February 24th - The Day Profile Linking Died?

[Mike Anthony]

I'm seeing a lot of reports that sites with profile links have taken a hit especially this day after Google announcing a major algo change (still not fully rolled out). I'm not personally seeing those changes but then I have always been selective even when I do use profile links , bookmarking etc. (I don't just go wild on one platform ala xrummer etc - much less footprints)

I did notice a few weeks ago that the famous "backlinks" search result made famous by Angela had some major changes on the first page ( and ironically Angela is back on page one after being absent for quite awhile) .

thing about it is that some sites that are on that front page that push profile backlinks either now or in the past are now showing alot of paid links bu these certainly are not the glory days of pasting a lot of links and being sure you will rank for months to come..

So what have you found? Are forum etc profile links with pretty easy to find footprints now officially dead?

Personally as long as you mix with profile links that do NOT have a set footprint (like all from one software package) I can't see it being totally dead as some are suggesting but the glory days do appear to be over for mass linking.

[4morereferrals]

the sky is falling ... Dont crack that champagne and bust out the high 5's and self congratulatory backslaps just yet ...

17 days late there Mike.

The real hit to the profile linkers took place around the 7th or 8th - and a few folks saw it thru their datacenters 5-7 days earlier than that. We were noting google playing with the algo - as we watched sites jumping from page 1 - to page 8 - to page 1 - back to page 5 - back to 1 and then across 30 or so sites ... all across the boards.

New emd sites that were getting fresh new unique content and copious amounts of profiles were in hte 50's - instantly hit the high 100s when the Google algo tests were done on or about the 10th. Thin Sites with exclusively profile links on page 1 hit the 50' s or - if they had more depth - were .com/.nets - they seemed to have taken smaller hits.

Across 20+ marketers - new was then - its so random and across the board its rather hard to tell and pinppoint what theyve done - what exactly they are after - as a lot of "quality" sites also got flushed.

This new change they released - apparently targeting content and dupe content and scraped content farms - seems to have been a huge boost to the thinner content sites with massive profile spam.

I saw many sites knackered by the earlier algo change take some rather nice serp climbs - still not where we wnt them - but steadily climbing none the less.

Have a friend on skype now actually - using xrumers and doing some energizing - who was page 5 3 days ago [ from #3 on 2/1/11 ] is now nearing the top of page 2 again for their PHARMA kw's ...

This latest 2/24/11 - from what Im seeing and reading took out more quality white hatters traffic and serps than it did - thin / mfa / dupe content scraping / profile link spammers.

Its still way to early to tell and I cant put a finger exactly on what they are doing. With the amount of "quality" white hat sites that got caught up and tossed with the bathwater - as they say - I cant see google leaving it alone as is for too long.

Everyone got hit .... and Im hearing complaints that googd sites went way down too and skanky mfa s with profile spam usurpped them.


Im also still seeing really weak thin mfas adsense sites in several niches propped up on page 1 - right there on top with low quality content and weak links.

[pjman]

I notice Matt Cutts isn't tweeting away today. He's probably on red alert fixing the mess they created.

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by pjman

I notice Matt Cutts isn't tweeting away today. He's probably on red alert fixing the mess they created.

It's only 7am where he is at.

[paulgl]

Everyone got hit .... and Im hearing complaints that googd sites went way down too and skanky mfa s with profile spam usurpped them.

How can everyone get hit? for each site that drops, there is one to take its place!

For each one that got "hit," someone got "upped."

Paul

[gearmonkey]

Originally Posted by paulgl

How can everyone get hit? for each site that drops, there is one to take its place!

For each one that got "hit," someone got "upped."

Paul

Someone on digitalpoint said Amazon and Ebay moved up...

[dezchamps]

Originally Posted by paulgl

How can everyone get hit? for each site that drops, there is one to take its place!

For each one that got "hit," someone got "upped."

Paul

That is a great positive way to look at it! I know some sites moved up quite a few places in results because of this. I am so glad quality content and frequent updates are being rewarded.

[theseoguys]

Hopefully the title can be changed to, the day AUTOMATED profile linking Died...i.e. xrumer, dripfeedblast...and scrapebox...

[pjman]

It's only 7am where he is at.

I caught that right after I posted.

He's up to 3AM Tweeting about it in his neck of the woods. I see a few all nighters in Matt's future.

