White paper - “Google bombing” and what it can teach us about search engine optimisation

Recently there was a new entry in the annals of Google bombing. Many of you may remember the infamous example of how the U.S. White House biography of George W Bush was returned in top place for the search “miserable failure”. John Prescott MP has been the victim of similar efforts, although for the sake of those with sensitive souls, we won’t repeat the relevant search phrase here.

So what does this tell us? It should tell us that search engine optimisation (SEO) isn’t all about stuffing pages with keywords. We promise you, the phrase “miserable failure” does not appear in either the content or the meta tags for George Bush’s biography page. So how is it done? Google bombing involves creating links to a certain page using the target keyword in the link. This is a legitimate method to use to improve search engine rankings, even if it is a method abused by the Google-bombers.

All too often, organisations pay too little attention to the role that incoming links can play in improving search engine rankings. And even when they do get incoming links, nine times out of ten, the link is just the company name or worse still, an image. This is a wasted opportunity because if the organisation name is also in the website address, most organisations will occupy the top position already.

It should be noted that for popular search phrases – unlike “miserable failure” – a few incoming links using keywords won’t propel your pages to the top of the results page. But as part of your optimisation programme as a whole, it can have a positive effect on improving your search rankings.

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