Disarming the Googlebomb
This one’s been all over the SEO blogosphere this week, so you might have heard about it already, but I wanted to weigh in on this issue. It’s being reported that Google’s begun policing Googlebombs and deterring their intended results. According to statements by Matt Cutts, this change is being handled completely by an algorithm with no human intervention.
Many of you already know what “Googlebombing” is. It’s also called linkbombing. For those of you that don’t, it’s the practice of propagating links all over the internet that use very specific text in order to rank a certain page for that specific phrase. The most famous example of this is when a whole bunch of bloggers linked to President George W. Bush’s biography page on the White House website with the phrase “miserable failure”. The result of that effort was that if you searched “miserable failure”, G.W.B. came up as the first result. This example is the most visible sign that Google is doing something about bombing, as that particular search no longer works.
Cutts got even more specific saying that Google has differentiated “bombs” from legitimate SEO, defining “bombs” as link building efforts designed to rank a page that the implementers don’t actually own. The “miserable failure” incident is a prime example of this, as the people doing the linking clearly don’t own the White House website.
An article on SEOBlackHat covering the issue puts forth an interesting theory. The only real way Google can be qualifying this is by comparing the text links with the on-page content of the destination. The President’s bio page isn’t optimized at all for “miserable failure” so this could be how Google has made its determination.
However, for instance, my site has a little optimization for “Coolest guy on the planet” (And you all know how I rank for that!) Does it only take that little bit of on-page effort to legitimize these link fests? It would appear so.
It’s like Google now checks for permission from the “bombed” site before it sends that keyword traffic to it!
I have to think this also relates to my previous post about Wikipedia trying to thwart the efforts of SEO vandalism that results from some SEO “contests”. Most publicly known instances of “bombing” are just cute and clever pranks, akin to digital graffiti.
But they’re not always harmless and so I’m glad Google is addressing this now. Because as these techniques become more widespread, “bombing” is a practice that unethical SEOs could use to potentially cause financial damages to e-commerce websites, or even personal damage to individuals.
A lot of the blogs I read on the topic shiver with an alarmist tone, but the fact remains, if you’re practicing ethical, logical, organic SEO anyway, you have nothing to worry about.
Here is the original article I read on WebProBlog:
http://blogs.webpronews.com/2007/01/26/will-googlebomb-algo-affect-seo-contests/
Here is the commentary from SEOBlackHat:
http://seoblackhat.com/2007/01/28/google-bomb-update/
Matt Cutts’ comments are referenced in this SearchEngineLand article as well:
http://searchengineland.com/070125-230048.php
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Well said, Brad! I wonder, though, how long before someone hacks the Whitehouse site and slips in a few “miserable failure” phrases, alt tags, or title tags on links so that it’s no longer considered a Googlebomb by their algorithm.
Hmmm…. Whitehouse and bomb in the same sentence. This can’t be good.
It’s about time that G did this. Their whole mission is to return relevant results and the bombs don’t do that.
Now, I’m sure some clever SEO type will put up a page outlining exactly why (insert least favorite politician/celebrity here) is a miserable failure.
Give it a few weeks and we’ll see those pages making up the G top ten. But that is probably the type of thing that people would be looking for anyway.
So kudos to the big G for doing this.
Brad, when you quote “It’s like Google now checks for permission from the “bombed” site before it sends that keyword traffic to it” how does Google determine whether that site grants permission to the particular keyword(s)? Does google just look at the title tags, h1 tags, keyword density, etc? Or is there something else that we’re not aware of?
Beach Wedding Favors
Tan: You’re correct - there’s not a “handshake” or anything going on between the search engine and the target site, but by having on-page optimization that matches the external link text, Google can safely assume that the links are part of organic popularity (or at least ethical SEO).
I am actually quite surprised that they weren’t already doing this. It all makes total sense to me. Thanks Brad!
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Brad, I have noticed recently that the myweddingfavors site has fallen from the first page ranks in google. Is that due to this google change, or is that a calculated move for you? I know your business is growing, and maybe the retail side isn’t doing as well as the wholesale side? Just curious. I didn’t think you would ever fall from the first page on something like “golf wedding favor”.
Thanks!
I too have written about the death of Googlebombs. My current theory is that Google has taken what amounted to an addititve algo (on-page factors *plus* off-page factors) and changed it to a multiplicative algo (on-page factors *times* off-page factors).