[webjedi]

Originally Posted by gearmonkey

Someone on digitalpoint said Amazon and Ebay moved up...

Subscribing to this thread for more news..

wj

[dp40oz]

So far this month ive heard profile links, blog comments, web 2.0, social bookmarking, article marketing and link exchanges are all dead. They don't work. The Algo updates have killed them all. So basically Googles not counting links anymore. Sounds good to me, i'll just keyword stuff my pages like I did 10 years ago.

[gearmonkey]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

So far this month ive heard profile links, blog comments, web 2.0, social bookmarking, article marketing and link exchanges are all dead. They don't work. The Algo updates have killed them all. So basically Googles not counting links anymore. Sounds good to me, i'll just keyword stuff my pages like I did 10 years ago.

This is a good point. I just checked one of my recent articles with 5% keyword density and it's still sitting pretty on page 1. Maybe keyword density is coming back?

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

the sky is falling ... Dont crack that champagne and bust out the high 5's and self congratulatory backslaps just yet ...

17 days late there Mike.

Not really I was talking specifically about people who are complaining about serp drops as of this week but yes as I said in the Op I noticed a change a few weeks back.

No high fives are in order from any group because I am fully aware that google's algo will never be perfect and act the way people think it should work. Sites will get hit that shouldn't . its the nature of the algo. Its not human and can't really judge content or sites as humans can .

So though we have had our heated disagreements in the past don't think I am doing cartwheels. I preached not over doing it but like I said many times I have used profile backlinks.

this new algo is aimed at finding quality over quantity but no engine can do that that isn't human so what it no doubt is looking for are signs that the content isn't really getting human thumbs up. I think thats why some people are reporting their sites with profile links taking a dip again after yesterday.

and yeah some sites will move up. any time you have sites above you falling you will move up until perhaps its your time. More than likely its a combination thing between kind of backlinks and content - and the roll out isn't complete.

We can thank all those egg in Google's face articles and news reports. Google had to do something.

So no definitely not gloating or saying I told you so. Might not change how I do SEO as much as someone else but it still was a (smaller) part of my strategy.

[TristanPerry]

Not seeing anything in the 24th Feb update which affected backlinks?

It seems to be mainly to do with on-page SEO... and even then it's left some poor sites alone and hit some good sites hard.

I think there'll be big backlink related updates coming soon (more so than the one in earlier Feb which was more of a tweak), but for now I don't see that profile links have 'died'..

[JayVance]

I'll say this, I have one blog where half my backlinks were profile links from Angela and Paul, I've seen no variation at all with my rankings. I have two keywords I ranked for and I have stayed consistently #1.

So I doubt Google has targeted profile links.

-Jay Vance

[alexanderpoole9]

Originally Posted by TristanPerry

I think there'll be big backlink related updates coming soon (more so than the one in earlier Feb which was more of a tweak)

Have any guesses at to what these related updates may be?

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by theseoguys

Hopefully the title can be changed to, the day AUTOMATED profile linking Died...i.e. xrumer, dripfeedblast...and scrapebox...

Yes that might be more accurate but I OPed a very heated thread on that subject a few months ago and I don't want it to read like its a follow up I told you so thread.

I'm not trying to dig at anyone and really if Google for example decided to discount forum profile links then the algo may very well hit you eventually whether you do mass automated linking or not.

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

this new algo is aimed at finding quality over quantity but no engine can do that that isn't human so what it no doubt is looking for are signs that the content isn't really getting human thumbs up. I think thats why some people are reporting their sites with profile links taking a dip again after yesterday.

Unless Google starts ranking its searches by a Facebook like button or something of that nature I don't see profile links taking a huge hit. 1 of the few places on the net where real users exchange links is forums, forum profiles and social network profiles. If Google changes its algo to hit profile links they will no doubt diminish huge amounts of actual quality links in its swooping change.

I think people love to believe Google is smarter then it is. Every algo Googles ever unleashed has been easily exploited by many. They can only change it so much, otherwise their results will be completely out of whack and they'll have undone everything that got them here in the first place.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by TristanPerry

Not seeing anything in the 24th Feb update which affected backlinks?

It seems to be mainly to do with on-page SEO... and even then it's left some poor sites alone and hit some good sites hard.

Well as you know no one knows whats in the algo. It may turn out that low content sites like MFAs also rely heavily on profile links but I have seen people claiming their serps have been hit hard who have been using profile links.

