Generally speaking, it’s good to be on Google.
Websites and businesses from all over the globe expend their time and budgets in an effort to be found on the search giant’s rankings.
But there are occasional instances where being found on a Google search, being found at the very top of a Google search even, can be an absolute nightmare.
Take the case of presidential candidate and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who for years has had Google searches on his last name return pretty unfavorable results.
Long story short, a blog site started in 2003 by well-known columnist Dan Savage, was the catalyst which drove “redefining” the word Santorum, eventually leading his definition to be ranked at the top of organic results after other websites followed suit.
How he did it? Savage reached out to his fans, instructing them to spread the link around as much as humanly possible – which they did. Apparently, this is called a “Google Bomb”, and that, ladies and gentleman, is one example of how to get your site to rank high on search engines. Link building is a heck of a tool.
Is there a way to combat this sort of thing? Why, as a matter of fact, there is.
Taco Bell was able to push bad news down the rankings by paying for sponsored links to appear in results for negative buzz words, plus by having enough content out there to drown out the few bad apples in the bunch.
Santorum’s people say they aren’t interested in playing those games, presumably opting to hope this all will eventually die out. But here’s the problem: Now that Santorum talked about the Google Bomb, it’s been all over the news. That means now Santorum search results are littered with stories about him talking about Google search results, which most all link back to original stories of the Google Bomb. D-oh!
So unless Santorum can make big news about something else relevant (such as this whole presidential election thing), it looks as if he will continue to be an example of how the Google Bomb can blow up in your face.
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Tags: Google, link building, search engine results, SEO
