BWMagic’s Internet Marketing Newsletter


Google Bowling – The “Not So Nice” Side Of SEO?

Almost everyone has heard of Google Bombing… where
enough people plant countless links to get a keyword
phrase to rank in the top spot in Google for some
silly phrase, like getting George Bush to show up for
“miserable failure”… usually this is done in a
light-hearted matter.

Google Bombing has been around for a long time and
Wikipedia even has a whole section on it:


https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb

But there is another nasty practice called Google Bowling
and this one is much more sinister in nature and is not
much fun for its unfortunate victims.

What is Google Bowling?

Google Bowling is planting or creating low quality (spammy)
links pointing to a site in order to lower its rankings in
Google. This practice is usually done by your competitors
to undermine your site in the “eyes” of Google.

While Google has maintained in the Past that “inbound links”
don’t negatively affect your rankings… since you obviously
have no control over these links. However, many webmasters have
seen the negative side of getting spammy links and how these have
lowered their rankings in Google.

Why would someone do this?

If you’re in a very competitive and lucrative niche, just a
movement up or down a few ranking spaces – can result in a loss
or gain of thousands of dollars in sales. Business is war and
some people will do everything they can to beat the competition.
Including spending money to buy spammy links for their competing
sites!

Now, there is a whole discussion on the web about whether or not
Google Bowling even works? Google maintains they can counter this
practice within their algorithm or even manually, but I believe
it does work and after the Panda Update which is all about
“site quality”… this nasty practice is even more effective
for undermining your competition.

And I am not alone in this belief, Neil Shearing has been following
this issue for some time. He covers it in a very good blog post
located here:


www.neilshearing.com

Basically, all sites could be at risk, even yours. So the more
you know about this nasty BlackHat SEO practice the better you
will be able to protect yourself and your site. To learn more
about Google Bowling just click the link above.

Helping People Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
Titus Hoskins

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