Disarming the Googlebomb
For those of you who do not know what a googlebomb is, it is the practice of creating many links to 1 website with the same anchor text in an effort to cause that website to rise to the top of the serps for the given search term. That is the short definition. An extended definition is if the page being linked to is not relevant to the anchor text used to describe the link, then it is a googlebomb.
Google has made a recent announcement concerning difusing the googlebamb by making changes in their algorithym, and Matt cutts has discussed it at his blog.
Webproworld visitors are speculating that this can not be done automatically as it will nullify any benefit of being dug or promoted through any other form of online social networking sites. Some of the argument is if a buzz is created on the vast social networking web, than a large amounts of links could be created to the source in just a matter of a few days. Given the fact that a product or article was crafted well enough to warrant creating such a buzz, would it be fair for Google to kill the increase in percieved popularity.
What I think a lot of webmasters are missing is the word “relevancy”. If the anchor text pointing to a website about cars is “boats”, then the incoming links could potentially be ruled as irrelevant.
Another indicator of googlebombing is a quick massive increase in the number of inbound links with the same anchor text in the link. This brings another problem to the surface and that is the number of inbound links generated in 1 day back to popular GNU General Public License freeware type programs like PHPBB, Mambo, Joomla, RSStatic and the like. Currently, phpbb shows over 2 million incoming links. Joomla shows over 240,000. Mamboserver shows 65,000 links.
Granted, most of the links to these programs and the creators of these programs will be relevant to the context of the site, the sheer number of links generated in a single day could easily trip a new googlebomb filter.
How about website designers that provide free scripting or that create free templates for webmasters that can be downloaded from any free template website? These designers request that a link back to their website remain intact as a condition of use of the free template. The link back to the designer that provided the free template is not much different than putting a logo on a box. If someone wants more boxes, then they know where to go get them. It also serves as a vehicle to help drive additional sales for someone who may want more than a free template look and feel.
I can understand difusing the googlebomb, but please be careful and make sure a lot of innocent folks don’t get hurt in the process.
