Google is Flawed - You Can Influence Other Sites’ Rankings With Backlinks

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Yeah but no one has really even tried that here yet. In deference to the OP we haven't got there because he wanted to test if sitewide links would do the trick but even those who believe it don't think that causes sites to be penalized. Internet is full of sites with legitimate sitewide links

Well I have - multiple times. I can assure you if you have a traditional 15 article MFA type adsense blog or blogs standing between you and top spots - if their link profile is moderate to weak < 1,000 backlinks in YSE < 20 PR3+ links in their profile .... a few intense days of unleashing XR on them will get them out of your way.

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Believe it or not Steve that letter has been posted several times in this forum and I have even added links to people who state point blank they got them and for spammy links. One link went to backlinksforum where the whole thing is spelt out. Proof as you say has NEVER been the issue. But theres two reasons why despite all proof people here stick their head in the sand

A) they just don't want it to be true because it means there would be a reason to change or at least be cautious.

B) People don't want to think and change. It s been a saying around here for a long time that people pull out link parrots - "if bad links could hurt you then you could hurt your customers and Google wouldn't allow that because it would be stupid."

What has never been true is that Google cares about your site and being fair to it. they don't . They care about their search results looking good and they don't need the average IMers site to do that. If a site has some good links that are organic from sites that Google likes then that will protect them if they are blasted but if not Google doesn't care if either you or your competitor shows up in the search results where the sun don't shine. Them protecting ALL other sites has always been an urban myth.

Yup - if its one thing we can take away from these lessons - it's Google doesnt effing CARE [.] So screw them.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by yukon

Didn't think anything would happen...

Nothing odd there Yuke. I think only the OP believed site wide links would tank a site.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

Well I have - multiple times. I can assure you if you have a traditional 15 article MFA type adsense blog or blogs standing between you and top spots

Don't doubt it . Why people think Google will give a rip about protecting their MFA is beyond me. Perhaps they think that Google sees them as some valued partner. Serious mistake there.

[Ash R]

I'm glad to see this thread of common sense here.

I am tired of hearing the parroted "wisdom" of "all backlinks are good, nobody can hurt competitors with backlinks".

At the end of the day, you need to think about defense as well. An aged domain and lots of useful content can go a long way

[InternetMarketingIQ]

This original poster clearly does not understand how Page Rank and Google work. If you could damage another site with links... clearly the big boys with deep pockets would have blown their competition out of the water.

[InternetMarketingIQ]

Google is flawed however. They SCRAPE other peoples content then profit from the scrape then pretend like they are the God's of all that is Search. They put their own properties in Organic Search ahead of the competition then pretend like they are for the Greater Good.

Hey any corporation that is pulling 28 Billion has their own Agenda and Interests.

[stephenwaldo]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Believe it or not Steve that letter has been posted several times in this forum and I have even added links to people who state point blank they got them and for spammy links. One link went to backlinksforum where the whole thing is spelt out. Proof as you say has NEVER been the issue. But theres two reasons why despite all proof people here stick their head in the sand

A) they just don't want it to be true because it means there would be a reason to change or at least be cautious.

B) People don't want to think and change. It s been a saying around here for a long time that people pull out link parrots - "if bad links could hurt you then you could hurt your customers and Google wouldn't allow that because it would be stupid."

What has never been true is that Google cares about your site and being fair to it. they don't . They care about their search results looking good and they don't need the average IMers site to do that. If a site has some good links that are organic from sites that Google likes then that will protect them if they are blasted but if not Google doesn't care if either you or your competitor shows up in the search results where the sun don't shine. Them protecting ALL other sites has always been an urban myth.

I just don't understand where folks got this idea of Google being search engine utopia...It's not.

They run a business, often times a pretty shady one, for the purpose of making money and dominating their given market-space. They are NOT perfect. If they were we wouldn't need links and we would never be having this debate to begin with.

Furthermore, if you're not taking anything Matty Cuts says with a big ol' honkin' grain of salt then you need your head checked. Think about this for a second...

