Negative SEO Victim strikes back.

You’ve been Google Bowled

You have a solid SEO strategy in place – you spend wisely on Google Ad Words, you’ve paid a firm to optimize your site. You even take the time to produce thoughtful, original blog posts with all of the right keywords. Imagine this – you get yourself to page 1 of Google Search, and everything is going perfectly until one day, without warning or any explanation – you drop to page 8. Your traffic plunges. Sales decline. Did Google announce another algorithm change? No. Your site has just been “Google Bowled.”

So while the world waits for further action from Google, I’m taking matters into my own hands – I’m offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the identification of the individual(s) targeting LogoGarden.com with junk backlinks. Please email me at bowling@logogarden.com. I will provide details on how to collect the reward.

Black Hat link building – and Google’s swift response – has been widely chronicled. But beneath the surface, there lurks a darker practice that those outside of the SEO profession may know nothing about – there are those that deploy “junk backlinks” that trigger damaging reactions from Google search algorithms. Junk backlinks are really cheap. For pocket money anyone can buy more than enough backlinks to damage (or, with luck, destroy) a competitor online. Lots of companies sell junk backlinks. Some people like having junk backlinks on their sites; more power to ‘em.

A web professional named Terry coined the term “Google Bowling” in a thread on ThreadWatch.org. He wrote “It's clear on how to torch competitors. . .  Maybe that will be the new version of Google SEO - not optimizing your site to get high in rankings, but. . .knock competitors out of your way and you rise by default. . . We could call it Google Bowling.”

Because Google is typically a step ahead of those seeking to game search results, it would seem that this has somehow slipped through the cracks. The company’s search algorithms enable anyone to easily “bowl” rules-abiding websites off page 1.

In June 2007, Forbes senior reporter Andy Greenberg published an article, “The Saboteurs of Search.” Greenberg explained:

Search engine optimizers can use software that generates thousands of links to their site, pushing its ranking artificially high. In response, Google and Yahoo!'s search algorithms now automatically punish sites that game their algorithms by pushing the offending pages deep into the unseen layers of search results.

. . . search marketers say it also makes possible a powerful form of negative SEO. Search marketers claim they can frame certain competitors as cheaters by posting thousands of links around the Web, making a competing site look like it's engaging in "link spamming," a tactic that draws the disfavor of major search engines. In SEO circles, this technique of setting up a competitor to be punished for link spamming is sometimes called "Google Bowling."

The same article quotes Google’s Matt Cutts (head of Google’s anti-web spam team) as saying:

"We try to be mindful of when a technique can be abused and make our algorithm robust against it," he says. "I won't go out on a limb and say it's impossible. But Google Bowling is much more inviting as an idea than it is in practice."

Unfortunately, it is the experience of many independent experts and of victims that this statement is not one that the junk link builders would agree with.

I should know. Because Google Bowling happened to me.

My company, LogoGarden.com, launched in the United States in July 2011. Gaining customers through natural search was an important part of our plan. Not the only part, but important. We invested heavily in developing website content that’s relevant to our flagship product, do-it-yourself logo design for startup businesses and entrepreneurs — ideal for millions of people who can’t afford graphic designers’ custom work. We also invested in making our webpages highly searchable for Google and other search engines.

For popular search terms like “logo design”, competition is fierce for a slot on Google’s page 1 of search results. Getting there takes patience, skill and investment. I had achieved this feat before, driving my previous DIY logo design company to the prized #1 spot among millions of Google search results for “logo design” and similar search terms. I’d done it working by Google’s rules, and was well rewarded.

LogoGarden.com was poised to reprise this performance. We applied the same play-clean, by-the-rules strategy. And with significant investment, it worked. Within a remarkable six months after US launch, LogoGarden.com reached Google page 3, then 2, and finally hovered at the 6th slot or above on page 1, a stunning achievement. We expected to climb “above the fold” on page 1 within a few months, gaining substantial traffic — people who want to create DIY logos and buy our products and upgrades.

Just a few months later, LogoGarden.com vanished from Google page 1. After intense analysis, our SEO firm ruled out all possibilities but one: SEO sabotage. Google Bowling. Overnight, we’d become invisible to the tens of thousands of people a day searching “logo design”.

To find some answers, I did what anyone would do. I Googled it.

What I found was Google’s official response, quoted in an article by David Harry on SearchEngineWatch.org. “Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google”

"Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question."

For those of us that have had our businesses negatively affected by Google looking the other way, this answer just isn’t enough.

Malicious SEO behavior must stop. Society needs to make Google Bowling as unacceptable as embezzlement and armed robbery. At least in the US, existing laws protect individuals and property from malicious intentional harm. Prosecutors and police should enforce these laws. SEO criminals should, in my opinion, do hard time.

Background:

1. As close as we can tell, the surge of AC rank of 0 links were built from October 2011 until the end of January 2012. They were almost all linking from the term “Logo Design”. Logo design is a trophy term for our space.
2. August, 2011 we paid for a story to be published in VentureBeat. It was my understanding that there would be no back links tied to the story. When the PR piece was published, there were three links back to LogoGarden.
3. We have had two professional SEO companies engaged. StoneTemple.com and SlingShotseo.com
     a) Eric Enge of StoneTemple.com SEO: April 2011 through June 2011. StoneTemple assured me that they did not buy any links.
     b) We did not have a SEO firm from June through November 2011. From November, 2011 through February 2012, we engaged the services of SlingShotSEO.com. SlingShotSEO.com came highly recommended by one of the principals of SEOMOZ.org. SlingShot assured me that they did not buy any links. In fact, in February when we lost our google rankings, SlingShot again verified that there were NO links being bought. However, SlingShot did say that their reports indicated that low ranking links being added to blogs that were not coming from them. I did request a list of links that SlingShot secured for LogoGarden. They would not supply the links because they said it was against their policy. I was not happy with this.  As a side note, we were paying SlingShot $10,000.00/month and had a written agreement that they would use only white hat policies.
     c) LogoGarden has never bought links or would work with a SEO firm that didn’t guarantee they would not buy links
4. One thing that I find highly suspicious is that during the time of the surge of AC 0 links, LogoGarden had a copyright issue with a handful of graphic designers in the US. When LogoGarden was made aware of the issue, we quickly rectified the issue. There were no copyright laws broken but as a company, we bent over backwards addressing the issue.  Unfortunately this created some bad will.  While we have no direct evidence who is behind this surge of low quality posts, we do have some suspicions. 

Comment and share this article to send a clear message to the SEO bullies. Has your site been a Google Bowling victim?