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Google Bombing
Published: September 16, 2005
It looks as though 'Google Bombing' is doing the rounds again. It started way back in 2001 and seemingly hasn't changed much since.
Definition: To create a network of links, all with similar keyphrases and pointing to the same destination, in order to manipulate the results within Google for that phrase.
Purpose: An already tried and tested SEO technique but commonly used for abuse amongst friends.
Example: Create, say, 20 links, all saying "The biggest fool in the United Kingdom" and point them to your friends website. Give it a little time for Google to find all the links then check that keyphrase in Google to see who comes up first.
An important lesson to learn
As fun as it may be to get your friends listed for odd and disturbing phrases, it actually serves as an important lesson in the way the Google algorithm calculates rank as it shows the importance of the text within links when describing internet resources.
As always, links must be keyphrase descriptive of the resource they point to.
The rule above has never been so emphatically supported by the Google Bombing craze.
Types of links
Google not only looks at the text of the link, but also the location on the page, whether it's part of a list or a paragraph and also the importance of the page or site the link resides. All these factors combined make a huge impression on Google and the results it gives so it's worth experimenting with.
Warning
Keep it clean though. Don't go affecting peoples businesses with this and don't display the link, hide it using CSS.
I didn't know that you can get shown for search results that way. It really make you thank about the link text that you have with a link. that was really helpful. So that means that if I wanted my site to show up for say weird carpet cleaners not for sale I could do that ha! I never really thought about it like that. not that I have anything to do with carpet cleaners at all. but a good question does MSN and Yahoo also work the same way. I'd love to know.
I would say very useful but not to be abused.