Political Google bombing has been a thing for a long time, and while the details of how it is done and what it acheives changes, it probably will be for a very long time in the future.
Yep, and there's not much google can do about it as every metric can be gamed. Remember the "upvote this thread so that this image is the first result when searching for [politicians name]" campaigns on Reddit the past 6 years? =P