Google starts de-indexing many blog networks!

[GeorgR.]

This is BAD news since many people are using blog-networks - and many people make GOOD money selling their blog network services. (Namely BMR, articleranks, seolinkvine, ALN just to name a few)

Google started to get really TOUGH and is starting to de-index many of those blogs.

It's allover certain forums where people report how their blogs which are part of a blog-network getting de-indexed. Means sooner or later those network will be worthless.

A typical blog-network blog..the ones i see getting DEIDX dont have any privacy policy, terms, contact etc... they look all low quality.

I think that blogs which are part of blog networks who have privacy policy, contact us, terms etc. have a better chance to not get hit. But that's just a guess. (Even a blog in a network solely for the purpose of featuring content from others in the network CAN be high quality)

Please report your findings - this s pretty drastic in terms of SEO!

[blinkseo]

I'm just about to finish a trial with BMR. Do you think it's worth signing up, or has its moment passed?

[patrich]

Which networks are you seeing get deindexed GeorgR? I have seen one private network go down, but not any others.

[mattlaclear]

Ho hum...we have just as many page one rankings coming in as we always have. We have seen no evidence whatsoever in our own business backing up the assertions being made by OP.

[onepace]

I'm still new to the scene, but I can vouch that Matt is saying is true, as I've used his links on a site and they are still holding.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

Google started to get really TOUGH and is starting to de-index many of those blogs.

It's allover certain forums where people report how their blogs which are part of a blog-network getting de-indexed. Means sooner or later those network will be worthless.

Yo george you need to give us a bit more than that

A few links might help but yes as constructed many blog networks are destined to be deindexed at some point especially with spun gibberish content and multiple links and content on the same page. Blog network owners know how easy it is to happen so they try and hide their networks but when you are renting or selling out space in mass to whoever gives you a few dollars its pretty easy to find and then trace a network.

this is one (of many reasons) you really don't see blog networks of that kind playing a bit part in many really competitive serps. They are constructed in ways that make them easy to spot and if they ever do help a site rank and knock another really great money making site out of first place the competitors can report it and deep six a good block of the network.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by onepace

I'm still new to the scene, but I can vouch that Matt is saying is true, as I've used his links on a site and they are still holding.

OP never stated all networks were at this time deindexed.

[36burrows]

Absolute bull as far as I'm concerned.

It takes more proof than "It's all over certain forums"

[GeorgR.]

You think that the blog-network which charges $100 per month or more will openly announce when half its blogs get deindexed? Especially since no-one knows what blogs are actually in such a network.

I don't have all the wisdom at this point, but according to SOME people "on forums" Google already "nuked" 3 such high PR blog networks this month.

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS, this is from reading around as well as talking to someone who operates such a blog network:

1) on-site factors MIGHT play a role (as i said above, there are indications).....
2) posting frequency + wild variety of subjects on such blogs
3) KNOWN IPs of so called "SEO HOSTERS" <---

So called "private blog networks" naturally might be in highest danger especially if they use hosts where google knows and tracks their IP.

Don't call what i say "BS", i am just repeating what i read.

Testing other networks i am in might not be too easy, it would require to keep track/record all the trackbacks and then make a list what blogs are in the network, collect a number of them (like 100s) and then test them in scrapebox whether the blogs are still indexed.

It is LIKELY that natural blog-networks (all with diverse IPs) are better off..which would include networks like ALN, articleranks, seolv, BMR (i think?)....but if Google goes after the suspicious on-site factors then also such networks would not be safe!

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

I don't have all the wisdom at this point, but according to SOME people "on forums" Google already "nuked" 3 such high PR blog networks this month.

Well could we have the forum links? This is the only thread coming up for anything recent. Not everyone is saying BS. We just want some links

[GeorgR.]

One is a thread on BHW and i am sure i am not allowed to link to other webmaster forums, especially not some where they talk about BH stuff

The thread is about someone having to shut his service since his network was deindexed, with one person replying "its already the 3rd network THIS MONTH". There is not much more information. It's very recent.

