Google Bombing

A Google bomb (noun) is a type of mass link building prank that brings certain websites to the top of the Google search result list when certain search terms are entered. When numerous websites add links to a third-party website in order to make the third-party website pop up higher on Google search results, this is known in Internet slang as Google Bombing (a verb).

Google bombs are often created for political or marketing reasons, or just as a joke. Google bombs can cause websites with unsavory or unfavorable information about a company or political figure to pop up higher on the list of results than the company or person's official website.

Early instances of Google Bombing occurred in 1999-2000, with the notorious examples of the search term phrase "more evil than Satan himself" bringing up Microsoft's home page, or, in the UK, Google's home page. One of the most well known examples of a Google Bomb is the bomb associated with George W. Bush. For many years, when you searched for "miserable failure" on Google, a link to the official White House biography of George Bush popped up. All it took was a few hundred people with websites following the instructions on blogger George Johnston's website, and the prank was complete. Other politically motivated Google bombs include linking the term "liar" to Tony Blair

Google bombing is a way of manipulating Google's algorithms, which, until 2007, would reward websites with higher-ranking order if they have a lot of external links with similar anchor text pointing to them. In January of 2007, Google developed an automatic method of lessening the effectiveness of most Google bombs and/or defusing them.

Google bombing has never worked well on search engines other than Google. This is because Google searches the name or title a website gives to hyperlinks (such as "more evil than Satan himself" accompanying a link to Microsoft.)  When a number of websites use the same phrase as a title to a link (putting it into the HTML code), a Google bomb is dropped.

Often, bloggers join forces (calling on all their friends to add links to a third party website) and drop a "Google bomb" to make the third-party website more popular.

Google Bombs are also called a Link Bomb or spelled thus: "Googlebombs."