Head of web spam team & also in charge of communicating with the 'SEO community'...

Just think about that for one tiny second and you'll realize exactly where you fall in the eyes of big G, and where you should operate from as an SEO.

And with good reason! Our purpose as SEOs is to manipulate results. So to say that you can manipulate results one way and not the other is just...I don't know. Just plain and simple denial I guess.

[kindsvater]

If keyword rich backlinks are important to telling Google what topic your site is about so you rank for certain searches, then it seems possible damaging keyword rich backlinks could hurt that ranking.

Example 1: A website has 10 law related keyword rich backlinks. Must be a legal site worthy of a good ranking.

Example 2: A website has 10 law related keyword rich backlinks, plus 10,000 Pokemon worded backlinks. Could the site suffer in the rankings for legal searches because the backlinking profile now deals with Pokemon instead of the law?

.

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by kindsvater

If keyword rich backlinks are important to telling Google what topic your site is about so you rank for certain searches, then it seems possible damaging keyword rich backlinks could hurt that ranking.

Example 1: A website has 10 law related keyword rich backlinks. Must be a legal site worthy of a good ranking.

Example 2: A website has 10 law related keyword rich backlinks, plus 10,000 Pokemon worded backlinks. Could the site suffer in the rankings for legal searches because the backlinking profile now deals with Pokemon instead of the law?

.

I say yes - because now the algo thinks the site is predominately about Pokemon. That said, it would be easy for the site owner to explain to google that they were maliciously link bombed by a competitor of their site was hit with un related anchor text links like pharma and porn and other naughties.

So if the goal is to blow out a competitor - over use of keyword anchor text they do want to rank for is most logical - and harder for targeted site owner to refute knowledge. So I hear.

Ohhhh man kindsvater - B-l@ck H@t SEO Tort Law can be a hot new specialty! :-)

[TheFBGuy]

Current Rankings: Google is Flawed - You Can Influence Other Sites’ Rankings With Backlinks

Okay, ironically Neil_Patmore has gone inactive, what say you boys and girls... should we proceed to phase 2? 1 month has passed and the 6000 side wide links Neil created were ineffective as most of us believed from the very beginning. I think we can all agree now and conclude that side wide links have NO definite impact on a competitor's site.

As a participant, I would like for us to move forward, those who offered sites for this test, please confirm as well so we can proceed with this. I think many people are still curious to know if a competitor can tank a particular website.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by TheFBGuy

that side wide links have NO definite impact on a competitor's site.

As a participant, I would like for us to move forward, those who offered sites for this test, please confirm as well so we can proceed with this. I think many people are still curious to know if a competitor can tank a particular website.

Agreed so what do you suggest.? We can go the xrummer forum profile route or some might want a blog comment blast

[MikesWebShow]

Frankly, when I discovered that companies (and individuals) offshore were being paid to click on ads to drive competition out of the market I stop using Adwords.

My biggest problem is that you can't account for the costs based on the clicks.

I have found a number of white and grey hat techniques for driving traffic and I am very happy with the results.

I think that many of the people using PPC these days are newbies (who don't know better) or super gurus who can spend $10 to $20 thousand dollars a day to earn a couple of thousand dollars.

Too expensive for me!

[KevinRichardsonMD]

This is frankly a moot point--it has been documented time and time again that this is not the way it works.

[Daedalus]

Is it a new site? Definitely yes.

Is it an old one? Depends on what kind of arsenal you have at your disposal. It is doable, just quite difficult.

[MikeFriedman]

Somebody blast these sites. Do it on a big scale. Something like 5000-10,000 links a day for 4-5 days.

[Technology]

Ya no this has been documented to be a complete myth in the long haul.

[TheFBGuy]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Agreed so what do you suggest.? We can go the xrummer forum profile route or some might want a blog comment blast

At this point any type of blast is welcome, so If someone would like to step forward and do a blast, please do so or we can take mattlaclear's offer to do 5k article links I believe it was.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by TheFBGuy

At this point any type of blast is welcome, so If someone would like to step forward and do a blast, please do so or we can take mattlaclear's offer to do 5k article links I believe it was.