Question is how does google determine a good quality site? This isn't just about duplciate content that google rolled out before

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

They're using some criteria that looks at user experience and have even used their chrome extension to evaluate those changes (though they say they are not using the extension itself).

So backlinks are their main user voting system to determine human worth - perhaps theres something to those people reporting a drop.

[theseoguys]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Yes that might be more accurate but I OPed a very heated thread on that subject a few months ago and I don't want it to read like its a follow up I told you so thread.

I'm not trying to dig at anyone and really if Google for example decided to discount forum profile links then the algo may very well hit you eventually whether you do mass automated linking or not.

I was never concerned in the first place as I don't automate anything. I am all for automation of a lot of things. But automated content is not original, authentic, thought provoking or beneficial. Nor is automated backlinking re: is 80,000 links in 12hrs too much? Or I created 400,000 links this week.

Well golly.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

Unless Google starts ranking its searches by a Facebook like button or something of that nature I don't see profile links taking a huge hit. 1 of the few places on the net where real users exchange links is forums, forum profiles and social network profiles. If Google changes its algo to hit profile links they will no doubt diminish huge amounts of actual quality links in its swooping change.

Actually thats not true at all. Doing SEO mostly outside of IM I can tell you I rarely see sites rank on profile links in the established business niche (and they'll be even less Since JC penney tried it and got caught in very bad PR). Google is concerned with established sites referring established sites and yes a few months back they said they have begun to use Social networking reputation not profiles as a small part of the algo. I admit it would greatly affect people in IM but it would be nowhere near massive outside of it.

I think people love to believe Google is smarter then it is. .

Not the case here. But finding and noting some profile backlinks doesn't require any smartness. Scrapebox can find tens of thousands of "powered by vbullettin" with "profile" "member/user profile" and you can buy that for less than $60.

I think google can pull that off.

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by paulgl

How can everyone get hit? for each site that drops, there is one to take its place!

For each one that got "hit," someone got "upped."

Paul

Ohhhh jeeezz ... really? Seriously?

Forgive me .. I stand corrected. NOT "everyone" got affected. I should have know better to over-generalize [ "dramatize" for effect ] I apologize to all for the improper terminology.

for each site that drops, there is one to take its place!

Uhhh - thanks for the lesson on Uber Obvious.

The real point was - "quality" - white hat only sites - the indestructible ones we read so much about ... seem to have been hit and hit hard - whether thats you or not - enough folks other than you ... produce a significant enough sample to make it "an issue".

Additionally - its the notion that gooble was aiming for one thing - and seems to have hit a different target [ today ... and that could change tomorrow ] Yes a site drops and another rises. Ya ... however this is about quality sites dropping and being replaced by the so called "spammy" MFA thin sites.

If it doesnt pertain to your sites and dont really have any insights to add value to the thread - why waste the bytes?


... perhaps google is just letting the nasties float to the top for a few days to identify them easier so they can shlap them and revert the algo?

[GlobalTrader]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

... perhaps google is just letting the nasties float to the top for a few days to identify them easier so they can shlap them and revert the algo?

I have often speculated this very theory!

Our main site is 12 years old, totally white hat, our index page ranked in the top 5 for two main keyword phrases for years. We still rank number 4 for the primary KW, however, we dropped from position 5 to 374 for the secondary KW.

The secondary KW has always been the one that got bounced around but generally have maintained a page one ranking for about 2 years now. It will be interesting to see if your theory plays out of the next few weeks.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by GlobalTrader

I have often speculated this very theory!

Our main site is 12 years old, totally white hat, our index page ranked in the top 5 for two main keyword phrases for years. We still rank number 4 for the primary KW, however, we dropped from position 5 to 374 for the secondary KW.

I'd give it a few days - weeks. people run around like they understand how an algo is switched over but we are as in the dark about that as we are about whats in the algo itself. Who knows it may take several crawls for google's new algorithm to sort out the serps.

[WealthWithin]

Originally Posted by theseoguys

Hopefully the title can be changed to, the day AUTOMATED profile linking Died...i.e. xrumer, dripfeedblast...and scrapebox...

How would a machine know if it's automated or not?

If someone's doing forum profile spam (without adding any posts), I guess they're both the same.

