Because Google uses a page’s popularity to help determine its rank in search results, people constantly try to manipulate the Web in order to rise in the ranks. (does Black Hat SEO ring a bell?).
Most of the time, Google foils those attempts, known an Google Bombing.Despite its name, the effect of google bombing is subtle: When you run a search for a word or phrase, an unexpected site or more may appear at the top of the results.
Probably the most notorious is the tag “miserable failure” where it was used to bring up the official White House biography of George Bush, followed by Michael Moore.
That’s Why.
One of the ways Google associates a phrase is by analyzing the text in the anchors linking to that page. If a lot of sites link to a page using specific text, Google would show that page when somebody searches for the text – even if the words aren’t anywhere in the destination page itself.
It requires a group of people to set the same anchor texts on their sites, an SEO manouver.
Simple. More here
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
The first Google bomb known about by a significant number of people was the one that caused the search term “more evil than Satan himself” to bring up the Microsoft homepage as the top result. Numerous people have made claims to having been responsible for the Microsoft Google bomb, though none have been verified.