My name is Matthew Bredel and as of March, 2007, I am a full-time, work-at-home internet marketer.
For close to 10 years, I worked for a defense company which was an OK job, but I was so uninspired in life and frankly, I needed some more money. That is when I first discovered internet marketing! Now I admit that I didn't start making thousands in my first couple of months (in fact, I lost my shirt!), but I finally saw the "internet light"...
What is GoogleBombing and why is it freaking out internet marketers.
In the past, I have written about the importance of off-page Search Engine Optimization and the role of anchor text. In review, anchor text is the highlighted text that can be clicked to direct you to a new webpage. For example, I can link to my main [...]
What is GoogleBombing and why is it freaking out internet marketers.
In the past, I have written about the importance of off-page Search Engine Optimization and the role of anchor text. In review, anchor text is the highlighted text that can be clicked to direct you to a new webpage. For example, I can link to my main website in two ways:
TheWebReviewer.com - Learn how to make money online.
Work From Home - Learn how to make money online.
In the above example, I send the visitor to the same location but the anchor text is different. The first one seems very standard (TheWebReviewer.com), but not very SEO effective. The second anchor text (Work From Home) is a much better SEO choice, because it optimizes the landing page to that specific text.
Remember the “Click Here” example? If you search for “click here”, the number one result is Adobe Reader. This is due to the strength of the anchor texts that say “click here” that sends you to the free download of Adobe Reader. But what happens when the use of anchor text gets abused? Well, this is what recently happened! Large groups of internet savvy users decided to optimize the keyword “miserable failure” by creating anchor texts (from high PR sites, blogs and forums) and pointing them to George Bush’s biography on the White House website. Yes, it is kind of funny and it was very effective, too. In fact, it became the number one result on Google for that phrase.
Of course, this is not the type of result that Google would like to appear in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) for such an (irrelevant?) keyword. So, to combat this Google recently upgraded its algorithm (January 2007). This new algorithm change is known as the GoogleBomb update (which they also call GB, and is supposed to be a hidden coincidence with the name “George Bush”).
Every time that Google has an algorithm change (like the GoogleBomb update), you find the internet marketing world go up into turmoil. For some, their websites seem to disappear from the SERPs. For others it has no impact and maybe it even helps them. Does this mean that anchor text no longer provides any SEO assistance? Well, if you type “Click Here” in Google, Acrobat Reader still comes up number one. So the general answer is no! Google is smarter than that. But how does it distinguish the difference between honest anchor text and a Google Bomb? Who knows! Maybe it is relevancy. Maybe it ignores negative sounding anchor text.
It is still my belief, though, that if you play the games of the internet in an honest (and “white hat”) manner, you should never be punished in the long term for a Google update. And also, remember that Google is still a little bit ahead of the game: If you still search “miserable failure” in Yahoo or MSN, you find our president George W. Bush in the number one position.
- Matthew Bredel
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