Google Bowling – Fact or Fiction?

Google Bowling is a concept that has been around for several years now. It is well understood that the search engines rank websites partly on the number of links pointing to that site, as they see it as a sign of popularity. However they are also concerned about site owners who create inbound links purely for the purpose of inflating rankings without the site necessarily being backed up with relevant content.

Google Bowling occurs when a competitor deliberately creates thousands of spam links pointing to your site in order to get that site slapped down the rankings.

Now, according to Google “There’s almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index”

There is the worrying use of the word ‘almost’ in that paragraph!

So, my question to you is whether or not you have evidence that Google Bowling actually exists, whether factual or anecdotal, and if so what can be done about it?

Thanks

Mark

Web Traffic SEO