WebProNews

On the 6th of May Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped started an experiment. He added a false parameter and keyword to a link to a high PR site to see if the site would appear for the key phrase. His test was http://www.cnn.com/?-gmail-account.

Bombs on Parade: Exposing SEO's WMR's (Weapons of Major Rank)...

The parameter is false but does not break the CNN page. He created a single link on his blog like this: http://www.cnn.com/?-gmail-account.

At the time of the first Blogoscope post there were 148,000 pages for the term "Gmail Account."

Yesterday Blogoscope reported that, for the search term "Gmail Account," CNN shows up at #14 in Google.

Today CNN appears in the 18th position for this term, and the url it shows is, of course, www.cnn.com/?-gmail-account. Incidentally there are only 102,000 pages for that term now.

(Yahoo returned 250,000 results and CNN didn't appear in the top 200 results.)

WooHoo! Let's start bombing!

I first tried to bomb http://www.google.com/?-teoma-rules, but that leads to a 404 page (though it's a 404 with a PR of 10...).

Scott, who creates our daily WebProNews images (like this one) and discusses risky seo tactics with me, pointed out that you can use a "#" in place of a "?" and not break the page.

And so, here's http://www.google.com/#-Teoma-Rules. I've not seen the "#" tested so we'll see what happens.

To double check I'll also create this little bomb and see what happens: http://www.yahoo.com/#-Teoma-Rules

And now for the one I'm more certain will work: http://www.yahoo.com/?Teoma-Rules

While I'm bombing I may as well hit this way too: Teoma Rules.

As of 5-14-04 there are 32,300 pages for "Teoma Rules." This should be much easier to rank for than Philipp's "Gmail Account."

Garrett French is the editor of iEntry's eBusiness channel. You can talk to him directly at WebProWorld, the eBusiness Community Forum.