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Web Site Marketing - Diffusing The Google Bomb
By Richard Zwicky, CEO, Metamend.com

Each month, or thereabouts, as search positioning changes are 
noticed as a result of the latest Google algorithm updates, an 
analysis of what happened occurs. An analysis of the update 
ensues in many news groups and discussion groups and invariably, 
there never seem to be many people happy with the updates.

This month, the focus of attention is links, and the way Google 
uses them. I've noticed a lot of discussion in Search Engine 
Watch (1) about the fact that a search in Google for "out of 
touch executives" no longer displayed their link to #1 at Google. 
The discussion veered between almost paranoid sounding "Is Google 
censoring results it does not like?" to the more rational and 
scientific, "If Google changes X then Y is the result, therefore 
it is logical that the results would be affected in this way." 
Invariably, there were holes in every argument except one, which 
although was not quite on the mark, at least pointed in the 
right direction.

The root of this issue is the so-called "Google Bombing." There 
are two versions of Google-bombing, one run by web sites on 
their own behalf, and one that can be used either humorously or 
maliciously. In either case, it boils down to having a multitude 
of web pages all with the same links and with the same key phrase 
used within the text links, all pointing back at the same page 
within a web site. These Google Bombs are incredibly effective 
at building traffic. One of the most famous examples was when 
people Google-bombed the phrase "miserable failure", pointing 
all the links to George Bush's web site. The web site shot up 
to #1 in Google for the term.

Companies do this on their own behalf as well. They have 
affiliates and other related companies all link to them with 
identical text within the links. If they get enough, Google is 
led to believe the company's web site is among the most 
referenced on a particular subject and ranks it accordingly.

Used properly, this can help a truly relevant resource appear 
properly in the search engine results. Unfortunately, it is 
often used improperly to manipulate search results or promote 
irrelevant web pages, thus negatively affecting search results.

While Google, (or any other search engine whose results can be 
manipulated by this kind of loophole) would like to eliminate 
this practice, it's never been clear on how to go about fixing 
the problem. After all, a Google-bomb link looks to a search 
engine algorithm exactly like any other link, thus impossible 
to individually distinguish it from a genuine link. Impossible 
individually perhaps, but not impossible.

However, upon reading all the various musings, it occurred to me 
that realistically, Google may be able to stop Google-Bombing 
all together by simply deprecating the value of inbound links to 
a web page. i.e. When more than X number of links contained 
identical wording and the inbound link text did not appear 
contextually, on the web page being targeted.

In all cases, if the link text was not on the page, the rule 
would apply. Therefore "miserable failure" for George Bush's web 
site would likely fail, as those words do not appear together at 
all on the real web site. The value for X links could 
theoretically be either a percentage or a hard number. For 
example, if more than 50% of inbound links contain the identical 
link text, then depreciate their value by 90%.

More realistically you could choose an arbitrary number, such as 
200 identical links gets a value depreciation of 90%. This would 
likely ward off the malicious and the humorous Google bombing 
campaigns. They are mostly viral in nature and would quickly 
eclipse 200 in number. The text chosen rarely is extracted from 
the text on the page. But 200 inbound links with identical text 
for a company web site would not need to face a penalty. If 
Coca-Cola got all their distributors and retailers to link to 
Coca-Cola.com (2), that would exceed 200 inbound links, but the 
links would all say, "The Coca-Cola Company" and thus be highly 
relevant and contextually correct with the content of the target 
web page. It would therefore not need to be penalized. This 
formula should also not penalize web sites for poorly formed 
links. e.g. If someone links to your web site using alternative 
terms, it should not trigger the filter. Unless of course 200 
others did exactly the same thing.

It is possible that Google's algorithmic understanding of 
phraseology is not yet advanced enough to make this possible. I 
don't mean to suggest that Google's technology is not advanced. 
Perhaps Google's technologies are simply not yet able to properly 
analyze the phrases within link text, while contextually relating 
it to the text within the page targeted.

I would find this shocking, since our firm's technology uses 
phraseology in this context on a daily basis. I would therefore 
surmise that Google is capable, but unwilling to do so. A 
rational explanation why they would not use this type of 
algorithm to improve search results is perplexing. If Google's 
technology were able to perform this type of link analysis, 
"miserable failure" would never have worked. Ergo, Google, and 
every other engine that similarly values links, can solve the 
Google-bomb problem in a manner which rewards context and 
penalizes irrelevance.

I believe the search engines will eventually move in this 
direction, if they are not working on it already. I also believe 
that any search engine optimization work which includes linking 
strategies must take into account the context within the links. 
After all, when you receive a referral link from someone, you 
generally like to know the context of it too. Search engine 
algorithms should work the same way.

*source: 
1. Search Engine Watch
2. copyright Coca-Cola.com

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Richard Zwicky is a founder and the CEO of Metamend Software
(http://www.metamend.com), a Victoria, B.C. based firm whose 
cutting edge Search Engine Optimization software has been 
recognized around the world as a leader in its field. Employing 
a staff of 10, the firm's business comes from around the world, 
with clients from every continent. Most recently the company was 
recognized for their geo-locational, or LBS technology, which 
correlates online businesses with their physical locations. 
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