Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

| This News Blog is dedicated to bringing news, information and innovations targeting the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

Google's new anti- Googlebombing Algorithm

Google is reported to have been playing with a new algorithm. Whether it is an algorithm or an just a new filter is immaterial, but the technique of Googlebombing would appear to be at the centre of it's impact. Since the beginning of Google their algorithm has been based less on the content of a site and more on the number of links pointing to a website with a particular piece of anchortext.

And indeed some progress has been made. For example one of the major demonstrations for this was the word "exit". If you put "exit" as a search into Google, in the past, Yahoo, Google, Crayola and Disney all ranked well. Not that any of these sites wanted to appear for this search term, they didn't even have the word on their sites. This was in fact born from the adult industry having warnings "if over 18 click here, if not click exit". Now if you do a search for "exit" none of these sites appear in the results. The same goes for the "miserable failure" example. Prior to this update a search for "miserable failure" used to rank the George Bush site, now he is no-where to be seen.

So without doubt Google have modified the impact of Googlebombing, however not entirely. In our testing we are seeing that Googlebombing still works, but is has to be part of the proposition. Gone are the days where you can use the technique with gay abandon.

Google I'm sure are very happy with the new update, but that isn't the end of the story. We are seeing blatant exemptions in the results being displayed. On closer scrutiny it would appear that the technique does still work, but there appear to be some new rules as to the volume of anchortext in proportion to the total number of links. There also appears to be an element associated with the number of links on the donating page, its theme and the theme of the page receiving the link.

Therefore, yet again, the penalties of being caught over optimising by relying on one technique are brutal. We will be examining more results over the next few days, no doubt it will be a hot topic at the upcoming TFM Search Clinic in London next week, and I dare to say the Search Engine Strategies Conference , the week after, will be entertaining.

M.P