The other information is from direct talks with someone who operates a network and my own testing of blogs IN THIS PARTICULAR network. Needless to say i am unable to name the network - however i know that the owner is working on fixing this problem.

[lukemeister]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

A typical blog-network blog..the ones i see getting DEIDX dont have any privacy policy, terms, contact etc... they look all low quality.

I think this is the key line right here - shoddy sites are getting deindexed. This is nothing new really, is it?

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

The other information is from direct talks with someone who operates a network and my own testing of blogs IN THIS PARTICULAR network. Needless to say i am unable to name the network - however i know that the owner is working on fixing this problem.

I got you. It happens all the time though so I don't know if those two represent a new wave of crackdowns.

[patrich]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I got you. It happens all the time though so I don't know if those two represent a new wave of crackdowns.

I believe the network he is referring to is the same one that I discussed in the thread here in WF that was about ranking for a competitive term like car insurance or something. The $200/month high pr network.

It was deindexed and the people that run it posted on another forum that they believe it was deindexed because they were using the same name servers for the domains in the network. So, Google removed everything pointing to those name servers.

So, as you said, definitely not a wave of blog networks going down, but rather a network going down based on a poor choice of configurations. Will be interesting to see what happens to that "car insurance" site now.

*edit* It wasn't car insurance, it was the network referred to in this thread Number 1 on Google For the hardest keyword on earth in 2 months ?? HOW DO THEY DO IT ??

[MikeFriedman]

Wow. So that site owner and that network potentially got screwed because of someone outing them here.

[MaverickUK]

I'm still waiting for someone to name even just one of these blog networks and besides, these networks that are getting taken out of Google's index are probably crappy spun garbage that shouts put to Google "hey I'm a load of crap, I'm not relevant to your search engine, please remove me".

I'm glad this is happening, it sorts the noobs from the professionals in the blog network world.

[patrich]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

Wow. So that site owner and that network potentially got screwed because of someone outing them here.

No, according to the thread the owner(s) posted on another forum the network was deindexed on the 4th of this month, which was before that thread here was even posted.

My guess is that they just had too many footprints and google found a way to link their blogs together and wiped them out.

[GeorgR.]

Yes of course there are ways to find out..its SCARILY easy.

I already pointed out the above on-site criteria which are suspicious, then of course things like "seo hosting" IPs, same nameservers etc...this is all obvious.

But besides those things that....yes there are ways to directly find out which blogs are in networks.

The fact that a number of people reporting THIS MONTH that some networks got deindexed leads me to believe that they (Google) are actively going against those networks.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by patrich

*edit* It wasn't car insurance, it was the network referred to in this thread Number 1 on Google For the hardest keyword on earth in 2 months ?? HOW DO THEY DO IT ??

That IS interesting but if it was deindexed way back on the fourth and that was what was holding up the results then how come its still there unaffected.

[patrich]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

Yes of course there are ways to find out..its SCARILY easy.

I already pointed out the above on-site criteria which are suspicious, then of course things like "seo hosting" IPs, same nameservers etc...this is all obvious.

But besides those things that....yes there are ways to directly find out which blogs are in networks.

The fact that a number of people reporting THIS MONTH that some networks got deindexed leads me to believe that they (Google) are actively going against those networks.

Well I think that Google is always actively looking for networks of this type and removing them. Especially, when the network starts to make a little bit of a name for itself or is getting better than average results for the people using it.

The problem I see with a lot of these networks, is that the owners are so concerned with finding high pr domains, etc., that they overlook important factors like network security. Reducing footprints, putting sites on different servers, using different name servers, changing the themes and so on.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

Yes of course there are ways to find out..its SCARILY easy.

I already pointed out the above on-site criteria which are suspicious, then of course things like "seo hosting" IPs, same nameservers etc...this is all obvious.

I don't think it goes into all of that. I have a site or two at site5. They are huge with datacenters all over the world and many of the accounts use the same nameservers. So even though I don't do any networks on them everybody on them would be hit by one person doing something scuzzy.

But like you said its really easy . You can spot a normal blog network a mile off by the amount of links and diverse content and subjects. I do feel for blog network owners who would like to do it better with less clients but people don't want to pay for quality especially in the IM niche so you end up loading a ton load of links and really oddly combined content and its a dead giveaway.

