Google Bombing from a Time Perspective

Google bombing is a collective attempt to change the placement of some documents in Google’s result list for a given query. This can be achieved by extensive linking to the page to be promoted, since Google’s ranking algorithm takes into account the quantity and quality of links pointing to a page. This article investigates whether the effects of Google bombing are long term or whether the interest in promoting a page diminishes over time. Nine Google bombs that were once successful and were 10-40 months old as of August 2005 were examined, and the content of a random 20% of the pages linking to the targeted pages was analyzed. The results of the content analysis show that the behavior of the Google bombs over time seems to be dependent on the type of Google bomb (humor, ego, or ideological) and on the community promoting the bombed page. Six of the targeted pages still occupied top positions, while three lost their effect over time.