|
The end of Google bombs?
Google bombs have become a problem for Google. The official
Google webmaster blog recently
had a statement about Google bombs and how Google deals with
them.
What are Google bombs?
Google bombs are Internet pranks. Google heavily relies
on the number and the type of links that point to a web
site. If many web sites link with a special search term
to a web site then the linked web site will get a top ranking
on Google for that search term.
Some people abused this behavior of Google's ranking algorithm
to get web sites to the top of the search results that
normally shouldn't be there.
It works like this:
A webmaster decides that a web site should have a top
Google ranking for a special search term. The webmaster
links to the web site with that search term and asks all
of his friends to also link to that web site with that
special search term. His friends also link to the site
and they ask their other friends to link with that search
term to the web site, and so on.
Now that many different sites link to the web site with
that search term, Google thinks that the web site must
be very relevant for that search term.
The most famous Google bomb is the miserable
failure Google bomb. For several months, the official
home page of George Bush was the first result on Google
for the search term "miserable failure".
What did Google do about the Google bomb problem?
Last Thursday, Google decided to do something against
Google bombs:
"These pranks are normally for phrases that are well
off the beaten path, they haven't been a very high priority
for us. But over time, we've seen more people assume
that they are Google's opinion, or that Google has hand-coded
the results for these Googlebombed queries. [...]
So a few of us who work here got together and came
up with an algorithm that minimizes the impact of many
Googlebombs."
That means that most Google bombs shouldn't work anymore.
The new algorithm is probably an extension of the algorithm
that detects unnatural linking patterns.
What does this mean to your web site?
Inbound links are very important if you want to get high
rankings on Google. It's important to optimize your web
pages so that they are relevant to a special search term
but it is equally important -- if not more important --
to get high quality links to your web site.
A web site can only get high rankings on Google if it
has good inbound links in addition to good content. However,
it is important that you get the right links.
If the links to your web site have an unnatural pattern
then Google probably won't count these links. If you get
many links with exactly the same link text in a short time
period then these links might be interpreted as a Google
bombing attempt.
Links to your web site are very important if you want to
get high rankings on Google. You
must get good inbound links to succeed with Google. It's
important that you get the right links to your web site.
Details can be found in our free eBook "How
to get high quality inbound links".
|