Why in the world would we do that? Who in this entire thread thinks that article directory submissions tanks a site? People do AMR runs all the time.

Don't and never owned xrummer or Senuke or I would do it. Must be somebody in this thread that does.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by TheFBGuy

At this point any type of blast is welcome, so If someone would like to step forward and do a blast, please do so or we can take mattlaclear's offer to do 5k article links I believe it was.

We need links that might actually get found though.

Xrumer or even Scrapebox if someone has an enormous autoapprove list that isn't already spammed to death is the way to go.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

We need links that might actually get found though.

Zing!!! lol.

[iAmNameLess]

boring... so who wants to spam out links for me? I'll take the free juice.

[TheFBGuy]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Why in the world would we do that? Who in this entire thread thinks that article directory submissions tanks a site? People do AMR runs all the time.

Don't and never owned xrummer or Senuke or I would do it. Must be somebody in this thread that does.

Lol, maybe laclear will submit them in a way that Google doesn't like?

Laclear is the only one who stepped forward, so we cannot ignore that option unless someone else steps forward. I don't own Xrumer or SENukeX either.

Friedman: Yes I agree.

Can anyone help us out? I am sure many of you own ScrapeBox, Xrumer, SENuke, and other tools similar. If we had conducted this case study at BHW, things would have moved along faster...

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by MikesWebShow

Frankly, when I discovered that companies (and individuals) offshore were being paid to click on ads to drive competition out of the market I stop using Adwords.

My biggest problem is that you can't account for the costs based on the clicks.

Yesssss.... Isnt it simply amazing that google can detect fraudulant clicks on the Adsense [ content ] network but cant for SERPs based adwords?


... interesting indeed

[MDSEO]

i spent 1,000s of hours building backlinks etc... and now sites that have like 2 backlinks rank higher then me, this just happend within the past like 4 weeks my site dropped from 1 on some of my top keywords to like 45... F U google!
go figure i have a new baby "and now my business has had like zero calls over the past 3 weeks due to this latest panda update" google really did a number this time....... im pissed

Originally Posted by paulgl

You people mix up cause and effect so many times....

Backlinking causes your site to sink in ratings.

Such BS.

**You get piddly backlinks to your piddly sites, and come
up with all sorts of hallucinations.

Please. Stop backlinking. You will make the internet a better place,
and the rest of us will benefit from your lack of effort.

People just can't get over the fact that google owes you nothing,
could care less about you and your sites. And they don't
take you personally. Period. They don't have a man behind the
curtain following your every move. No matter how important on
the internet you think you and your websites are.

Anybody who peddles this nonsense is just pushing more voodoo
SEO.

You people need to get a grip on reality.

Repeat: Please. Stop backlinking.

Google is flawed - to the tune of billions of dollars in record profits.
If only they would hire their engineers from here....they would be so much
more successful....silly flawed google...

Paul

**Feel free to copy this anywhere.

[zannix]

I don't know if you can get your site penalized by building low quality backlinks, but I do know this:

I've stopped building backlinks to my site for quite some time, and after ranking #1 for its keyword for 4 months, it started going nowhere and back, every 2 weeks or so. And this is not a "Google Dance", because "Google Dance" occured earlier in the link building process, after which my rank has been stable.

Yesterday, it's rank #1 again. And I'm not doing absolutely anything...

There's something to consider.

Kind Regards,
Zannix

[nicnac03]

Watch out! Mine did the same thing for a few months and then it simply vanished and hasn't returned yet despite more backlinks and content being added. 3 months anf counting. Still in the index though. /shrug

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by TheFBGuy

Lol, maybe laclear will submit them in a way that Google doesn't like?

Laclear is the only one who stepped forward, so we cannot ignore that option unless someone else steps forward.

We most surely can and should ignore it. It was never a genuine offer. Just another attempt to hijack the thread (second or third one ). No provider is going to offer his promotion service as a means of tanking sites. Don't be crazy man. Why should we waste the time running another go nowhere test of something we ALL know does not tank sites? If it did then AMR would be out of business.

