Does Googlebombing Really Work?
Does Googlebombing really work? If it does, how can you compete for competetive terms if serps can be so easily manipulated on the worlds largest search engine?
Last year, a blantant display of what could be called googlebombing was pulled off by a closely knit group of Search Engine Marketers. If you haven’t been following the story, Searchenginewatch.com and Seomoz.org whipped up a possey of blog members to create postings on their websites, myspace accounts, etc, to point to letter on Colbertnation.com with the anchor text of “Greatest Living American”. The SEO community succeeded in pulling off the Googlebomb and currently Colbertnation.com ranks #1 for Greatest Living American. Or did they?
Well, a quick search on Google shows colbertnation #1 for greatest Living American, so the googlebomb must have worked. But wait, what exactly is a googlebomb? Google Webmaster Central defines it as a prank where people attempt to cause someone else’s site to rank for an obscure or meaningless query. Googlebombs very rarely happen for common queries, because the lack of any relevant results for that phrase is part of why a Googlebomb can work. One of the earliest Googlebombs was for the phrase “talentless hack,” for example.
UPDATE: I’m re-posting this article by Jeff Phillips since, now as I look back, the Google-bombs have all backfired. Articles about the bombs out rank the inteneded bomb pages. Take a look - JSH
