Google Bombing

In attempting to come up with new blog topic I dug up this email response to my CEO on Google Bombing & how Page Rank works.

The question was "Why is our registered and trademarked domain mentioned on a spam blog http://verbalizethelove.blogsp0t.com?"

My response.. This is called Google Bombing and it is a dark hat technique designed to inflating a sites pagerank and therefore search ranking. And this site is a great example of how it works.


PageRank or PR, named after Google founder Larry Page (really), is calculated by how many backlinks a site contains. The higher the PR value.. the higher ranking. And even though Google says it's not the most important value, experience says it is.

PageRank is calculated by how many relevant, quality backlinks a site contains.

1. How many is defined by how many websites, blogs, bookmarks, article hyperlink your site.

2. Relevance is defined by whether the site linking to you has a similar topic. Like a weight loss site linking to a weight loss site.

3. And quality is defined by by PageRank value. A high PR value site holds more credibility than a site which has no PR value at all. For example WeightWise.org has a PR value of 4 and can pass this ranking along to another site by linking to it. At one time the linked to site got a PR value of 3. However, Google got wise to this scheme and now uses a complicated algorithm to calculate the value. This whole process of passing along PR values through links is called "Link Juice" or "Link Love". Techniques for getting people to link to your site is called "Link Baiting"


Back to the black hat scheme.. Here's how it worked. (BTW, these links are broken. Perhaps Google shut them down?)

http://verbalizethelove.blogspot.com - is linked to http://dagnors.blogspot.com/ which is linked to http://dayz-dreamer.blogspot.com/ - which is linked to http://a-girl-in-me.blogspot.com/ which is linked to http://blazing-death.blogspot.com/ I bet there are hundreds of them. Giving the impression that there are hundreds of backlinks. (How many) All of these sites contain gibberish and contain no real value to the visitor.

However a search engine is not a human and reads these pages thinking that these sites are relevant to the topics mentioned on the page. Within the gibberish you will see reference to WeightWise, weightwatcher, hoodia. Terms that are hot.. and I agree that it is a compliment that we are mentioned and does not harm us in any way because there are no true links, just mentions. (Relevance)

Through out these pages you will see one or more referred real sites. Perhaps these sites either employed a SEO or bought into an actual backlinks scheme? Who knows..

Whatever the case, this method is doing them more harm because the PR value of these above backlinks are zero. And zero can only pass along zero link love. When Google eventually find out about these sites.. watch out.
It's bad mojo all the way around.

Google's edit search results

This morning I had a long conversation with my colleague about Google's new experimental search called "Edit Search Results" and how this simple test indicates Google is about to turn over the keys to Search Engines Results directly.. to... well, you. This conversation was completely hypothetical since we had not seen this mythical experimental creature.. only screencasts from the lucky few invited to participate. That is.. until.. I logged onto Google to start my day, when lo and behold (glorious trumpets) my results had changed.. access granted. I could hardly believe it...

Since I feel pretty lucky to have access (for now.. and a limited time) I think it is only right to share my experiences and thoughts about this brave new world and the impact it will have on consumers and businesses. First, here is now Google explains "Edit Search Results"

This feature allows you to influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again while you are logged in to your Google account, you'll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you've made.

Pretty simple.. right? No, not at all.. The World Wide Web is a pretty big place and apparently Google needs help in getting the results just right. In this brave new world, the power of "group think" will reign supreme. Here's how the experimental results appear to work.

After logging on to my Google account, my search returns results which contain a digg like voting options,where I can indicate to Google that in my personal search results bring the web address www.google.com to the top when searching on the term "Google. I can also give www.google.com the big heave ho and punish them by banishing them to the bottom of the results. (very cool visual effects on the banishment part..it's like an exploding cloud)

From SEO - Search ...

Cool enough, but the real power is in the ability to leave comments. This is where the social "wisdom of the crowds" thing is brought to a whole new level. Now you get direct feedback on what a site is all about before you even visit the site. And comments can be rated as well, with good comments getting better visibility than the inane, useless ones.



While it may seem reckless to allow anyone to comment on a site, there is some accountability. If you leave comments, then your comment history is transparent to all.. so flamers will be revealed to be just that..



No doubt this really is a big deal. It's the democratization and humanization of search results. More to come..

SEO - Search Engine Optimization Expert

After 8 years of optimizing websites for search engine and developing kick a*& internet marketing plan, I've decided to start a blog to collect my thoughts and experiences on SEO.

I'm currently employed full time as a Director of Internet Strategy, so the advice you get on this blog is from a professional Internet executive who gets black line results.

SEO becomes pretty simple when you understand how search engines work and why Google, MSN, and Yahoo make is so difficult to win top tier search results.

The Internet is a big place. MarketingCharts reports new .com and .net registrations were added at an average of 2.6 million per month in the first quarter of 2008, for a total of 7.8 million new domain name registrations in the quarter. That a 5% increase over last year this same time.

It's the search engine's job to index each site and catalog them against specific keywords. It's the website's job to give the search engine enough information to prove they are worthy (PageRank) and clues to what search terms are relevant.