Gretchen Andrew started her career at Google.
As US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden battle for the White House on Election Day 2020, an election-related search term returns some unexpected results on Google. If you Google “the next American president,” you’ll find that the first results do not include either Trump or Biden, as you might expect. Instead, the first results on Google Images show red and blue collages with intricate designs and floral motifs.
This is not an accident. It’s clever search engine optimization by Los Angeles-based artist Gretchen Andrew. According to CNN, the self-proclaimed “Internet imperialist” and “search engine artist” has used search engine optimization (SEO) to display her artwork first when someone Google searches for “the next American president.”
Next American President is an online work of art from Ms. Andrew, who began her career at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters. She worked at Google before becoming an artist, and her background in art and technology helped her manipulate search engine optimization.
According to Artnet, he did this by creating a network of web pages on sites like Quora, Eventbrite, Yelp, and Twitter. He then loaded these pages with addresses and images that would trick search engines into showing his artwork first.
“It’s important to me that when people see these works, they look bad,” said Gretchen Andrew. “I don’t want to confuse people, I want to confuse machines. I want people to laugh at Google. If we can make both sides of the political spectrum laugh at great technology, that’s a good thing.”
In his work, he hopes to show that algorithms can be manipulated and that anyone can.
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