Been Hit in the last 14days by Google Paidlinks Roll out ?
- 16th May 2007
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OK I normally keep this stuff for clients, but IMO Google in the last 14 days looks like they are hitting sites on both sides, sites that sell backlinks and sites that buy backlinks - and there has been collateral damage again.
For me this is a hard call to make on what you should do personally, normally I say weather the storm, but this looks a little different to me, normally Google attacks the webmaster from one side at a time to stop collateral damage. For example, if you sell links your site might not pass link juice or page rank while those links are still on your site. Clean up and after a update or two you should be OK. Buying links, well that’s another ball game. You could loose the domain forever if you don’t move quick enough.
So what happened this time? It looks like that some sites that ranked well and have pulled paid links just drop from the SERPS and some sites that didn’t pull them have also dropped. The common thing here is how the links were placed. Footers and sidebars seem to have been hit and links totally off theme have been hit. For example, a site about “home cooking” linking to a “holiday site”, but where the holiday site would have dropped this time both have dropped - oen for selling the links and the other one for buying links.
Some areas look like they got passes, or maybe their authority carried them, or maybe Google just said a site about home cooking could link to its hosting company/web designer/W3C/etc. That makes sense to me.
Common link networks also have been hit. So what can you do?
OK I still think wait it out, but download your backlinks and check though them if you can. Clean them up do so and go get some authority!
3 step plan on links
1) 1st batch of links: You need to gain your authority to play in that market place, but don’t over do it, being way too authoritative for an industry is sometimes worse than no authority at all. Try and get some links from press releases and on sites that don’t normally sell links.
2) 2nd batch of links: Once you have authority status get some blog love, but avoid Pay Per Post blogs for now. Take GetClicky.com: I’m not getting paid for that review or link, I did put my affiliate code in so I could see how many people I passed into getclicky.com and signed up… I’m geeky like that.
I think I have sent 180 people to date, 23 people signed up via my link, and only 13 people had balls to comment on my blog lol, but I will have passed a little of my authority onto GetClicky. Once you have enough blogs that have gained authority status linking to you, you’re set for stage 3.
3) 3rd batch is a free-for-all, you have gained authority and your stage 2 links should be pulling in the search terms. This means you will get scraper sites linking to you, so buy text link ads on lower grade sites, PPP and review-style sites. Your authority should pull you though.
But remember: You are always in the hands of the Google Overlords and they can change the rules at any time.
DaveN
21 Comments | Leave a comment »
You mentioned about paid links being in traditional places such as sidebar and footer, what’s going to happen to all the bloggers blog rolls!? There in the same place and could be easily mistaken for paid links :(
If they’re penalizing the linker and the linkee, what’s to stop people going out and buying links on non-related sites for their competitors?
I think Blogs will get a free pass at the moment blogrolls are a natural way for bloggers to link to each other.,
Dave
Its a hell of a lot harder to clean up your incoming link profile than it is to remove a bunch of footer links.
My observation is that in the case where both sites have dropped its because the paid links were passing link juice and now they aren’t.
sites didn’t used to drop for selling links
@Simon Heseltine
if the double hit happens quickly, then stops happening the links you bought for the competitors would start working again, until next time they go for a hit and run like this
Isn’t it sad that one company can control us webmasters to such an extent when they don’t even have any physical or jurisdictional presence?
Put another way: Why is it that Google have succeeded where the RIAA, MPAA, US/UK.gov, law enforcement and UN have failed?
They control the Internet, and we let them.
I work for a link broker / network and am not seeing any of this. I had one client drop 3 places for their main term in the last shuffle, but overall my clients are steady as she goes and they all have massive paid link buys, most with links in sidebars / footers.
David, email me if you want to compare notes.
Interesting finds there Dave! I’d be interested in seeing some data from the find.
I have one client that I advised to pull his TLA’s as they were doing more harm than good… and ended up putting close to 17k pages in the supplementals (or at least that’s what it looks like at this point)
And from a link buying standpoint… I always go after the sites that don’t normally sell links and contact the owners personally (those are GOLD! IMO)
.02
db
Funny one of our sites took a dip but the other older ones are holding strong.
