First off, just what is a Google bomb?

In essence, most Google bombs are simply massive link campaigns where numerous web sites link to a specific URL with a specific keyword in their link text. Some Google bombs are intentional or "pranks" like the "miserable failure" attempt to take over a little used search term by political bloggers and others. Some Google bombs may be more benign or occur by coincidence. For example, so many people link to Apple.com, with "click here" in their link text via sentences like this:

"click here" to download the QuickTime Player

that Google's algorithm can take this as a sign that the phrase "click here" should be associated with Apple's QuickTime page. Similar pages from Microsoft, MapQuest, and other popular sites are also well ranked for "click here" due to the overwhelming number of inbound links that these sites have. Google can weigh many different factors when deciding how to rank a page, at times, these links can overwhelm any other factor that might help a page to rank.

SEO Vs. Google bomb?

After reading various posts in forums, SEO blogs, and other places... Many are wondering why keywords like click here, french military victories, and other searches still display Google bombs in action. Does Google "hand edit" the search results? Google says no, that they have simply created an algorithm update. Google reps have also posted that sites which still appear to have been Google bombed happen to "want" to appear for these phrases, and thus they are "performing SEO", not Google bombing. Taking this line of reasoning into account, the French military victories site is a parody of Google's "did you mean" feature, has the text "French military victories" on the page, and obviously wants to appear for the term. Where as a senator or president's site showing up for "miserable failure", probably does not want to show up for the search term.

But how does Google determine if a site does or does not want to show up for a term if this is a programmatic change? Is this change broad and far reaching? Despite Google's reassurances, some SEOs insist this was a hand edit, was it?

I would postulate that this was likely a programmatic change as Google states, but that the update simply had a very narrow focus. Perhaps the narrow focus was only on specific, well known Google bombs rather than an all encompassing change in Google. Many of the more political or infamous searches like "miserable failure" or "waffles" no longer return rankings for pages from the White House site, Michael Moore's site, John Kerry's site, various senators, and other unwanted link bomb targets. These searches now return URLs from news sites and forums, that have discussed these terms and obviously have no problems with being ranked for the terms.

But this is not the end of unwanted, coincidental, or benign Google bombs. Searches like "waffle John Kerry" still point to the John Kerry site despite there being no "waffle" terms on the target page and surely, John Kerry's site does not link around it's own site with the term "waffle". So you can't say that the site "wants" to be ranked on this phrase. Searches like "failure in the White House" still point to the White House site. And you can still tell that behind the scenes, there is some word association going on at Google. So before you think that Google's comment about "wanting" to rank for a term will always determine whether a site shows up or note for a Google bomb, take a look at the following information...

You would expect links to point to the White House site with the term "president" in their link text. You would expect Google, to count these links and note the emphasis and thus, use this emphasis as a factor in a site's rankings. Lo and behold, they do:

Yet, depending on how you check word associations in Google, there seems to be some discrepancies as neither failure or miserable appear on "www.whitehouse.gov/president/" yet Google is finding an association... Is this still from link text bombing?:

Before this update, the synonym operator, ~, had displayed the same info as above. Today, this is missing from these searches:
failure: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=%7Efailure&btnG=Google+Search
miserable:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%7Emiserable&btnG=Search

While Google will still associate some keywords, it will no longer associate some phrases:

Mini-Google bombs?

When I initially read that Google was getting rid of these bombs, I thought that this would significantly change the way that Google counted back links. I had thought "a-ha, a new innovation", one that may not only fix the bombs but change the nature of "quality links", in order to add a new dimension to scoring and ranking pages. But as my previous examples show, this was probably not an overall change in scoring but rather a very narrow attempt to defuse some Google bombs.

Why would Google consider applying this to all links at some point in the future? The current change lets mini Gooogle bombs slip through. Some firms "Guarantee Top 10 Rankings in Google" by implementing mini-bombs that help sites rank well even if they are not optimized for some terms. By buying the rights to the content and domains of old web sites and blogs, some firms are able to create mini-networks of topically focused, aged, "trusted" sites and use these to create mini-Google bombs.

These firms typically perform little to no on site SEO beyond 'tweaking' some meta tags, creating low quality "door way" pages, adding hidden text, and pointing thousands of keyword laden links from their networks, at the client's pages. Once the client stops paying, the links go away and the ranking go as well. Or if the network is discovered and devalued by an engine, the rankings go away, and the client may or may not have a means of recourse with the firm that provided the links. There are several splits in the SEO world as to the ethicacy of such tactics. Since you can't guarantee long term results in Google, many SEOs on one side of the spectrum rely less on trivial 'tweaking', and instead focus on creating interesting content, improving site usability for human visitors as well as search engine spiders, and other long term strategies in order to improve a site's engine rankings.

SEO Karate!

OK, I'm just about to close this article but I wanted to point a few things out that may seem obvious after you think about it. Center yourself, take stock of your site, the SEO that you are using, the yin and yang of the links you are encouraging and...

1. Remember that while Google can introduce Google bomb minimizing tactics either in a narrow or broad way, Google is not the only engine out there. Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and others are still affected by these bomb techniques. These other engines may or may not follow Google's lead.
2. Know that even if a keyword appears on a site, peppered if you will, in various pages of their content, this does not necessarily mean the site "wants" to be ranked for the term. This is probably why Google is not getting as aggressive as they could in squashing all Google bombs just yet. If their minimizing tactic was all encompassing and strongly based on SEO factors like text on the site, miserable failure does appear on the White House site, as does keywords like miserable and failure individually.
3. SEO Karate really comes in handy... As a child, I took karate lessons from schools founded by Chuck Norris and Fred Villari and I've come to learn that by knowing how to deflect or channel unwanted force that is pointed in your direction, you can take advantage of this force. In life you might choose to embrace and be proud of being a geek, a soccer fan, poker fan, whatever it is. The same is true for these bombs.

If some one links to your site with a bomb term, write some content that uses the term in your own way. I.E. The web master of the .gov site could change the wording on the page that was being link bombed. While the link bomb might have previously pointed to a biography page for the president, it could also have used the terms miserable and failure in such a way that it told the story that they wanted to tell rather than waiting for Google to remove the White House site from the miserable failure search. Somewhere on the page they could have had some copy like "Some one once said failure is not an option, we think...blah,blah,blah...The miserable conditions in X prompted us to do Y...blah, blah, blah". On the other side of things, political pundit Michael Moore had his site targeted by anti-Moore sites such that these links caused Moore's site to also show up for "Miserable Failure". Why did he not try to "own" the keyword on his own terms? Thus he could have had text similar to: "Company / politician / whatever X is a miserable failure, learn more it in this section of my site...".

Final Thoughts

Finally, before you think that Google bombs only affect well known, obvious targets in benign (click here) and malign ways (miserable failure), anyone can be targeted by link bombs. Understand that aggressive competitors, disgruntled customers, well meaning fans of your site, and others can link to your site with various terms that you can not control. You might or might not want the keyword, but you might want the links or traffic from the search. Control the message on your site so that you don't have to worry about what an engine may or may not do in the future.

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