Google Bombing an insight into the algorithm

[tstolber]

Hi all
Its been almost a year (November 16, 2003) since the famous Google Florida update.
I read an article recently that was comparing the two major schools of thought between "content is king" and "linking is king" and saying that it looks more like Google is trying to combine the two and make more of a semantic analysis of a site.

The article goes on to mention Google bombing and in particular the search term miserable failure which will give you the white house presidents biography! This goes to show that Google bombing does still work and that linking must still be a very important part of Google's algorithm.

This raises question such as how many links do you have to do with relevant anchor text to alter SERPs. The sites linking to the biography with the anchor text miserable failure are not relevant to either the search term or the page it is linking to. Does anyone have any data or experience with Google bombing? It stikes me that if it were that easy every blat hat wearing !+#8
person would do it. How much effect does it realy have? And how much of an insight does this give to the algorithm?

Opinions please.

Thanks.

[Jasontnyc]

The one wild card here is how competetive is the phrase "Miserable Failure" .. Has anyone optimized and entire site around that phrase the same way they would Web Design or SEO Tools, etc

If the on page isnt there than Google Bombs work really well on their own.

Maybve make the next SEO challenge for the phrase "Miserable Failure" and see what happens. Can on page + some links beat just links in huge quantities?

[tstolber]

Hi ya, thanks for that response!

I can't believe I didn't think of that! Must be down to sleep depravation!
Yes I guess Google Bombing would be much easier if it was for a term that had very few optimised sites.
I think the challenge - and maybe the real test would be to try Google bombing for a fairly competitive term.

Any moderator here want to get an SEO comp started to test this out? The trouble is of course we don't realy want to fill Google's index with pointless results but its kind of hard to test against competitive terms without doing so.

[mountainmad]

Nice idea - although I do like were "miserable failure" leads now.

[Web_Guy]

Although if it is so easy, why wouldn't somebody optimise a George Bush, John Kerry, Micheal Moore, etc site for that term and then use adsense.

I would think with all the press that terms get you could make a decent amount of money.

On the other side, why wouldn't one of those people build some totally unrelated sites targeting that phrase just to knock them out of the Serps

PS. I intentionally added all those names because one of the things I like about SEOChat is that politics never come up - hopefully that stays that way.

[tstolber]

Hi

No I haven't. I have got an Orkut profile but don't realy get it. It promises to be quite good for networking but just didn't find it that useful. Other than the fact that it connected me to about 100,000 south americains through one contact that didn't want to know anything about SEO. I gave up!

I too like where it currently goes! LOL

What I realy want to know is if it is possible to do some further analysis and how we can get an insight into the ranking algorithm. If we could compare a low competitive term and highly competitive term with the same googl bombing strategy and do some middle ground we would know more about how links effect SERPs.

Anyone up for some research and a bit of a challenge?

[randfish]

I'm working on it right now - to monitor the top 100 SERPs for about 200 competitive keywords, around 100 commercial, 50 news related and 50 like 'miserable failure' - which have no specific fit into a category. Probably will take a couple months to set up though :-(

[Mikee]

I'm up for a challenge, baby baby.

Does miserable failure actually get that much press anymore?

[mick.sawyer]

I will buy a domain for 20 quid.

You can all link to me to bomb me.

I will put ads on it and get rich from it.

Then i will buy all you guys a pint and send you a picture of me sitting in my villa abroad i have bought with the income from it.

Sounds like a good deal to me

I am well up for that.

[Mikee]

Good idea.

But use one of my domains.

www.depopulated.com is free.

c'mon.

miserable failure

;)

[mick.sawyer]

Thanks for saying it was a good idea mikeeeee.

I am sure you will agree that it would be better to start on a fresh domain.

What fresh domain should i sign up?

[JaneCompersNews]

Oh c'mon, if we are going to do it, we should do it properly. How about doing it to this page...

http://www number-10 gov.uk/output/page4.asp ;)

I was around during the conception of 'miserable failure'. It only took 32 links to get it to the top at the time.

Jane

[Mikee]

Ehehehe..

shame there isnt a Cherie Blair page on there. I'm sure we could think of something evil yet fun for that one.