I am seeing evidence to support Dave’s claims of aged sites being in better shape.
I think if you host multiple sites in the same C-Block they are giving ther older sites a pass but restricting the newer ones. And yes I know to change hosting but in our case we just can’t for these particular sites.
I plan on going through all paid links and see what is going on at those sites.
I think this is TOTAL BS on Google’s behalf. Why is it so awful to have paid links on your site? God forbid us web masters try to pay the bills. Oh, but if you have Google ads, hey, that’s not a problem to Google! Oh and it’s no problem to have sponsors within Google’s search results… but hey, you try to do ads on your own site outside of the Google ecosystem? Yah, that’s not ok according to Google! WTF???
This is the first time I have ever been pissed at Google. I think they’re a great company with a lot of great products but this is just going too far.
I’m seeing the same thing as Jeremy. Actually, one company that competes for the same terms has had a boost in the last update. Looking at their back links shows ALL paid links. I found all of their links coming from one link broker. All footer/side bar paid links.
hey dave fookin. :) great post thanks for the insight. Step 3 is probably a little further than I’d go,unless I was burning domains, right? You hint at G changing lanes again…seems like these may be easy to go after, unless you feel that once the scrapers have started accounting for links, the rest will “blend in?”
Thanks for the warning. I have been waiting for the boom to drop. In Asia, Google has a small market share and we must optimize for Yahoo but sooner or later Yahoo will follow suit.
Sites where I sell links and sites where I just trade links all got knocked down 1PR (all my sites :( ). To my mind it is a move further towards monopolization, after all to qualify to sell links on text-link-ads you need at least a PR4 page, which I guess is why I don’t have PR4 pages anymore thanks to the update.
Fortunately theres been no reduction in traffic, just that the PR3 isn’t as appealing to link buyers….
I hope yahoo gets more of a market share and MSN live gets a better reputation to keep things more evenly balanced so Google is less of a “god” to the internet…. I somehow get great rankings on MSN so I wish more people used it :)
Have to say most of our sites seem to have escaped unharmed (and in many cases actually significantly improved), however I would add that many of our clients have well established sites which Dave has hit upon on.
Not quite sure I agree with Google’s current mentality regarding paid links, I can see where they are coming from, just think their interpretation and implementation are somewhat misplaced. At the end of the day, in many other advertising sectors, you pay your money, you get your results, third party or no third party
Some good advice there Dave, great post.
Surely nobody believes Google have algorithmically penalised sites for buying and selling links???
As far as I can tell, this is a manual process that Google are going through, and they’re clearly targetting the big players in the link buying and selling markets.
Despite this, many huge link buyers have not been affected, look at Norton Finance, Confused.com or many others. Google are using scare tactics to try and force a change in SEO procedure that they cannot manage algorithmically.
If you find yourself banned by Google, I agree with Dave - it’s clean up time, then you’re probably in for a wait of up to 3 months before you’ll be out of the sandbox again.
Anyone notived the emergence of LinkXL.com ? I think this looks like a great tool for link buying from this point onwards and I’d love to see plenty of publishers get involved and create a healthy market there, which as far as I can see is probably the safest automated link buying system there is.
Good post Dave. The value of paid links has been a grey area for a while, but we can see that Google has definately penalized sites for buying and selling at this update.
My advice is to act is if Google does not exist. Write useful content and buy links within useful content on useful websites through services like BlogPostsForSale.com http://www.blogpostsforsale.com. (self promo )
Instead of buying irrelevant side links, ignore the search engines and just focus on being useful and relevant. The social networks , bookmarking services, forums and blogs will pick you up. Google isn’t forever, blogging and writing will be.
Thanks for the info. I just started a blog and added paid text-link-ads to the sidebar. It makes me wonder if I should keep them or not.
It happens. Google have done the same to me. I used to have the number one slot for my own name “Linsey Dawn McKenzie” and now I am nowhere to be seen. I have no idea what is going on. I haven’t paid for any links, nor have I done any black hat SEO. I guess I’ve been John Chow’d!