SEO Blog

The Official Google Webmaster Central Blog did a post on Google’s new algorithm change that addressed the Googlebomb issue.

A Googlebomb, some times called a linkbomb or cyber-graffit, is where a number of links are pointed to a webpage with the keyword in the anchor text the person wants that page the link is pointed at to rank for.

Two of must well know Gogglebombs were “Miserable Failure” and “Waffles”. I say were because they no longer are working. The first pointed to a White House biography page of George W. Bush (it redirects to the /president/ page) and the second points to John Kerry’s offical website.

Let’s take a look at how the other search engines are dealing with this terms. Yahoo ranks Kerry’s site #4 for Waffles and Bush’s bio page Miserable Failure is #1. Microsoft’s Live Search has the president page #1 for Miserable Failure but John Kerry’s site is #20 for Waffles. Ask.com has Bush’s bio page at #2 for Miserable Failure and Kerry’s site is not in the first 100 sites for Waffles.

While ranking for “Miserable Failure” would be pretty easy (Google shows 823,000 results when it is put in quotes), “Waffles” would be a bit harder with 5,050,000 results showing in Google.

Googlebombing and this algorithm change show us two things about Google and in general all search engines. The first one is the important of inbound links and how much ranking weight is given them. The second is how search engines perfer to not do hand bans but to build let their search algorithm filter sites that are practicing techniques that go against the search engines guidelines for webmasters.

More to come…

My disagreement with Mitchell Cowell and his partner Peter Davis has been settled and as of Jan 19th 2007 I received a full refund based on a decision by PayPal that the services I paid for were not provided.

It is not often a Buyer can win a PayPal dispute on a purchase of services as PayPal will accept the Sellers declaration where or not the services were given.

I laud Peter Davis for being ethic and honest in the PayPal dispute resolution process. Honestly hides a multitude of faults.

I took down the original post and have put this one up in its place based on my business ethic of doing to others what I would want them to do to me if I was in their shoes and they were in mine.

I wish both Mitchell Cowell and Peter Davis the best in all their business endeavors.