[patrich]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

That IS interesting but if it was deindexed way back on the fourth and that was what was holding up the results then how come its still there unaffected.

I remember looking at the backlink profile for that site in the thread mentioned and they were using other networks as well, BMR or Linkvana and so on. That may be helping to stabilize their rankings.

I also believe, and this is just an assumption, that there is probably some sort of grace period when your backlinks fall off before google takes action towards lowering your serps, although I may be completely wrong. lol Or, maybe that high pr network just didn't have the power that people thought it did.

I am definitely going to watch that site now though, because I know that a good hundred to two hundred or so, of the backlinks they had were on the network that was deindexed.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

That IS interesting but if it was deindexed way back on the fourth and that was what was holding up the results then how come its still there unaffected.

I was wondering that too. I just went and looked and saw it is still #1.

Doesn't seem like much of a slap to me. I don't want to take the time to run it through SpyGlass again and see if all the links are still there.

[patrich]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I don't think it goes into all of that. I have a site or two at site5. They are huge with datacenters all over the world and many of the accounts use the same nameservers. So even though I don't do any networks on them everybody on them would be hit by one person doing something scuzzy.

But like you said its really easy . You can spot a normal blog network a mile off by the amount of links and diverse content and subjects. I do feel for blog network owners who would like to do it better with less clients but people don't want to pay for quality especially in the IM niche so you end up loading a ton load of links and really oddly combined content and its a dead giveaway.

Hey Mike, I have a question for you and this is based purely on your signature and some of the posts you have made in regards to running private networks.

Wouldn't it make more sense to drip content without promotional links to each of the sites in the network, to lessen the appearance of it being a "network"? I mean, in these networks, every post has one or two links that go to a site, it become pretty obvious. But if everytime someone posted an article it was followed by one or two articles that didn't have links, it would seemingly avoid that appearance of being used for promotional purposes only, correct?

Just seems like that would be an easy solution for network owners.

[TheFBGuy]

Example of a blog on a network for those who don't know: emortgageafterbankruptcy[dot]com

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by patrich

Wouldn't it make more sense to drip content without promotional links to each of the sites in the network, to lessen the appearance of it being a "network"? I mean, in these networks, every post has one or two links that go to a site, it become pretty obvious. But if everytime someone posted an article it was followed by one or two articles that didn't have links, it would seemingly avoid that appearance of being used for promotional purposes only, correct?

Just seems like that would be an easy solution for network owners.

But how much could you really space them out so at some page someone doesn't see a pile of links? Google doesn't have to look over the whole site to tell what is going on it just has to land on one page that tells them. Honestly the best way to avoid all of this is have a few links per page but that means the blog network is probably going to have to charge you more because it has less people to make the money from.

Thats why some people just build their own for REALLY private networks (to rank their own sites or a few others willing to pay decent money). Once you start taking on hundred if not thousands of customers it becomes really impossible to facilitate all those keywords and subjects without looking fishy. Frankly these network owners have to build into their expenses that domains are going to get deindexed.

[MaverickUK]

Mike to be honest i think you think Google is much more clever than it actually is. Yes, it's smart and its algorithms are great, but they're not perfect and it certainly isn't going to be able to figure out a website based on a single page i'm almost certain of that - there's simply too much to consider for it to be able to draw a conclusion on such little information.

[patrich]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

But how much could you really space them out so at some page someone doesn't see a pile of links? Google doesn't have to look over the whole site to tell what is going on it just has to land on one page that tells them. Honestly the best way to avoid all of this is have a few links per page but that means the blog network is probably going to have to charge you more because it has less people to make the money from.

Thats why some people just build their own for REALLY private networks (to rank their own sites or a few others willing to pay decent money). Once you start taking on hundred if not thousands of customers it becomes really impossible to facilitate all those keywords and subjects without looking fishy. Frankly these network owners have to build into their expenses that domains are going to get deindexed.

Good points, adding filler/dripped content wouldn't make the network "undetectable" but it might lessen the negative side effects of having every post look exactly the same in terms of one outgoing link, etc.