[sree94]

A site I have spent day and night trying to get to the top for 6 months is now on page 2 after jumping to the #3 position on page 1

Speaking of jumping... good thing there are no ledges around me right now

[wpgwalt]

I don't think so. Would be neat to see them take some stance against the automation though.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by WealthWithin

How would a machine know if it's automated or not?.

quantity divided by age of links is a dead give away.

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

quantity divided by age of links is a dead give away.

2 months ago a big time musician friend of mine linked to one of my brand new sites on his Facebook page. I got 1000's of real backlinks all over blogs and profiles in a few days. This happens all the time all over the Internet. Not to mention my rankings skyrocketed. Its harder for a robot to determine this then people think it is. I'll just keep saying it, Google is not as smart as people like to believe.

[drd1812]

Originally Posted by WealthWithin

How would a machine know if it's automated or not?

If someone's doing forum profile spam (without adding any posts), I guess they're both the same.

good point, except, the real person makes posts.. but its easy enough to teach a bot to make a decent forum post comment lol... been playing with fembots in early dalnet days - people been chatting with my creations for days and even writing an email to ten - so go figure what is real or not - for them experience was as real as it gets while I know the code behind my bot...

I dont think forum profile links will die so easily, even automated ones - that is a really good question - how would a bot know a difference between real and spam and flushing all of them would mean taking along with them a good measure of "real" quality links... I dont think this is the case.

oddly enoough, I can comment that my white site have gone a little bit up (very few backlinks, small local blog, links only from same local blogs, not especially SEO optimized, just a home brew blog - but TONS of good content - video, pics, posts 800-1500 words long), while sites I have been working on for IM - stay about the same, then again, its on the local market.

anyone considered gooble just having one of those days?

[oilerblue]

Originally Posted by gearmonkey

Someone on digitalpoint said Amazon and Ebay moved up...

I was ranked #3 for my primary keyword and was overtaken a few weeks ago by amazon and walmart. Out of nowhere...these sites weren't even top 20 prior to that time. It has held this way pretty steady over the course of the last few weeks, too.

[scott g]

Forum Profile backlinks are a joke and a waste of time. Doubtful any decent ones will stick around very long... How many of you Warriors run your own forum and delete profiles everyday?!

Obviously, this could and will be argued for days about how effective and great (or not so great) forum profile backlinks are.

There's a way to "train" Scrapebox to recognize forum profile fields, but I haven't figured out or messed with that! Scrapebox is for DISSECTION!

CHEERS!

[Black Hat Cat]

Originally Posted by scott g

Forum Profile backlinks are a joke and a waste of time. Doubtful any decent ones will stick around very long... How many of you Warriors run your own forum and delete profiles everyday?!



CHEERS!

Meanwhile, back in the real world....

[drd1812]

Originally Posted by oilerblue

I was ranked #3 for my primary keyword and was overtaken a few weeks ago by amazon and walmart. Out of nowhere...these sites weren't even top 20 prior to that time. It has held this way pretty steady over the course of the last few weeks, too.

mhm, could it be that gooble starts again looking at the SEO optimization on the page itself - url, kw, domain?

anyone?

[scott g]

Originally Posted by Black Hat Cat

Meanwhile, back in the real world....

Why did you edit out the rest when you quoted me? Just curious... I didn't think I ever left...

[drd1812]

Originally Posted by scott g

Why did you edit out the rest when you quoted me? Just curious... I didn't think I ever left...

do I sense drama? and should I just get another home brew and enjoy it while reading?

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by Black Hat Cat

Meanwhile, back in the real world....

OK I LOL'd at that.

[inter123]

Is blog commenting dead too? I mean "manual" commenting and not scrapebox, et al.

Originally Posted by dp40oz

So far this month ive heard ...blog comments ...dead.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by inter123

Is blog commenting dead too? I mean "manual" commenting and not scrapebox, et al.

What's the difference? A comment is a comment. If one was dead, they'd both be dead.

[AdamWB]

Profile links are not dead.

Article, blog commenting, web 2.0, etc etc links are not dead.

If that were the case then I'd be dead broke right now. Some of my sites were shifted in this big mess, but they all seem to be coming back now (I admit I was freaking out there for a couple days) - and the ones that did get hit were relatively new sites - NONE of my older aged quality sites got hit. And a lot of them use a lot of profile type links. None of my sites have duplicate content, all 100% unique quality content - so that may have something to do with it. *shrug*

Just like in any forum...99% of the time you see the exceptions because the people that aren't having problems don't go posting about them.