Whats next? Okay I will step forward and offer some High PR contextual inks to tank these sites.....ROFL

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

We most surely can and should ignore it. It was never a genuine offer. Just another attempt to hijack the thread (second or third one ). No provider is going to offer his promotion service as a means of tanking sites. Don't be crazy man. Why should we waste the time running another go nowhere test of something we ALL know does not tank sites? If it did then AMR would be out of business.

Whats next? Okay I will step forward and offer some High PR contextual inks to tank these sites.....ROFL

4 Drip Feed Blasts accounts set on "KILL" for 60 days should just about do the trick ... $99 x 4 [ accounts ] x 2 [ 60 days ]

Im not eager to piss my $$$ down the drain to learn something I already know to be true - but if others want to chip in as a group

Or we could get a couple of "Dripable" accounts too - 2 dripables and 2 drip feed blasts and add in blog commenting just for grins and giggles and really seal the deal.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by TheFBGuy

Laclear is the only one who stepped forward, so we cannot ignore that option unless someone else steps forward. I don't own Xrumer or SENukeX either.

Like I said, we need links that will actually get found in order to test something like this. He has claimed his are super secret special ones that do not show up in rank checkers, yet still somehow boost sites.

I have Scrapebox, but I do not have an auto approve list of the size needed to blast a ton of links at these sites. I also am not real keen on being the one who spams up thousands of other people's websites.

[TryBPO]

Someone can test on the sites I put up, if they like...just please post here before you do it letting us know exactly where the links are from, what you're doing, etc.

Again, I don't think it will do much...but I'm willing to see what happens if you want to do it.

[neil_patmore]

I've been really busy with a mobile app project which hasn't left much time for me to hang around on the Warrior forum so apologies for not posting for some time.

Well, what a disappointment! I did think the site wides tanked the sites but it looks like I was wrong. Not just because the participating sites didn't tank, but I know I was wrong because 2 other sites of mine that didn't have the sitewides also tanked after the last Panda update on 13 october. I'm now focusing on the why but it most ceratinly wasn't the site wides so I'm sorry guys but I was wrong.

I WAS WRONG! There said it, hope you're happy :-)

That doesn't go to say I don't think backlinks can harm a site, I know they can, I still haven't changed my opinion on that one.

I'm willing to send a 50k Scrapebox AA list at the sites if the site owners agree. The list is getting on a bit now but still gets quite a number of links indexed. Actually still works pretty good. Let me know.

Just a quickie update on one of the sites before I jump over to the panda thread. I pulled both sites down and put up default wordpress blogs to use with Authority link network and guess what? Both sites ranking top 3 for their main keywords, with ****e rehashed ALN articles on them.

Google praises quality content my arse. What a joke. Right, where's that panda thread ....

[agmantz]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

Oh it absolutely can happen. Just a word of advice from a guy who has posted many threads with proof on the subject. You will be making the page more valuable in the end. You'll be able to knock a page out and into oblivion for awhile but heres the key… IT WILL ALWAYS COME BACK, and when it does those links will count. Ive shown this proof a ton of times on this forum.

Google will penalize a page but all their penalties decay. How long does the penalty last? Depends usually between 30-60 days but sometimes can be up to 6-9 months. Just mark my words, you will be making this domain stronger in the long run.

You are absolutely correct! Just continue backlinking.
This scenario happened to me.

[joulesverne]

Neil: Just curious now that it has been over six months if your sites ever came backs, and if they did, how long did it take / what did you do?

Also, were your sites tanked for a single keyword or did you lose rank for all keywords? I noticed in the thread your theory was that google punishes individual pages for individual keywords, but it almost sounds as if your sites tanked for everything

That same question goes for MDSEO.

My two cents, from someone who has never posted on this forum but has been doing SEO for a while... it seems to me that a very unnatural link campaign can trip some sort of automatic google filter (obviously they are not watching your site individually, but their algorithms are and they keep track of keywords, keyword context, links, anchor text, anchor text context etc etc... why not speed / type of links?)

