Jeremiah Owyang casts doubt on whether GoogleBombing works in light of a campaign to keep appropriate results for Martin Luther King, Jr high in the rankings to combat a site badmouthing him which is rising in the rankings. (As an aside, there must be hate sites for everyone, but wouldn’t it be nice if some people were immune? I’m sure there are sites out there that say stuff like "Mother Teresa didn’t cover her face when she sneezed" or "Tom Hanks is secretly a Nazi.")
Despite Jeremiah’s contententions, there are some well-documented examples of GoogleBombing working, if you pick the right words, people are passionate enough or amused enough about the cause, and it’s thus a viral enough GoogleBombing campaign. See some examples below. For those unfamiliar with GoogleBombing, it’s a campaign to get results to the top of Google’s natural search rankings by linking the word on a website or blog to the site that they want boosted to the top; this site would also come up for anyone hitting Google’s "I’m Feeling Lucky" button for that term).
Examples:
We’ll see how it works for Martin Luther King.
People reacted to this story.
Show comments Hide commentsDavid
I don’t doubt that mass linking to a site will alter the index or page rankings, but speaking from a “Marketing Awareness” standpoint, the hate site is getting more attention from curious folks than might have no otherwise have never known about it.