almighty_monkey - 9:47 am on Aug 12, 2011 (gmt 0)

Google Bowling is hardly a new trick. In Goog's defense, its not as common as it used to be.

Furthering what Tedster rightly said, some other things you can do to mitigate it is to enhance your 'trustrank'.

Onsite, some of these signs would be things like a business phone number, address, privacy policy, clear contact instructions etc.

Offsite, this will be citations (directory listings with your full address are real low hanging fruit in this regard) and a varied and legitimate whitehat backlink profile. I've a sneaking suspicion that registration on Google Places will also help, although this is based on nothing more than it making sense to me.

The higher your trust rank and your brand authority, the more likely it is Goog will simply dismiss bowling attempts than penalise you for them. And if they don't dismiss all of them, you may actually see a rankings boost from them.

Also, as an aside, anyone who Google Bowls is a terrible, terrible human being who deserves bad things to happen to them. It's one thing to win a market because you have the best product and have done the best job of making it visible to a wide audiance. Its quite another to win a market because you've smashed up everyone elses stall.