WTF Google?

[Red Squirrel]

Google is now penalizing sites for being linked to from external sites that meet specific criteria. For example, if your site is linked to from a blog, you get a penalty. This is pure BS and will greatly screw up the rankings of all websites, considering backs links are one of the main ranking factors. Popular sites are more likely to be linked from these "bad" places such as blog sites.

http://www.aboutus.com/how-to-avoid-an-unnatural-links-penalty/


Time to pack in in and close my sites down, they relied on back links to stay on the top. SEO is now a thing of the past. At least with Google.

This is drastically going to alter the search results, making the search engine practically useless for most people. Sites that have lot of back links tend to be popular, well known, and trusted sites, otherwise there would not be so many other sites linking to it or people mentioning it in blogs, or accepting payment to advertise for them etc.

I really don't know what Google is thinking here, but this sucks.

 

[Gooberlx2]

SEO is now a thing of the past. At least with Google.

I imagine that's exactly the idea. Helps stop groups from gaming their ranking system.

 

[Texashiker]

Are you seriously using "aboutus" as a google resource?

Go find the blog of Matt Cutts and go from there.

 

[darkewaffle]

Makes sense to me, most blog posts are garbage to begin with and I'd wager a large majority of them exist only to bump up search rankings.

 

[Markbnj]

This is drastically going to alter the search results, making the search engine practically useless for most people who are trying to make money off of everyone else's searches. Sites that have lot of back links tend to be popular, well known, and trusted sites, otherwise there would not be so many other sites linking to it or people mentioning it in blogs, or accepting payment to advertise for them etc.

Fixed that for ya .

 

[Red Squirrel]

Fixed that for ya .

Isin't that pretty much the point? That's how most free websites make their money, ads, and to get people, you need to rank high. SEO is not evil, it's just standard practice if you want people to find your site. You build a site that has good resources and people will link to it either willingly by posting a link on a forum/blog saying "check this out" or you can pay people to link to it, or have a link exchange. This is all standard practices. At least until now.

Funny thing is they're actually shooting themselves in the foot because the search results will become so irrelevant that people may actually give up using Google and go to something else like Bing. They should not screw with the ranking system they've had for years and that has worked fine.

Webmasters have no control over who links to their site. This will enable people to maliciously link to a site they want to bring down.

 

[Gooberlx2]

unny thing is they're actually shooting themselves in the foot because the search results will become so irrelevant that people may actually give up using Google and go to something else like Bing.

Or, if it effectively helps to filter out the spammy shit I sometimes get near the top of a search, then I'm more likely to use google instead.

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

Google is always changing things up. In this case you'd need to make sure you have adequate link diversity.

Also, if anything it opens up the door for blackhat stuff like link bombing a competitor. (Edit: Lol just noticed you mentioned that already.)

Also paid links is blackhat. They've already deranked a lot of link networks in one of their previous updates.

 

[gothamhunter]

Google is always changing things up. In this case you'd need to make sure you have adequate link diversity.

Also, if anything it opens up the door for blackhat stuff like link bombing a competitor. (Edit: Lol just noticed you mentioned that already.)

Also paid links is blackhat. They've already deranked a lot of link networks in one of their previous updates.

This

 

[Texashiker]

Also paid links is blackhat.

That is a load of crap.

Buying and selling links that pass pagerank is a violation of google guidelines. Links that are bought and sold should use the nofollow attribute so that the link does not pass pagerank.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag
Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

There it is, in black and white, "not all paid links violate our (google) guidelines".

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Thank dog!

 

[alent1234]

kudos to google

a lot of times when i search for SQL related stuff i get a lot of crap back from forums where you're supposed to pay to get the full thread.

SEO doomed? good riddance

it's so easy to create hundreds of blogs programatically and "update" them with whatever links you get paid to

 

[DaveSimmons]

Thanks Google, less SEO spam to wade through.

 

[Red Squirrel]

kudos to google

a lot of times when i search for SQL related stuff i get a lot of crap back from forums where you're supposed to pay to get the full thread.

SEO doomed? good riddance

Actually those are the sites that will be the more likely to go up. People don't post links to those sites from their blogs or websites, they post links to legit sites that were actually useful.

I guess we can't do anything but wait and see how this folds out.

 

[alent1234]

except in your link it says that google is analyzing back links. so linking to msdn from sqlservercentral will be good.

linking to exchange-forums from a blog no one reads, bad

 

[foghorn67]

This is awesome news.

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

That is a load of crap.

Buying and selling links that pass pagerank is a violation of google guidelines. Links that are bought and sold should use the nofollow attribute so that the link does not pass pagerank.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736


There it is, in black and white, "not all paid links violate our (google) guidelines".

I was assuming he was talking about paid links that pass link juice. Something like a private blog network. If he was talking about something else then fine. Still want link diversity though. I'm also not against black hat seo. Plenty of people are making money through it. It just means you can't expect your rankings to stick and you'll need to change things up when google decides to "tweak" their algorithm again.

 

[Texashiker]

I was assuming he was talking about paid links that pass link juice.

Even if the link does pass page rank, and its bought, its still not a black and white picture.

Matt Cutts has talked about this several times on his blog, and in his videos. Some of the guidelines that I remember from the article and video from Matt,

Is the submission reviewed? If you submit a link to a directory or a site it should be reviewed before its published. Reviewing the link and the site help limit spam.

If you buy a link on a site, are both sites good quality? Is the topic of the two sites related?

There is a lot more to it then just "buying a link is going to get your site banned".

Google webmaster guidelines says very clearly that buying and selling links is part of normal internet activity.

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

Even if the link does pass page rank, and its bought, its still not a black and white picture.

Matt Cutts has talked about this several times on his blog, and in his videos. Some of the guidelines that I remember from the article and video from Matt,

Is the submission reviewed? If you submit a link to a directory or a site it should be reviewed before its published. Reviewing the link and the site help limit spam.

If you buy a link on a site, are both sites good quality? Is the topic of the two sites related?

There is a lot more to it then just "buying a link is going to get your site banned".

Google webmaster guidelines says very clearly that buying and selling links is part of normal internet activity.

I actually did not know that. Good info. Didn't imply blackhat leads to a ban though.

 

[Texashiker]

I actually did not know that. Good info. Didn't imply blackhat leads to a ban though.

Do not take my word for it, be sure to do your own research.

After a quick google search I found a blog post by matt cutts that talks about links.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-link-follow-up/

In that article Matt talks about "2 clicks to a bad site" approach. If you link to a site, what sites does that site link to?

Its about quality, relevance, and quality of the sites you link to. That is why you only link to authority sites, such as time.com, yahoo, msn,,,, and so on.

In the OP, Red Squirrel says,

For example, if your site is linked to from a blog, you get a penalty.

So if Matt Cutts, Anderson Cooper, Huffington Post,,,, any of those bigtime blogs link to your site you are going to get a penalty?

Wrong.

Its about the "quality" of the linking site.

 

[Puppies04]

Makes sense to me, most blog posts are garbage to begin with and I'd wager a large majority of them exist only to bump up search rankings.

This +9000