I think what we're seeing is a big shift in rankings because Google slapping content farms, autoblogs and the like. This shift is causing havoc on everyone's rankings until the dust settles - basically there is a big dance going on and it's causing a lot of people to freak out.

This is just my opinion of course - but history is a good teacher.

[TigerEye]

Originally Posted by JayVance

I'll say this, I have one blog where half my backlinks were profile links from Angela and Paul, I've seen no variation at all with my rankings. I have two keywords I ranked for and I have stayed consistently #1.

So I doubt Google has targeted profile links.

-Jay Vance

I keep seeing the names Angela and Paul reading through the forums. How do I find out more info on their strategies or products?

[drd1812]

Originally Posted by TigerEye

I keep seeing the names Angela and Paul reading through the forums. How do I find out more info on their strategies or products?

+1
curious as well!

[Dumkist]

We'll before you guys go nuts about profile links being dead go type "Angela" in Google then you will have the answer whether or not profile links are dead

[Fraggler]

My main money maker has seen a spike in traffic over the last couple of days. Even today is higher than a weekday last week.

I haven't used profile links on the site for over 12 months. I built its original rise on high PR blog commenting and then started profile links before it took a big dive at the end of 2009 (due to hosting issues and C&Ds lol). The comments were before the power tools hit the market (except xrumer and other private ones).

When it came back 'from the dead' (July last year) I only used BuildMyRank, articles, and paid links (renting). There is 10x more content on the site than before the crash too.

My site hasn't experienced a drop from any of these algo changes.

My links aren't exactly high qaulity, but I would like to believe they are a step up from profile spam.

I personally think the stability has come from the inclusion of a lot of relevant content and less focus on sniping keywords. I have less keywords at #1 but the traffic is spread a lot wider. When the changes happen this might lower the impact as any drops for specific keywords results in a lower % of the total drop.

I think to get a better picture of what these algos are REALLY doing is by finding the difference between the stable sites and the volatile.

[Fraggler]

Originally Posted by Dumkist

We'll before you guys go nuts about profile links being dead go type "Angela" in Google then you will have the answer whether or not profile links are dead

"Angela" isn't exactly a competitive term attracting the cream of the crop in SEO and SEM.

1800 links to any page will help balance any drop. She also has high PR blog comments linking to the page.

[yukon]

Profiles are not dead, lol!

If you know how to build them they'll work just fine.

I don't use them on my new sites, still I use them everyday on older sites that don't have a problem in the SERPs.

If you can't get profiles to work, chances are it's because nothing links into the profile, not really that complicated to figure out.

I've traded profiles for free high PR authority links, takes half the work compared to profiles & ranks a page faster than you can do a Google search (no joke).

[iAmNameLess]

Originally Posted by scott g

Forum Profile backlinks are a joke and a waste of time. Doubtful any decent ones will stick around very long... How many of you Warriors run your own forum and delete profiles everyday?!

Lets pretend they don't delete profiles....



Oh... nevermind. It's about the same.

[drd1812]

Originally Posted by Dumkist

We'll before you guys go nuts about profile links being dead go type "Angela" in Google then you will have the answer whether or not profile links are dead

* cough *

could you please be more specific (or anyone else for that matter) to the n00bs?
would really apreciate

cheers,

Andy

[iAmNameLess]

Originally Posted by AdamWB

Profile links are not dead.

Article, blog commenting, web 2.0, etc etc links are not dead.

I think what a lot of people believe, is that you can buy 10,000 profile links, for 10 bucks, and rank #1.

No, profile links are not dead, and will never be 100% dead, but I don't believe they are very alive either. Automated profile links, I think are almost useless, and no one can convince me otherwise.

To me, and I know many of you will argue with me on this, but to me, I think profile links are useless. I don't really get links, that don't get me traffic. Profile links don't get traffic, that is a fact.

I still use profile links, to have a variety of back links, from different sources. I don't believe they give you any additional push, but it is variety.

[Craig McPherson]

One of my sites was getting 200 uniques a day for months up until Feb 7th when it was sent to the bowels.

It came back on Tuesday and has had over 600 uniques a day since.

Short term pain for long term gain I hope