finally dropped on Wednesday, though Rick probably isn't too happy with its replacement shown below in a screencapped image:
The first thing that shows up is an ad from the Santorum campaign, followed by a box listing the results from the various nomination contests. So far so good. But once the non-sponsored results kick in, an Urban Dictionary page defining Santorum as the neologism is the first result.
A box of Google News stories interrupts the stream of results before Santorum's campaign website makes its first appearance. The original landing site for spreadingsantorum no longer appears on the first page of results, but a blog associated with it does, toward the bottom.
