Google Bomb – Google’s Miserable Failure to Diffuse It

Google bomb, most of the webmasters or web-surfers think, it is used for comical or satirical purpose only. But, in reality it is quite commonly practiced by grey-hat SEO practitioners.

Google bomb, a result of Google’s SE ranking algorithm, now giving sleepless nights to the search engine giant.

What is Google bomb ?

Creating large number of outbound links,from high Google PR websites, with an anchor text, and all pointing to a web page, to rank the latter high on SERPs.

In internet history plenty of examples of Google bomb are there. The famous one, which you and me know are politically or comically targeted, either to defame a person / organization or for a pure sarcastical pleasure.

And, the vast number of grey-hat SEO practice, which is in between white and black-hat SEO are usually unknown to most of the webmasters, b’cos these are not famous.

Basics of Google bomb

Whenever a website points/hyperlink  to another website/web-page with an anchor text, Google passes the link-juice to the latter from the former and ranks it higher on the SERPs. This is also the fundamental/mathematical basis of Google Page Rank, originally researched by Larry Page (hence the name Page Rank) and Sergey Brin, when they were in Stanford University.

Here, the anchor text plays the vital role. Suppose, a large number of hyperlinks with an anchor text “ miserable failure ” point to a web-page, which is not at all miserable from any angle, then Google thinks the web-page/website is highly associated with miserable failure, and ranks it higher (top position) b’cos plenty of highly ranked (authority sites) are voting or telling the same thing.

Links from large number of high Google PR websites + Anchor text( single ) = Google bomb. But, of course with an ill intention. B’cos, if the intention is good then it will be SEO.

Examples of Google bomb

1. In the end of year 2006, a notorious Google bomb was used in a campaign that targeted the Whitehouse.gov biography page for George W. Bush with the anchor text “ miserable failure ”. As a result, that page ranked No.1 for searches on miserable failure.

Steps taken by Google: In Jan 2007, Google makes some major changes in SE algorithm to combat the miserable failure issue. Google told – The anchor text used should be present in the pointing website, either partially or fully.

2. By exploiting Google’s algorithm changes for Google bomb, a group called anonymous targeted the Church of Scientology’s main website with an anchor text “ Dangerous cult  ”. This time, the word    “ Dangerous ” was actually present on the website of Church of Scientology. But, not the word “cult”. The grey-hat SEO technique worked here.

Is Google a lame duck in front of Google bomb ?

Today, there are plenty of websites rank higher for certain term/phrase/anchor text, without any relevance or without offering quality services, by leveraging Google’s SE policies regarding Google bombing.

As, these kind of practices don’t considered to be black-hat and the end results are not meant for political or sarcastic purpose, don’t come to limelight. In-fact, this grey-hat SEO practice by not so deserving websites causing immense loss to quality sites.

Let’s hope, the search engine giant will deploy its so called able engineers to defuse the Google bomb permanently.

Whether you agree with me or not, your suggestions and comments are always welcome.