Google Blip

What is Google Blip?
Google blip is a term that describes the result errors that the Google search engine sometimes presents. This term was first coined in 2002 by Danny Sullivan, the editor of SearchEngineWatch, in his industry newsletter about the time when the search results ranked the Microsoft homepage as the best result for the search terms 'go to hell'. This type of blip or glitch has nothing to do with the Microsoft website or the above search phrase that is present on the website, rather it is a consequence of the phrase being in the same context as the link to the Microsoft website.

What happened to the 'Go to Hell' result in 2002 is a classic example of link building at work. Since Microsoft has many opponents who are against the commercialization of software, the phrase 'Go to Hell' appears a lot with a link to the Microsoft homepage. This still happens from time to time because there are thousands of old websites and domains that are still up to date but have stopped being updated because the owners forgot about them or simply walked away from them.

Google blips are mainly caused by search engine optimization (SEO) and link building, which is a major characteristic of the search engine itself. The result is determined not simply by the websites that contain the word or phrases, but also how many other websites link to a website.