As someone said previously, variation is key... naturalness is also key. Vary the keywords, let your campaign start fairly conservative and grow (it can grow quickly though, from my experience) and you can very rapidly start pummeling it with links without hurting it.

I have used SENuke extensively. I have taken a brand new domain to second result for a keyword with 48,000 local monthly searches and 32 million competing websites in less than 2 months. No penalties, much dancing though. Sometimes it would drop for a week. The key was that I started with a second tier and hit that like crazy for a couple weeks. Then i started light campaigns against the main site. Then I started to really hit it hard for a solid month. Also, as this was one of my early endeavors I made the mistake of letting up on it after it was in the second result and it dropped pretty quickly to the second page until I started hitting it hard again. Took some time before it was securely there and I could ease up. This may mean that Google, interestingly, rewards large numbers of links all at once as long as they look natural. When you let up, it takes away that extra reward. If your links are very unnatural it seems it can and does punish you if your domain is not established.

This also makes sense in the context of tiers. Everyone says you should only use heavy duty blasts against your second tier. Why is this? Obviously a website is a website. Your second tier should be no less susceptible to de-indexing than your first tier. Your second tier adds a layer of protection, but If blasting a site gets you deindexed, all of these people would be blasting out their second tier that they worked so hard to build... obviously it wouldn't make much sense. However, what do people usually build their second tier on? Wordpres, livejournal, hubpages, squidoo etc... all second tier pages are built on established, old, strong domains. They rarely get blasted out.

Conclusion: given very strict stipulations, Google may punish a domain. I think this is clear from all the people who see their domain drop for 6-9 months. This is obviously not a dance. You could argue it is an algorithm change, but that does not explain the people who get 'penalized' and abandon their site only to find that 60 days later it was where they started. I have seen this testimony from many (though I have never experienced it myself). If your site is fairly unestablished and new, and you build backlinks that are clearly unnatural (i.e. tons of the same type of links without varied enough keywords on low/no quality sites suddenly appearing) then you may be punished. However, these are very strict stipulations... and that makes sense - at this point computers are still dumb and very poor at pattern recognition. Google is not God, and the amount of processing power that it takes to do those things that we know for a FACT that they do (as mentioned above) is enormous. I think they have automatic systems in place, but it is very hard to implement an automatic system that does not punish the good guys. Therefore, under strict circumstances you can shoot yourself in the foot. Although, most of these things seem like they would be newbie mistakes anyway.

[Cantbedone!]

Originally Posted by John Williamson

I won't recycle what Paul, Matt, and Yukon have said already (I agree with them completely on this), but here's some math for you folks...

Having a math degree, there are a couple things that come to mind related to this topic, the first being a "conditional" statement in regards to propositional logic. As Matt said, the OP assumes a false premise. The main thing to remember is that correlation does not imply causation.

And if I may...

This vehement paroxysm has undoubtedly exacerbated my ingeminated attempts to reach a definitive conclusion and have thus catalyzed a chord of dismal failure....

[Cantbedone!]

But seriously folks..

It looks like the links were not the problem after all. This does not surprise me. I have had pages tank in the serps before without any visible ryme or reason. It has happened numerous times and I was not even building links at the time so there are definitely other factors that are not easy to pinpoint. Additionally, I have used many linking services ranging from ultra spam to high quality and I have never seen a negative impact that did not eventually go away.

I'm not going to tell anyone what to believe but I certainly don't buy that backlinking is going to destroy your site. It never hurt any of mine. If anything, it will waste your time and money by providing you with no measurable benefit. Any sinking in the serps is either temporary or was caused by something else in pretty much every case I've observed.

[cssitkt]

Just to add a bit more heat to this debate:

3 of my sites received the following message from Google which coincided with a complete loss of rankings. Around 50% of the links were created by Matt's service and at the time of the penalty/filter/message, whatever you want to call it, the link building service active was Matt's. The sites were all at least a year old, had PR 4 and between them had 65 keywords on page 1.

