The Googlebomb is back: Murder

Googlebombing may be a word some newbies have never heard before. Once it was a political trick and a prank to arrange mass link networks to connect a message with a keyword. The most famous one was the Whitehouse's biography of George W Bush ranking for the phrase [failure].

Google announced they had tweaked their algo to try and combat this. I recall at the time some outspoken SEOs decided Google was lying. They insisted this was a manual and not an algorithmic change. They cited some persistent Googlebombs as examples of this.

Here's the thing; those Googlebombs eventually failed too. My theory is that Google spots when trusted editorial sites are discussing a "Googlebomb" to detect when a Googlebomb has become significant/political. It tends to use those same sites to rank for the phrase.

We may now be able to test that theory. Google for the word [murder] and you'll see the American "Pro-Life" lobby has had an effect. My link there is to a Google.co.uk result as well where the result is even less appropriate.