I think, ideally, you could have a high pr home page, which has static content and links to the internal category pages so that is passes pr down to those cat. pages. So you would have health, beauty, marketing, home and family and so forth.

Then the variety of topics being posted, would be relevant to the pages that they are showing on in their respective categories. So it would be similar to an article directory structure. And then randomly post(via a script) articles that do not have links in them to each of the categories to flush them out and make each category look more natural.

I have used a lot of blog networks, they all have one thing in common, they look like a crappy blog network. But if you build each site and make them look like high quality sites, a variety of content some with links and some without, then the network would probably last much longer.

I might even go as far as to insert random author bio's at the bottom of the posts, the same way you see them on mainstream blogs. Make them appear as though they were written by a "guest poster" rather than a guy submitting crap through the control panel of a blog network.

Am I walking down the wrong path here, because it seems like an ideal situation in my mind.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by patrich

I think, ideally, you could have a high pr home page, which has static content and links to the internal category pages so that is passes pr down to those cat. pages. So you would have health, beauty, marketing, home and family and so forth.

Ah now you are thinking good stuff. I am actually building a network just like that and to boot it will all be based on quality content giving google EXACTLY what they want instead of fighting against them. However I haven't talked about it much here because i don't know - IMers tend to want to pay a few dollars and be done with it without thinking about lasting effect , real quality etc.

I know markets outside of here will pay for a system that gives them links with real on page Pr or just one hop away links (passing real but not immediately showing in the PR bar link juice) THAT WON"T ROLL OFF those pages but I don't know that Imers would go for it. Thats why I say I feel for blog network owners in the IM niche.

You seem to understand about PR being passed to internal pages with a good navigational setup even one hop/link away from a page with PR but I am not sure enough would understand that value.

[mark@1to101]

The problem is that most of these 'private' networks aren't really that private at all. They advertise exactly what they do and let anyone sign up.

Any network that does that could be de-indexed at any time, regardless of whether they use different IPs for the sites, hide their WHOIS info, etc.

A network can cover up their footprints as much as they want, but if they then widely advertise their service, on forums such as this especially, then it's extremely easy for Google to track down the sites.

Obviously, all Google would have to do is have to do is sign up for the service, submit some content, and track where the articles get published. They don't need to be super smart to do that.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by MaverickUK

Mike to be honest i think you think Google is much more clever than it actually is. Yes, it's smart and its algorithms are great, but they're not perfect and it certainly isn't going to be able to figure out a website based on a single page i'm almost certain of that

Maverick I was not talking about the algo. When these sites are deindexed like this a lot of the time its a manual deindexation where a human looks at it not an algo penalty. I don't know of a algo that automatically deindexes domains. All it takes is a link spam report that a human being follows up and yes a human can figure out in less than ten seconds if looking at the right page.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by mark@1to101

A network can cover up their footprints as much as they want, but if they then widely advertise their service, on forums such as this especially, then it's extremely easy for Google to track down the sites.

Obviously, all Google would have to do is have to do is sign up for the service, submit some content, and track where the articles get published. They don't need to be super smart to do that.

theres the rub but it really doesn't take Google signing up. All that needs to happen is one site owner that has lost position checks the backlinks of a page he lost out to that is ranking by the blog network and then click a link spam report and the network could start getting domains deindexed shortly after (but not every report is followed up on)

[patrich]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Ah now you are thinking good stuff. I am actually building a network just like that and to boot it will all be based on quality content giving google EXACTLY what they want instead of fighting against them. However I haven't talked about it much here because i don't know - IMers tend to want to pay a few dollars and be done with it without thinking about lasting effect , real quality etc.

I know markets outside of here will pay for a system that gives them links with real on page Pr or just one hop away links (passing real but not immediately showing in the PR bar link juice) THAT WON"T ROLL OFF those pages but I don't know that Imers would go for it. Thats why I say I feel for blog network owners in the IM niche.

You seem to understand about PR being passed to internal pages with a good navigational setup even one hop/link away from a page with PR but I am not sure enough would understand that value.