Google Webmaster Tools notice of unnatural links detected to yoursite.com/ February 26, 2012

Dear Site Owner or Webmaster of yoursite.com,

We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to your site, so that it meets our Quality Guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Yours sincerely,

Google Search Quality Team

[outwest]

Originally Posted by jasonthewebmaster

I totally agree. The "Penalties" everyone complains about are usually not true. In fact, Google has NEVER publicly said their algorithm's penalize sites... yet everyone thinks they do.

The fact is, your backlinks probably have nothing to do with your loss in rankings. It could be a million other factors. Most likely, your competition is doing something right that you are not, and that is why your site is now lower in rankings.

Rightttttttttttttt
you are ranking 1, or 2 for 6 months all the sudden you drop to page 100

must be something your competitors ALL decided to do at the same moment
all 100 pages of competitors, this cant be a google penalty, hahahaha

do you know how dumb that sounds

[BarryOnline]

Google penalties, both manual and algorithmically very much exist.

I am seeing the above mentioned email from Google search quality team a lot lately.

Dear Site Owner or Webmaster of yoursite.com,

We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

Penalties from Google was a myth years ago but it's now a common reality.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

[cssitkt]

Originally Posted by BarryOnline

Penalties from Google was a myth years ago but it's now a common reality.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Totally agree.

People are quick to ignore this truth.

Google Webmaster Tools notice of unnatural links detected...submit your site for reconsideration

this message is not 'google dance, 'natural fluctuation', 'random' 'been going on for years'

[cssitkt]

I can blast 5000 auto approve comments, profiles, private blog posts a day.

I'm happy to contribute in taking down a site - just let me know.

[sunray]

With a domain only six months old Google may do exactly as they please--take it out and put it back whenever they wish. No searcher will notice the absence of such websites.

[neil_patmore]

Neil: Just curious now that it has been over six months if your sites ever came backs, and if they did, how long did it take / what did you do?

No the sites never came back. The problem was not with the site wide links after all which I stated in an earlier post. The problem was with links created using AMR and ALN. After several reconsideration requests Google sent me an email explaining exactly what was wrong and pointing to several examples, some AMR links and some ALN links.

They told me I had to make a 'substantial effort' to clean up the links before they would lift the penalty. It was quicker and easier to just start again! The domains kept their PR so I added them to ALN and free blog links in exchange for more backlinks. :-)

I consider myself very experienced when it comes to Google penalties, I've certainly had my fair share of them, in response to both on page and off page factors. I like to test and push the boundaries both on and off page and I believe I've now got it down to a fine art !!!

There's an awful lot of bad advice and plain BS on this and other Forums, and anyone who tells you that you can't get a penalty from backlinking is talking complete codswollop.

I no longer use any automated software to link to my money site. Instead I use various types of buffer sites. I use more automated software than I've ever used in the past including the recently released Extreme Wiki Poster which is the real deal and I love it, but I never link direct to my money site. I am however seeing some pretty spectacular results.

What you have to watch out for is an UNATURAL LINK PROFILE. This is what Google told me I had. Nothing to do with the quantity of links, strength of links or type of links. But it was because of UNATURAL looking links. If you've got 6k links all coming from one source only that's pretty unatural looking right?

Link diversity and no automation direct to the money site. This is what's working for me now.

Also, were your sites tanked for a single keyword or did you lose rank for all keywords? I noticed in the thread your theory was that google punishes individual pages for individual keywords, but it almost sounds as if your sites tanked for everything

All keywords. They were sitewide penalties.

[abock]

You can take down a website by backlinking, period.

Nevertheless, you wouldn't want to do it to your competitor's websites as you might be better to just do proper backlinking to your own site.

my 2 cents

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by neil_patmore

No the sites never came back. The problem was not with the site wide links after all which I stated in an earlier post. The problem was with links created using AMR and ALN. After several reconsideration requests Google sent me an email explaining exactly what was wrong and pointing to several examples, some AMR links and some ALN links.

