It appears that Mitt Romney now has a Rick Santorum Internet-age problem.
Recall that Web users who search for "Santorum" using a tool like Google are immediately confronted with a parody site that offers a faux definition of the word "santorum" which is not suitable for work or polite conversations. Within the past few weeks, enterprising Romney-haters have pulled off the same trick, albeit at a slightly less tasteless level.
Searching for Romney using Google now yields a page defining the term Romney as "to defecate in terror" within the first five links or so, reports Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand.com. (Go ahead, try it for yourself).
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Clicking on the site brings visitors to a Web site called "SpreadingRomney.com" which echoes the SpreadingSantorum.com site. The page repeats the definition and links to a story about Romney's ill-fated family vacation that include a lengthy trip with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car.
"I don’t recall seeing it recently, so it appears to be a new gain," Sullivan wrote in a blog post about it.
The rise is unusually meteoric, and almost certainly signifies a concentrated effort to game Google's ranking system. In fact, Sullivan uncovered a page at DemocraticUnderground.com encouraging people to "Google Bomb" the SpreadingRomney site.
(Geeks would say this technique isn't, strictly speaking, a Google bomb. But it certainly must feel like one to the Romney camp).
The site launched on Jan. 10, site creator Jack Shepler told Sullivan. He also said he's not affiliated with any campaign, and created the site just to be funny, "and to make a point."
It got a boost when msnbc's Rachel Maddow mentioned it during her show two days later, but that hardly justifies the high Google ranking. SpreadingSantorum has been around for years, has attracted thousands of links the old-fashioned way, and the site offers real points of debate about gay rights debate. SpreadingRomney.com is hardly more than a blank page, yet still managed to fool Google and Microsoft's Bing. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)
We've discussed earlier how political entities can trick search engines, and why Google seems to let this go on as a form of political speech.
Sullivan supports that concept, but the quick rise of SpreadingRomney.com might be changing his mind a bit.
"For this site to leap-frog ... others, it creates all the same issues that Google initially encountered with real Google bombs, the impression that anyone can fire off a linking campaign and make it into the top results for anything," he said. "Certainly Google should take a harder look at why its algorithm rewarded a site with so little substance to it."
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A new website SpreadingRomney.com now appears prominently among Internet search results for Mitt Romney's last name and defines ''romney'' as: "to defecate in terror". ''Spreading Romney'' was inspired by the santorum neologism coined in  Dan Savage's column '''' in response to comments made by former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum about homosexuality; Savage's readers voted to define ''santorum'' as: "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex."

While defining ''romney'' as a , the word "terror" in the definition given at SpreadingRomney.com links to an article that appeared January 5 in '''' titled "Mitt Romney's Dog Incident Comes Back To Haunt Him". The article describes a 1983 incident where Romney was reported to have affixed his family’s pet  named Seamus to the roof of their vehicle for 12 hours while on a car trip to Canada; press coverage of the matter recounted how the animal let loose its bowels due to a fear response during the experience. 

Similar to online searches leading to the santorum neologism website originally created by Dan Savage, SpreadingSantorum.com, queries for Romney yielding top search results for SpreadingRomney.com are not limited only to Google but extend to other search engines including  as well.


'''' quoted search engine expert , who observed that the website had likely risen of late in search results: "I don’t recall seeing it recently, so it appears to be a new gain."

'''' reported that as of yesterday, SpreadingRomney.com had received 3,416  clicks from  and 1,261 posts on . The site appeared third in a Google search for Romney, directly below the former  Governor's Wikipedia page.

In a 2003 interview with the Associated Press, Rick Santorum compared legalizing  to supporting . Readers of the '''' advice column selected a new definition for the Senator’s last name, and Savage created a website SpreadingSantorum.com to promulgate the spread of the phenomenon. The term became a prominent result in searches online, and gained dominance on  including Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. 


Rick Santorum himself has acknowledged and discussed the existence and prevalence of the santorum neologism phenomenon; he was quoted by '''' on his assessment of Google's response: "To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can't handle. I suspect that's not true." Santorum criticized the response of the press to the phenomenon in a 2011 radio interview, saying, "It's offensive beyond, you know, anything that any public figure or anybody in America should tolerate, and the mainstream media laughs about it."

The company  manages the  for the website SpreadingRomney.com; the site was registered by an , Indiana-based company named Ayokay LLC which was formed on January 1. The website reportedly started operating on January 10.  commented upon it on January 12 on her program ''''. The founder of SpreadingRomney.com, Jack Shepler, informed Sullivan that he holds no ties to any political campaign group and formed the website out of a .

'''' noted that there may be another  this time derived from the last name of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich; linking to an established website for SpreadingGingrich.com. That site is currently asking visitors to submit suggestions for a new definition of ''gingrich''.