Clearly, you don’t have to have keyword stuff links to rank (for non-competitive keywords), but it does seem that at least some minimal on-page usage is required (e.g. an on-page of zero erases any keywords coming from links).
Has anyone seen cases of pages still ranking for key phrases that weren’t on the page? If so, I’d very much like to hear about it.
Thanks in advance.
Like everyone else I think it is a good idea that Google is finally cracking down on these guys however it would be nice to know exactly what will happen so that the little guy doesn’t get caught in the “clean sweep”.
Brian
http://www.ReviewofMedifast.com
Hi, I was wondering, Did “MyWeddingFavors.com” get penalized as a Google Bomb? I.E, point enough links towards a site, and it’s number one. Now where is it? We watch your SEO advice, have used much of it to our advantage, but wondered what happened to mwf?
thanks,
Marnie.
Ditto on the question about MyWeddingFavors.com. In fact I had posed this question before, but it never seemed to make it past your filter. Obviously I’m not the only one wondering. Please tell us what’s going on. I can’t believe it is intentional on your part, as I see you are still running Google Ads for the phrase “wedding favors”
The problems with myweddingfavors.com started in late 2005, possibly stemming from a issue in the older Yahoo store hosting configuration, and then got progressively worse during the first half of 2006.
We know for certain, and have known for over a year, that the problems at myweddingfavors.com are not a “penalty” nor is it bad, improper,ineffective, or overzealous SEO. On the contrary, the data point very squarely at one or more problems at Google.
It would be inappropriate, and not generally useful anyway, to get into the technical specifics of what is wrong and what we feel Google must do to correct it, but Google has been contacted a number of times as to the
situation, and while the problem has yet to be resolved, we’re confident that it will be in the near future.
Please recognize that this is just one of several sites my companies have built and currently operate profitably, and although myweddingfavors is the best known, the SEO techniques used there are precisely the same ones used on the rest of our top ranked properties. All of these businesses continue to grow and flourish while we take steps to put myweddingfavors back in the rankings where our analysis shows that it belongs.
I would imagine that the tedious work of increasing backlinks for search phrases a shop owner once ranked highly for might be the only way to remedy the situation of being penalized for duplicate content. I guess changing the content would be another tedious process that might help. What a pain, though…
-Jason
What are some of these other sites you speak of, Brad?
Brad,
Thanks for responding on the myweddingfavors.com issue. You said it would not be helpful to go into the technical details, but isn’t there some risk that another site could have the same problem?
Actually I first checked on myweddingfavors.com rankings around October of 2006 and it was doing very well (page 1 of “wedding favors” results) at that point, but not long after Stompernet got launched, the site just fell out of the results completely. I didn’t think it was caused by any inappropriate SEO technique, but did wonder what it was caused by and whether it was possible your site had been singled out — certainly you must have rivals that would enjoy getting your flagship site knocked out of the rankings.
As for the other person’s question about what other sites does Brad have — actually I can’t answer that, but his cohort, Andy Jenkins owns I believe a top 10 search results for “Lord of the Rings Swords”. I think a2armory.com is his.
Hi Everyone,
I’m really concerned about the search engines at the moment particularly Google. The optimized sites I have completed seemed to have vanished from their top 10 rankings for selected keywords and phrases. Has something gone on with Google lately, maybe some algorithm change.? At the moment I’m trying to get a site out of supplementary results hell. Fun… not
I would also be interested in some of the technical details if possible. I’m glad Google is getting The bomb thing under control.
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Although Google is pretty much on the fringe of technological advances, it is a very large corporation, so which that, changes will come in large waves rather then small ones. I think an approach that would help everyone out (as well as Google) is to implement these changes in small managable waves where it doesn’t literally knock off websites without warning.
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Will disarming google bomb affects SEO. What do you think.
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Considering google adjusts itself everyday, you have to think that sooner or later they are going to make efforts to eliminate unethical SEO abuse. This may prove that in the end the best road is the high road.
Is there where “authority sites” come in?
I mean if CNN is an authority site and it points to a domain with a certain anchor text will this overide google’s algo for defusing google bombs?
I am just wondering if CNN points to the whithouse.gov site with the anchor text “miserable failure” What would happen?