Googlebowling - A true step into the Gutter

Googlebowling is a term coined last month by Threadwatch. It has been making the rounds on several SEO sites and while I'm not sure of the legitimacy of the concept, if it's true it could be disturbing for many sites trying to get ahead in the natural SEO game.

Googlebowling is simply getting a ton of links very quickly with the same anchor text in order to flag Google's spam filters. Pretty ingenious, and would be pretty hard to do. But in theory it's definitely not beyond the realm of possibility for some folks out there.

Recently, a large SEO firm that shall remain nameless was inexplicably stricken from Google's results. This firm had ranked VERY highly for some pretty competitive terms - and all of the sudden they were gone. Their CEO blamed it on some people doing some unscrupulous things, namely requesting links to his site from anywhere and everywhere.

This brings up the question - is it possible to bring down another site's rankings? I know there are some shady public relations professionals that would love nothing more than to hire an SEO that could bring down the competition's Web sites. What would a corporation pay to have a yourcompanysucks.com site that refers to THEIR company suddenly disappear from the search engines? Believe me, they'll pay alot.

I hope Google is working to fix this problem. We'll certainly be watching for it closely with our clients.