Googlebowling A Distinct Possibility

[Chris]

If you follow the search industry with any kind of regularity, you may have heard the term "Googlebowling". For those that are not aware, Googlebowling is the act of trying to damage to your competitors' search ranking by giving the impression they were involved in a spam link campaign.

I first saw mention of Googlebowling about a year ago at Threadwatch and I've heard mention of it at SES conferences. However, thanks to Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org, we now have some more details to share about this activity. At the recent SES London conference, Rand secured some important information about Googlebowling; including the strategies employed and what do if fall victim to this type of attack.

According to a recent post on the SEOmoz blog, it has been indicated that Googlebowling is completely possible. In order to conduct one of these campaigns, the strategy is to pay attention where your competition is linking and point links from unsavory areas of web (spammy areas) to the same place. For example, if mycompetitorssite.com is pointing to a specific site, in order to initiate a proper "Googlebowl," you need to point links from spam areas to the same target site.

Doing so can give the impression your competitor took part in a spam link campaign and the resulting penalties (Rand gives the impression Google is much more adept at catching these) can be quite severe. Furthermore, if the site isn't an authority in it's targeted area, these penalties can be hard to recover from. Fishkin elaborates:

Related to the above; if you've got a site that's been "bowled" or heavily penalized for inbound links, here's the deal. Unless you can remove those external links (by whatever means necessary) or become a major brand in your space (such that Google will overlook any past [indiscretions]), you're basically up a creek. If you can't get the links removed, you're better off starting from scratch - even a successful re-inclusion request might be followed up by a link spam analysis the next week that gets you thrown back out.

In the SearchEngineWatch blog, Barry Schwartz indicates some are skeptical about inbound links hurting your ranking. He points to Google Blog entry where a similar topic is discussed. The post reveals:

In general, linking to web spammers and "bad neighborhoods" can harm your site's indexing and ranking. And while links from these sites won't harm your site, they won't help your indexing or ranking. Only natural links add value and are helpful for indexing and ranking your site.

Taking part in any of these goings-on can, according to the post, have adverse affects on your site's ranking. However, if you look at the Googlebowling strategy relayed by Fishkin, you see it meets the criteria of how not to conduct link campaigns, which by Google's own admission, can be damaging to your search engine presence.

From reading some of what's been written about this subject, it seems the main way to protect yourself from Googlebowling is to become an authority in your targeted field, something we've heard a number of times from Google, et al. But it looks like these were not empty suggestions.

[stretch dog]

I am no expert on the subject of "Google Bowling", however... I do not believe you can hurt me by pointing spammy links to the sites i link to.

As outlined above, this would mean that anyone could harm any other website simply by pointing links at it from a bad neighborhood...

I'm sorry, but my common sense tells me that the search engines are smart enough to not let this happen.

And if i am wrong, then a successful Google Bowling campaign would be very rare indeed and be more involved than what has been suggested.

For example, it was suggested in a number places late last year that a small loophole on Google had turned into a "devastating black hole", sucking in and wiping out countless quality websites in the process... this loop hole allows your competitors to sabotage your site to the point of getting it banned or penalized.

It all started when Google began its aggressive attempts to curb link popularity manipulation by penalizing websites that purchased "site-wide" text link ads so as to get lots of incoming links in a hurry. They began filtering out the websites that partook in this type of site wide linking and either penalized or flat out removed the site from its database.

This of course was bad news for that site owner, and excellent news for their competition.... thus what came to be known as "Google Bowling"... simply buying some relevant site wide links and pointing them to your competition.

Now although I am sure there are those out there that have in fact Google Bowled their competition, I doubt most of us today have to worry about our competition rushing out to invest in purchasing what would likely amount to a large number of perfectly good links when it came to our rankings in Msn and Yahoo... not to mention the traffic those links might bring.

This may take us back a few months in time, but is just one of several threads at the time that attempted to address this and other linking issues of the day...

Pubcon Comments of Matt Cutts Reviewed - Nov/05 - http://forums.seochat.com/google-opt...com-59161.html - Interesting thread talking about related matter.

"As to whether or not they are penalized, he did not answer that question directly. I definitely got the sense that they were devalued. He did suggest in the ad hok session that Google did penalize sites abusing paid links, guest book spam, etc., but... that as soon as they saw others using this penalty to (attack) competitors, they stopped. He suggested this more generally as well - suggesting that as soon as they see any type of penalty they issue being abused in a way that can hurt sites not causing the behavior, that those penalties are eliminated."

Just my two cents worth... SD

[Pedro Monteiro]

I have to agree with the points raised by the previous poster. There is no way a link from site A to site be will damage site C. It’s a simple and logical statement to me.

I do believe it is possible to damage a competitor using any given search Engine has a rail way; however, we aren’t looking at this through the right perspective. Hurting a competitor can only be done by literally “spamming” their business popularity by “negative viral messaging”.

[incrediblehelp]

Just to clarify Google bowling in its original definition was to point links (site wide or not) directly to your competitor domain in a way to hurt them. Whether or not this was true is still debate in my mind

This new concept is a tangent of the original. You are now pointing crap links to website that you competitor domain links to or receives links from, not the actual competitor domain itself. Maybe you could call this other method "Google Gutter Bowling"

I have always disagreed that you could not hurt a websites by simply linking to it as in the first example of Google Bowling, but with this next method I think could be possible.

