Out of 170 million results

Bill Gates is number 7!

[Liane]

Out of curiousity, I did a search this morning for the word, road. I just wanted to see how many results would be returned. There were 170,000,000. I did not use quotes for the search ... obviously.

The 7th result listed is Bill Gates Web Site - Home Page and it does not even contain the word road on the page. There is however a notation in the Google header saying: "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: road" ... rather than the standard, "These search terms have been highlighted: road"

Since there are 2,230 links to this page, I really didn't want to bother looking to see in what context the word "road" had much to do with Bill Gates, but I'm sure its valid! ;)

No particular reason behind the post ... I just thought it was interesting as I had never before seen the "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: road" notation before.

[bill]

Bill Gates wrote a book with the word road in the title: The Road Ahead. That might have a little to do with it.

[Liane]

Thanks Bill,

I knew there had to be a legitimate reason. Have you ever seen the notation: "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: road" before?

[bill]

I really hadn't noticed it before, but it's the same with all the SERPs where the term isn't bolded in the Google description/blurb. Using that same KW there are several other sites that produce the same results.

[Essex_boy]

Groans loudly

[theriddla1019]

Microsoft Progress Report: Security
March 31, 2004
Bill outlined a roadmap for battling malicious software code, helping computer users keep their PCs protected, and making computer systems more resilient so they can identify and stop suspicious behavior.

[Liane]

Bill outlined a roadmap

I don't think the mention of the word "roadmap" has anything to do with it. If it did, it would have been bolded in Googl'es cache and they wouldn't have used the tag about "links only"

I am sure Bill is right, its because of the book and the links to his site referencing it.

What's with the "groans loudly" comment Essex Boy? ... It was only an observation which I had not seen before. I thought it interesting which is why I posted in Foo! :)

[greenleaves]

many of us dislike bill gates, his company, his products, his services and the way he does business.

*groans loudly*

[this is not at you but at the face of Bill Gates success]

[mivox]

Well, if you went and posted this in the Google News forum, you could probably single-handedly start a whole new wave of incoming-link-text hysteria!

[Liane]

"new wave of incoming-link-text hysteria! "
LOL ...exactly why I posted it here! :)

I could care less one way or the other about Bill Gates ... but I do think its rather interesting to have managed to accumulate so many links that the word doesn't even need to appear on the page. Now that's marketing!

Good on him! Wish I could do that!

[Robert Charlton]

He's also #5 for ahead, with 19.4 million results returned... and #1 for the road ahead.

[coconutz]

Hi Liane - try the following search. Most of the results returned do not contain the word on the page.

welcome [google.com]

[cornwall]

"Google bombing (GOO.gul bawm.ing) n. Setting up a large number of Web pages with links that point to a specific Web site so that the site will appear near the top of a Google search when users enter the link text.
—Google bomb n. "

[Liane]

Apparently, I am the only one who never knew such a thing was possible on Google! I just thought it was really interesting that one could manage to attain a very high ranking in a field with an "exceptionally common word " and a tremendous amount of competition without actually having the word on the page!

I thought it was awesome ... but clearly, I was wrong . I feel very silly now. Please remove the thread. I wasn't aware this was such a commonplace thing!

[vkaryl]

Liane, you are NOT the only one who was unaware of this. I didn't know either....

It's interesting.

[Robert Charlton]

The classic illustration of this is the search for [miserable failure], which also returns the White House site as #1 (actually GW's bio page on the White House site), with no use of the words, you can be sure, anywhere on the page or in the title. Administration sympathizers countered by Google bombing Michael Moore's site for the same phrase, making it #2 on Google.

This search is generally a good comparative check for the presence of an anchor text component in an engine's algo... though, as I remember last time I checked, AOL was filtering these results from its Google supplied returns. Ultimately, this particular search might become very competitive, if it isn't already. ;)