Google Bombing

What Is Google Bombing?

Google bombing is a black hat SEO technique where people manipulate the search results by creating lots of backlinks with specific anchor text.

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The goal is to manipulate Google’s algorithm by making a website rank for a specific unrelated search term.

Google bombing relies on exploiting how Google’s algorithm uses anchor text to understand a page’s content.

The more websites that link to a page using specific anchor text, the more Google associates that phrase with the page.

Here’s an example:

In 2004, thousands of websites linked to George W. Bush’s presidential biography using the anchor text “miserable failure.”

This made his biography appear at the top of the SERPs when people searched for that phrase.

This wasn’t an isolated Google bomb…

There have been thousands of Google bomb attempts over the years.

Some are targeted at larger websites or well-known people, but some are also on a smaller scale.

The problem became so serious that in 2007, Google updated its algorithm to prevent Google bombing from becoming an issue.

Today, Google’s search algorithm is much more sophisticated.

So, Google bombing is significantly harder and requires more than just building a bunch of external links with the same anchor text.

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Why Would A Person Or Organisation Be Engaging In Google Bombing?

People use Google bombing for three main reasons:

  1. Political Statements: Making political figures or organisations rank for specific unrelated search terms
  2. Pranks: Creating funny or embarrassing search results as a joke
  3. Protest: Highlighting issues or criticising companies for certain practices

This isn’t just isolated to Google search…

People also use Google Images for bombing. You can take an image of someone and rank it in the Google Images search results for any keyword you want.

When someone searches that keyword, an image of the person you placed appears.

But that’s more on the light-hearted side of Google bombing!

Initially, it started as a way for people to express opinions using the organic search results.

Most Google bombs were created by activists to make statements rather than for commercial gain from a company.

Some businesses have tried Google bombing to damage their competitors’ reputations by making negative reviews rank for their business name.

This is much less common today because it doesn’t work as well as it once did!

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How Does Google Bombing Work?

Google bombing works by exploiting how search engines use anchor text in a backlink to determine page relevance.

Google considers backlinks votes of confidence in your website.

The more backlinks you have, the more trust Google will have in your site and the higher you will rank.

What is link building - more links equal higher rankings

But that’s just one side of link building

Google also uses anchor text to determine a page’s relevance to a search query.

When enough websites link to a page using the same anchor text, Google considers that text highly relevant to the linked page.

This happens even if the actual page content has nothing to do with those words.

To put it into a process-

  1. People identify a target webpage they want to rank for specific terms
  2. They create tons of backlinks pointing to that page
  3. All these links use the exact same or very similar anchor text
  4. Google starts associating words in the anchor text with the target page
  5. The page begins ranking for those terms

The more websites that participate in the Google bomb, the stronger the effect becomes.

The key to making it work is having a lot of trusted websites link to that page with the right anchor text. This pushes Google’s algorithm to associate the anchor text words with the page.

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Does Google Bombing Still Work?

No, Google bombing doesn’t work anymore.

Google fixed this exploit in 2007 by updating their algorithm.

The update essentially stopped relying solely on the anchor text of a backlink to understand the content of a page.

Today, Google uses a lot of machine learning and AI technology in its algorithm.

The algorithm looks at numerous factors, including-

  • Linking page content
  • Linked page content
  • Anchor text
  • Variations of anchor text
  • Words surround the anchor text

And so much more!

This makes it very difficult to use Google bombing effectively – especially for search terms with higher search volumes and ranking difficulty.

On top of that, Google’s algorithm is trained to look for manipulative practices, such as using a Google bomb.

That means you will likely receive a Google penalty before the bomb has any effect!

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