Dr. Strangelink or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Googlebomb

Psst! You there... yeah come closer. Ok, that was too close now there's a smudge on the monitor. I have a secret. It's about the googlebomb, or Google bomb or link bombing or whatever you want to call it. The subject has received a lot of attention recently. As you probably know, a Google bomb is the practice of linking to a site with a term that wouldn't normally have an association with the term. For instance 'more evil than satan himself' was linked to Microsoft.com, so when the term 'more evil than satan himself' was typed in a search engine the Microsoft site would appear as the top search engine match. Clever. Clever indeed.

The above method involves a bit of coordination with your fellow bloggers or webmasters, getting all of them to add your clever link but it can be done. Matt Haughey was successful in his bid to get people to link to an annoying company. I've thought of asking my readers to link me as Jason Shellen, rather than Shellen, so I can appear on the first page of Jasons on Google. I am currently holding at page 2. What if you wanted to get way up on the Google search list for your term without coordination with other webmasters? Now that would be something wouldn't it. A self-detonating Googlebomb (or SDGB if you will).

Well kids the cat is out of the bag, you need to look no further than the title bar of this site. For about 3 weeks now I have had the words 'my googlebomb can beat up you googlebomb' right after the usual 'shellen.com' title. I change my title tag frequently, a few weeks back I had 'shellen.com :: deserved recipient of a duplicate gold medal' before that 'shellen.com : Home of former Enron CEO Jason Shellen'. In all instances, after being crawled by Google I showed up in the number 1 or number 2 spot on Google for searches like 'duplicate gold medal' or 'former Enron CEO'. See for yourself and check 'googlebomb' at Google.

Of course as soon as I change the title to something like, 'shellen.com :: more Jason that the other Jasons' I'm sure I will fall from number 1 for 'googlebomb'. However, I might finally attain first page of Jasons status. The other strange thing about the SDGB is that it can be a bit confusing for site visitors. A while back I put 'Coffee is for closers, RIP Jack Lemmon'. Since then many visitors have come to this site looking to see what I have to say about Jack Lemmon or the famous line said to him by Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross. Alas, that was the extent of my mention of Jack Lemmon, so use your SDGB wisely. Now have fun with this and don't say I never told you anything useless.

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