They told me I had to make a 'substantial effort' to clean up the links before they would lift the penalty.

Neil Sorry to hear that you never got the rankings back but thank you very much for the update. Took a long time to resolve this thread but with your update I think any reasonable person can come to the conclusion that links can and do hurt sites. There will always be those in denial and who believe and insist otherwise (I suspect we'll soon hear that its all a google conspiracy) but the evidence is at this point overwhelming with you and so many others getting penalties and having those penalties explained.

[4morereferrals]

After several reconsideration requests Google sent me an email explaining exactly what was wrong and pointing to several examples, some AMR links and some ALN links.

They told me I had to make a 'substantial effort' to clean up the links before they would lift the penalty. It was quicker and easier to just start again! The domains kept their PR so I added them to ALN and free blog links in exchange for more backlinks. :-)

Couple things here too ...

some peeps would also 301 the old domains to a new one and pass all the PR and link juice - and most times - no penalties flow thru ...

As well another strategy may be to use short urls that can be re directed at will - like a firehose.

so if you tagged all your AMR style links thru a handful of redirectable short urls - and google tells you bad boy - point them at competitor A for a while - then remove - over optimization penalties - too man links to quick and unnatural penalties then remove and link decay algo drama for competitor A - just sayin then ya could point them at Wikipedia - and trickle them back to your pumper sites

[patco]

I am curious if this is really working. Recently I tried to blast more than 25,000 comments to an article page just to check if the rankings will go down ... and nothing similar ... The ranking is now BETTER!!! When will this affect the ranking???

[neil_patmore]

Neil Sorry to hear that you never got the rankings back but thank you very much for the update. Took a long time to resolve this thread but with your update I think any reasonable person can come to the conclusion that links can and do hurt sites. There will always be those in denial and who believe and insist otherwise (I suspect we'll soon hear that its all a google conspiracy) but the evidence is at this point overwhelming with you and so many others getting penalties and having those penalties explained.

Hi Mike, thanks! I learnt a great deal with these sites so no worries there. You are right though, there's always going to be those that disagree, no matter the evidence laid before them!

some peeps would also 301 the old domains to a new one and pass all the PR and link juice - and most times - no penalties flow thru ...

As well another strategy may be to use short urls that can be re directed at will - like a firehose.

so if you tagged all your AMR style links thru a handful of redirectable short urls - and google tells you bad boy - point them at competitor A for a while - then remove - over optimization penalties - too man links to quick and unnatural penalties then remove and link decay algo drama for competitor A - just sayin then ya could point them at Wikipedia - and trickle them back to your pumper sites

yeah I didn't want to 301 redirect just in case the penalty was passed over. I've talked to people on both sides of the coin about this recently - those where the penalty wasn't passed and those where it was. I decided against it just in case. Your short url strategy is an interesting thought though, I may look into this one, thanks.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by patco

I am curious if this is really working. Recently I tried to blast more than 25,000 comments to an article page just to check if the rankings will go down ... and nothing similar ... The ranking is now BETTER!!! When will this affect the ranking???

It may or it may not. People get the idea that because you CAN tank some sites with links that you will be able to tank all sites or pages in all serps. Its going to depend on a number of variables - does the site have a good quantity of solid natural looking and high authority links as well? What s the percentage of "scuzzy" links to to good links? is there good competition in the keyword niche? Where did the page rank before the link blast? Is the page in question even ranking anywhere to get a significat portion of traffic? (if it isn't then no one is likely to report you because you don't matter). Are you ina serp where everyone is using the unnatural links?

So an increase in rankings as opposed to penalties is going to be all a matter of those variables.

[neil_patmore]

I am curious if this is really working. Recently I tried to blast more than 25,000 comments to an article page just to check if the rankings will go down ... and nothing similar ... The ranking is now BETTER!!! When will this affect the ranking???

For some reason I don't find blog comments effective in this context. Although if you give me the url I'll happily fire a 70k blast at it just for fun!