Googlebombs are back?

Posted on 29th January 2008 at 9:22 am by Manley

Linkbombs, more commonly called Googlebombs, have largely disappeared from the Google SERPs in the last 12 months.

Does a recent example of an unexpected search result mark a comeback or is the algorithm still working?

Most people will remember a time when a Google search for [miserable failure] returned George Bush's White House biography in the number 1 spot. For a while Google acknowledged this, but was reluctant to alter the search results by hand, so the SERPs remained dominated by the president, but in January 2007 Google announced a change to its algorithm which would deal with Googlebombs without the need for manual manipulation of the index.

Today sees scientology.org in pole position for a search for the keywords [dangerous cult]. Is Googlebombing back for 2008?

The home page of the Church of Scientology contains the keyword 'dangerous' and, with so many pages legitimately linking to the page with the anchor text 'cult', many are arguing that this result only reflects the revealed information of genuine links. After all, the definition of cult is only: 'adherents of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices'.

The truth is though that this is a deliberate Googlebomb campaign, aimed at not only placing scientology.org in the top spot for [{adjective} cult], but also at putting xenu.net at number 1 for [scientology], as part of Project Chanology, a coordinated mass protest demonstration planned for February 10th.

What is interesting here is how Google will handle this. Matt Cutts was very keen to point out that the previous change was not in any way manual: "It's completely algorithmic". But if such a well documented linkbomb can hit so effectively, even taking into account that Google is "not going to claim it's 100 percent perfect", it does cast doubt on the effectiveness of the filter.

The algorithmic change was originally introduced because "too many people are misuderstanding that Google itself is not somehow endorsing the particular views of these bombs". This is certainly dangerous territory - neither the suggestion of support for Project Chanology nor the implication that it can be swayed by a church is going to sit well with Google, yet it is in a lose-lose situation here. If the SERPs change, many will accuse Google of manual manipulation and if the Googlebomb is allowed to stay then the effectiveness of the algorithm is in question.

I look forward to the outcome with interest.

Update: The follow up post, Manual removal of dangerous cults?, is now available.

File under: google

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