What you are doing is basically doing is attempting to give a lower weight not directly to your competitor domain, but the domains the competitor links out to and more than likely has IBL's from. This could create that bad neighborhood theory if done correctly.

Does anyone see what I mean?

[SeoSem]

My first post to this forum was about PR, marketing and linking strategy. Few days ago, the forum was updated, my post is now lost and I haven't been able to find this post again! I did mention in that post the text you use in the description does count a lot and how it can hurt your site, when you exchange links or you link to your site from e.g. sig files.

Back on track...

I think this is all about the known link sales directories and other such sites. Google don't like when you pay any third party money, to get your site higher in their own search engine. They want you to purchase their ads.

What about the link in your sig? You might be posting in a programming threat and your site is all about SEO, isn't that link from a bad neighborhood?

Perfect way to hurt your site is asking questions in a SEO forum, how to do SEO and design and your site is all about flowers! The link you put in your post is not about the site theme, regarding the bowling strategy, the link to your site "should be counted" as a link from a bad neighborhood!

Also, a threat about black hat SEO, isn't that going to hurt your own site as you link to your site in your sig?

The easiest way is to ignore most of the BS and market your business online as you would market it offline.

Let's go bowling...

[Chris]

Just to clarify Google bowling in its original definition was to point links (site wide or not) directly to your competitor domain in a way to hurt them. Whether or not this was true is still debate in my mind

This new concept is a tangent of the original. You are now pointing crap links to website that you competitor domain links to or receives links from, not the actual competitor domain itself. Maybe you could call this other method "Google Gutter Bowling"

I have always disagreed that you could not hurt a websites by simply linking to it as in the first example of Google Bowling, but with this next method I think could be possible.

What you are doing is basically doing is attempting to give a lower weight not directly to your competitor domain, but the domains the competitor links out to and more than likely has IBL's from. This could create that bad neighborhood theory if done correctly.

Does anyone see what I mean?

Jaan is exactly right. this method of Googlebowling described by Fishkin does not require linking to a competitor's site. just the sites he or she is linking to. of course, these links need to orginate from a spammy location in order to give the impression a spam link campaign was conducted.

[DomainDrivers]

For what it's worth, here is some anecdotal analysis...

The more legitimate links that a site has, the less likely that they will be penalized by a "bowling" incident.

I have seen the negative effect of a Google bowling incident affect only one site that we monitor (of hundreds). That site had very little established link popularity when the incident happened, and the downdraft happened at the Jagger, Sept 22, 2005 update. Haven't seen it happen since with any site we monitor.

For sites with substantial link popularity, we have seen "bowling" to be of no consequence. It might even backfire as a subversive tactic when used against a well-established site, simply adding to their overall link popularity.

This might support the "authority" concept as a defense. I'd call it more of an "established site" defense. An "authority site" can mean very different things to different people.

I can't say that I have seen any purposeful subversion attempts, but I don't doubt that people have tried to do it. To me, "bowling" seems to be more the result of scraper sites using other search results as their "content". It's astonishing how many of these sites exist. Are they just vehicles for paid text link placements? Or just AdSense magnets? I'd say a little of both, once you look at them. They often have elements of both.

It is encouraging to see that Google/Cutts has recognized the subversive aspects of this, and adjusted accordingly.

Bottom line...skip the link games. Establish links with other subject-relevant sites (reciprocal or not, it does not matter), continuously. Over time, this has proven to be extraordinarily stable.

[DomainDrivers]

Just to note...I am defining "bowling" as directly linking to a competitor's site.

I have never observed a "once removed" bowling effort (this is, linking to a linked site, and not directly), and I would have a hard time finding one using standard link analysis.

That seems very obscure as a tactic, to me, but I guess, like everything else, people might have tried it. That's a massive amount of work for a subversive attack.

If the goal is to create an appearance of a closed link network, there are more straightforward ways to do it.

BTW - the best defense against that (closed link network participation) is to have a lot of links (both in and out) that are not part of the network.

I have seen sites that have participated in these closed link networks successfully maintain their rankings if they substantially dilute the "closed" effect of the network links. Real estate is notorious for these "closed link networks".

The "bad neighborhood", sky-is-falling scare tactics that run rampant out here are not really that significant, if a site has a lot of legitimately obtained links. There appears to be a "threshold percentage", and it seems to be pretty high.

[Chris]

Just to note...I am defining "bowling" as directly linking to a competitor's site.

that's just it, rand, myself, incredible and google are using a completely different definition. what you just described has already been addressed by Google and they indicate you won't be penalized for links pointing to you.

[DomainDrivers]

"Once-removed" bowling attempts may well exist. I guess that since the vast majority of sites that we monitor don't get down-drafted, there is little need for us to hunt this issue down and worry about it.

My main point is that just doing the right thing, continuously, over a long period of time, is the best defense against all of this. It takes commitment, patience, and resources.

I think you were saying the same with your "authority" statements. I agree.

Sites that race to the top of the SERPs based on unstable foundations seem to be vulnerable, for a lot of reasons.