Hmmmm… this is interesting.
For the past couple of years, if you were to do a search on Google for the term “miserable failure” you would find that George W. Bush’s White House bio appeared in the No. 1 spot on the Google SERP page. A SERP is a search engine results page. Well, last month, Google fixed that problem so Bush isn’t the No. 1 “miserable failure” any more. However, Internet marketing expert Bill Platt has some interesting observations and a theory:
Based on what I was able to uncover in my study of Google Bombs, I came up with a theory. What I have been able to take from the results shown above is that Google may have targeted only “negative links”. If you want to review what is shown above, all of the Google Bombs that are now gone had negative connotations to them. All of the Google Bombs that survived can be construed as having positive, or at least non-negative, connotations to them.
So what was this big revelation that led Mr. Platt to his conclusion? Consider this:
Unchanged Google Bombs:
* A search for “Scientology” still has the “Operation Clambake” listing in the #2 spot (2007-01-31). Operation Clambake is a website that is critical of Scientology.
* “Click here” still points to the Adobe website (although this was not actually a GoogleBomb).
* “French military victories” still goes to the same page on Albino Black Sheep when you hit “I feel lucky” on Google’s search page. (I still get a kick out of this one.)
* The “great president” GoogleBomb survived. It still points to Bush’s bio on the White House website.
The one I find interesting is the last one. You can actually see it for yourself.
This just begs the question: Are the Google execs Republican, supporters of the president or Iraq War enthusiasts? It’s possible, but something else is just as possible.
If the positive Google Bomb phenomenon still produces results then anyone could start a Google Bomb and rise in the search engines. There are only two obstacles that would stand in their way:
- Competition
- Keyword Choice
You see, it all boils down to something called “anchor text.” Veteran Internet marketer Allan Gardyne does a great job of explaining what anchor text is. Anchor text is the text that is used to create a link on a website. For example, in this sentence, the word Google is anchor text. On his website, Gardyne teaches people how to run a successful Google Bomb campaign. He makes it sound so easy, but is it?
Here’s what he says:
However, don’t make the anchor text exactly the same in all links. To search engines, that would look like an artificial link structure.
He seems to actually be encouraging this behavior. If you take that kind of advice, you have to be aware of the challenges: 1) Competition and 2) Keyword choice. Here’s why they are challenges:
1) If your particular keyword has a lot of competition then you will need a lot of links to be effective. The more competition, the more links you will need. For instance, for the search phrase “Internet marketing,” Google has 25,900,000 results. That’s how many websites you have to beat to have the No. 1 spot. You better have a lot of friends.
2) On the other hand, if you choose a phrase that is so obscure that not many people will be searching for it, then you won’t need many links but since not many people are making the search it will be a moot point. No one will care and your site will not be found very often no matter how many links to it you have with that anchor text.
Perhaps these two reasons are why Google didn’t see fit to change its algorithms to fix the positive Google Bombs. Of course, there is always the possibility that Platt’s theory is wrong. But like all theories, it is testable. I present this challenge to the blogosphere:
Currently, there are only 547 search results for the phrase “best website on the planet,” and the top result is a website by the name of Intrinsix. As an experiment, just to test Platt’s theory, link to this blog post (URL = http://newsandmediablog.com/2007/02/13/lets-create-a-google-bomb) using the anchor text “best website on the planet” somewhere - anywhere - on your website or in your blog.
If Platt’s theory is correct, after a couple of weeks (or a few days, depending on how many of you join in for a good cause), this blog post should be in the No. 1 spot for the search phrase “best website on the planet”
