Just to start the post with a definition, no matter a famous and known one, i have to state, that google bombs are the activities of individuals or companies that are oriented at pushing specific references forward in search engine results pages (SERP). However it is not a standard pushing which in this case we would have to name SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There are several characteristics that typically distinguish google bombing from standard SEO activities:
- The object of the activity (company, individual, any web page) is not aware of these activities unless they are revealed to it - ex post.
- The realizator of the campaign has no direct connection to the web site that he is pushing up in the SERP,
- There possibly exists any in-direct connection which can help to explain the motivation of the "bomber" - the bomber is a former employee of the company (let´s cal it "object", he has negative experience with the object, its services, its employees, or, also typically, he is an employee of the competitor trying to embarrass the competition,
- The motivation can be different, some of the forms are described in the previous sentence - it is in most cases a negative feeling that is causing the bomber to act this way. In many cases, especially in the beginning of Google bombs, the motivation was to show the other that you are good at SEO and you know the mechanism and algorithms Google works. This motivation persists to the present and is accompanied also by curiosity - many people are trying "what it does with Google results" when they make several back links with special anchor text...
In Slovakia first bombs were realised by Daniel Ďuriš, the Slovak expert on
SEO. Many of them concentrated on politics, especially the top politicians which, according to the opinion of the bomber, deserved best positions for specific keywords. What has been done is achieving the state that the official web sites of top Slovak politicians occupied first results for some abusive key words, such as liar, defrauder, idiot, and even more "intensive" key words. They were often put to broader combination to ensure their originality and also easier bomb realisation. When the key word is unique and is in such combination not present at any relevant web locations, it is much easier and quicker to set up the bomb. In Slovak and Czech republic, tenths of Google bombs were active in 2007.
As many know, the year 2007 was the year when Google changed the algorithm in such way that the majority of active bombs was removed. Google has developed the change longer time to assure it does not affect the generic search results in any negative way. This state of art has perceived to present and there are not many bombs still active in Slovak and Czech Republic. Currently I can show you two nice examples, one from each country. In Slovakia, the best active bomb is called "greedy pig". It is a bomb against the Slovak bank which is in long term on the second place when comparing the loans and deposits it has realised. Their official web site is placed No. 1 in Google SERP. To try it, write "nenazrana svina", which is Slovak equivalent for greedy pig, to www.google.sk, or just
click here. The web site you are looking for has the URL www.tatrabanka.sk. In the Czech Republic, there is a famous bomb against a left oriented political party still active. When you type "banda zmdru" to Google, you will find them currently on the fifth position in SERP. Just look for www.socdem.cz. Or just
click here to open the SERP. This keyword can be translated to English as "gang of assholes".
As you can see from this article, not much is happening in this area at present. If you are aware of any interesting cases, especially in these two countries we have looked at, please let us know through comment by this article. We are looking forward to new activities in this field in the future. Just a shor notice at the end: these two bombs introduced do not work in Yahoo.com. What a pitty...
