GoogleBowling

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No doubt you’ve heard of Google Bombing, or using anchor text to manipulate search engine results to cause a page to rank for words that aren’t on the page. Well it’s taken it’s next step and evolved into something darker and potentially more dangerous, GoogleBowling. While I’d like to take credit for coining the phrase it was Terry who called it GoogleBowling over at Threadwatch.

So what is GoogleBowling? At it’s simplest it’s using anchor text to bowl over, or sabotage another website. According to Google’s webmaster guide it’s not possible:

Fiction: A competitor can ruin a site’s ranking somehow or have another site removed from Google’s index.
Fact: There is almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. Your rank and your inclusion are dependent on factors under your control as a webmaster, including content choices and site design.

Don’t glance over the important word “almost”, I wouldn’t consider it’s placement accidental. So how do you GoogleBowl someone, can it happen to anyone, and what can you do to prevent it. First we need to take a step back and say that as of this writing GoogleBowling is still a clinically an unproven event. However if a newly created website can become a victim of the google sandbox effect, then it’s extremely likely it’s something you can do to another website or your competitor.

So what’s the best way to go about GoogleBowling someone? While Google’s algorithm is reported to consider over 100 factors in ranking, any SEO worth his salt will tell you it’s mostly about the links. Google knows this, SEO’s know it, and Google knows SEO’s know it. Which left Google two choices, choose another ranking method, or find ways to protect the existing one. Enter the sandbox, some people still believe it exists, however if you’ve looked at Google patent and analysis, you will see some similarities between people claiming to be sandboxed and items mentioned in the patent application. So you want to Googlebowl, a good first step would be to buy site-wide links. Most SEO’s won’t come near a site wide link nowadays with a 10′ mouse cord. Go out and buy some, don’t think small think big, find a website with 20,000 pages or more, get a link on the footer of every page, get sitewide links on half a dozen or more websites. Now on to the anchor text, choose the best anchor text you can, something that they are already ranking for would be good place to start, if it’s a highly commercial or competitive phrase even better. Make sure it’s exactly the same on all of the websites, if you can get the surrounding text to be identical that would be icing on the cake. Keep all of this in place for at least 3-4 months, that should be long enough to take hold.

Can everyone be Googlebowled, probably not. There are some big websites out there, real authority websites, not purely algorithmic ones, that are immune. Look at Disney for example, half of the porn websites in the world link to it using the word “leave” but it still continues to do well in the SERP’s. If you have an older website, one that survived Google’s Florida Update you probably are fairly safe. However if you have new website, especially one that is ranking poorly you could be victimized. One of the worst things is you may not know it until it’s too late. Yahoo’s backlink feature works the best of everyone’s, however it’s always a little behind, Google’s backlink command is useful as an icemaker is to an Eskimo, don’t even bother trying it. You’ll just wake up one day to find your rankings gone, and there will be no evidence to be found.

What can you do to protect yourself? Well the details of exactly what will put you in the sandbox or bring you out, are sketchy, so it’s hard to say. Meanwhile Google is publicly in denial that there is a sandbox effect, so I wouldn’t expect much help from them. The best advice I can offer is check your backlinks regularly, look for things that are new, and check them out, and vary your anchor text as much as possible.

I’m sure some of you reading this article are furious that I’ve spelled it out, and made it easy for anyone to do. Well I say that you missed the point. I used to play tournament level chess a few years ago, and one of the things that separates the grandmasters from the woodpushers, is the ability to think multiple moves ahead. Chessplayers refer to it as ‘ply‘. Personally I could usually go between 3 and 4 ply but I knew people who could go between 6 and 8 ply. The reason I drag this nasty issue into the spotlight, is so it can be addressed and resolved quickly, before any real damage is done. Google was in public denial about 302 pagejacking being an issue. However Cornwall and Claus both blogged about it, it was “slashdotted” and we are finally seeing the problem being addressed by Google.

Don’t get me wrong Google’s in a tough spot. Do they admit publicly it can be done, if so how nasty will it get? Do they deny it, allowing hundreds if not thousands of websites to be victimized before admitting a problem does exist? An action like that is sure to widen the rift that already exist between Google and the web publishing community. Chances are they will stick with their current modus operandi and stonewall everyone with silence, leaving them to wonder without a clue. One thing is for sure as long as the sandbox effect remains and important part of the algorithm, websites are vulnerable, and it has the potential to get really ugly very quickly.

P.S. Think I’m making all of this up. Well then I’ll call you on it, give me one of your URL’s, something you created in the past 2 years, and let me try and Googlebowl it into oblivion. If I can’t, I’ll publicly admit it here. Believe me nothing would give me more comfort than knowing that your and my URL’s are safe.

tags: (search engine optimization | seo | google | googlebowling )

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