Googlebombs!

Today's blog note takes a slightly comical, but very real phrase, and looks into what it actually means.

A Google bomb (also referred to as a 'link bomb') is Internet slang for a certain kind of attempt to influence the ranking of a given page in results returned by the Google search engine, often with humorous or political intentions.

Because of the way that Google's algorithm works, a page will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page use consistent anchor text. A Google bomb is created if a large number of sites link to the page in this manner. Google bomb is used both as a verb and a noun. The phrase "Google bombing" was introduced to the New Oxford American Dictionary in May 2005, so it's not a new phrase. Google bombing is closely related to spamdexing, the practice of deliberately modifying HTML pages to increase the chance of their being placed close to the beginning of search engine results, or to influence the category to which the page is assigned in a misleading or dishonest manner.

The term Googlewashing was coined in 2003 to describe the use of media manipulation to change the perception of a term, or push out competition from search engine results pages (SERPs).

A recent Google bomb example was the word "failure" being linked back to the White House and George Bush. I'll let you keep your thoughts on that to yourself, but it is a perfect example of how link building and anchor text plays a huge part in the relevance of your links and your sites ranking on Google.

Until tomorrow.......