Where there's a will there's a way... nuff said.

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who has commented on the post. I appreciate the restraint, courtesy and civility you have demonstrated in your responses.

Here are some specific replies:

@dink I’m not saying that people don’t attempt to gain better placings in Google search results - it is just that there are different ways of doing it, some more legitimate than others.

Google’s own advice is quite simple: if you create good positive content, then people will naturally link to it. However, who is doing the linking is important. A link from a well established authority site such as the New Statesmen will have more value than a link from a no name blog created yesterday. And creating fake blogs with the express purpose of trying to manipulate Google’s SERPs is certainly not considered best practice by the mainstream SEO sector. Nor is paying for links. Look at what happened to JC Penney in the US when they were caught doing this.

@charlesfrith Why has a reptilian weasel like me been given airtime on the New Statesman blog? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask NS. I didn’t approach them. They asked me to write something. And if they didn’t like it, presumably they wouldn’t have published it.

Not sure about me not using my own name on Twitter. My Twitter handle is @andismit - the first online handle I ever had, dating back to 1990. Back in those days there was an 8 character limit on your user name. And I mis-typed it. Should have been andysmit. Still, I’ve stuck with it over the years. Not too far removed from Andrew Smith. And hardly an attempt by me to conceal who I am (curious that most of the people commenting here don’t use their real name).

@Happen Stan Only a handful of Google employees know exactly how its search algorithm works. I don’t deny a whole industry has grown up trying to second guess how it operates. And from time to time, some people claim to have found ways of manipulating results - but Google soon spots these loopholes and closes them down - whereas in the past this might have given you a few weeks advantage, whereas now you might have a few hours if you are lucky - but anyone claiming to have somehow discovered from the outside how to game Google’s natural search results on an industrial scale is either deluded or a charlatan.

@livers I don’t know the exact phrases that BP are alleged to have tried to manipulate results for. The point being that in order to bounce a page from the first 10 pages of results for one phrase would require manipulating 100+ pages in order to remove it. There are on average 14,800 searches a month for phrases containing the word dahabshiil (Google’s own figures - freely available) - in order to rid all results from Google SERPs would potentially require manipulating 00s if not 000s of page results. Not sure a phalanx of fake blogs and astroturfing comments could achieve that in a few months. If ever. And I can't believe that if anything was attempted on that scale that Google wouldn't notice it.

As I said, I don’t know the exact phrases being targetted. But there may be other reasons why the so called offending pages no longer appear - it is conceivable that they are no longer indexed by Google (either voluntarily by the site owner or for other reasons). However, this would hardly constitute a voodoo style dark art.

@lance Thanks. Good point about the EU Directive on Unfair Commercial practices

Isn't the point though, that unless you go looking for the guantanamo connection, you don't find it? I just did a Google search for Dahabshiil and I didn't see any headlines about guantanamo on the first ten pages. And the guantanamo thing is currently only on wikipedia because of the Independent article.

The weasel doesn't even use his own name on Twitter.

Don't know how to manipulate Google but I always wonder how the spammer axxeholes like the above flying4biz manage to clog up blogs.

Does anyone actually ever click on them? They piss me off so much just by being there that I wouldn't dream of going to their poxy site.

Have you suffered a recent head injury, @charlesfrith? "New Statesman" is not offering a right to reply to anyone, which should be obvious to anyone with basic reading skills.

You don't freelance for Bell Pottinger, do you?

By the way, which is it anyway: reptile or weasel? Your zoological name-calling is staggeringly inconsistent.

Regarding Dahabshiil, click on the second link after doing a Google search: it's Wikipedia. Go to "5 Controversy".