You are right, I doubt many people here would see the value in a network that didn't have the page pr. Personally, I have been looking for a network like this for several years but they are few and far between.

I would pay a hefty price tag for it too. Of course an advantage to less people finding value in it would be less newbs damaging the integrity of the blogs, but it would also mean less money for the network owner.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by patrich

You are right, I doubt many people here would see the value in a network that didn't have the page pr. .

Funny isn't it especially when you consider there are thriving networks out there that do mention their Pr but your post and links slide right off those pages into oblivion. However with your permission I will Pm you when I am ready to go.

[patrich]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Funny isn't it especially when you consider there are thriving networks out there that do mention their Pr but your post and links slide right off those pages into oblivion. However with your permission I will Pm you when I am ready to go.

Please do send me a pm when its ready, I would love to get in on it. In fact, if you ever need someone to bounce ideas around with while you are getting it setup, feel free to shoot me a message. I have been meaning to set something like this up for years, but never manage to find the time, so I am sure I have some ideas floating around in my head somewhere.

[DPM70]

Interesting thread. I think it tends to support the idea that bounce rate is becoming more a feature of the algo. You can try to game the system (all backlink methods - including private blog networks) and might get away with it as long as longer term stats show that visitors from diverse IPs are staying on your site. As a few have commented - that particular site has not YET been penalised for the drop in indexed backlinks. Actually, has anyone yet confimed the deindexing of that blog network or seen a noticeable drop in counted backlinks due to this in any tool?

[patrich]

Originally Posted by DPM70

Interesting thread. I think it tends to support the idea that bounce rate is becoming more a feature of the algo. You can try to game the system (all backlink methods - including private blog networks) and might get away with it as long as longer term stats show that visitors from diverse IPs are staying on your site. As a few have commented - that particular site has not YET been penalised for the drop in indexed backlinks. Actually, has anyone yet confimed the deindexing of that blog network or seen a noticeable drop in counted backlinks due to this in any tool?

Of course, I have verified that the blog network they were using has been deindexed, pretty sure I said that already.

But you could also just pull the domain up in Yahoo site explorer and analyze a few of the backlinks on the first page of the results. You can easily see that many of the links are deindexed with a simple "site:" search in Google.

Most of the tools won't show the drop in backlinks to the site, because most of them still pull their backlink data from YSE and the blog network is not deindexed in Y, its deindexed in G.

[rimam1]

Not sure this is true, but if so, it was only ever a matter of time.

[aa411853]

Guys, I cannot speak for other networks, but the sites we've had deindexed over the last year have more to do with dns/hosting issues then the fact that Google has sniffed us out so to speak. There's no common pattern and it's happened with older sites with hundreds of posts and new sites with dozens of posts. Our first site was deindexed 14-15 mos ago, so if Google had truly "found" our network they would've deindexed the whole thing way before now!

As a % of our total network we're talking about maybe 3% of sites that have been deindexed spread out over a period of 12 months. So not much, and I consider it a cost of doing business. When it happens we disable the site, keep adding new domains, and move on. In many cases moving the site to new hosting, and building some links has resulted in the site being reindexed after a period of weeks. Other sites are more stubborn.

What I've done with a sampling of these sites is create a unique Google Webmaster Tools accounts, and each time the errors that I see are related to timeout errors, dns lookups, etc.. No messages or anything that would lead one to believe that they have been deindexed for poor content or any other reason.

The problem with a network like this is folks are always trying to post comments, scrape content, etc. So over the last few months, we've been constantly tweaking things. Removing unneeded scripts such as the comment poster, and tightening our firewall policies. Ultimately our goal is to make sure the sites are available for the search engine bots first. Otherwise if we've got some spammer scraping a selection of our sites over 100s of connections when the googlebot is trying to download a page it's going to be slow to load, if at all, and we all know that Google will only try to load a page so many times before it either moves on or deindexes the site.

Any how just thought I'd share my two cents for what it's worth.

[Fernando Veloso]

Firstly,

Google admitted they are Penalizing sites, either automatically or manually: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Reconsideration requests get more transparent

Now I want to see the usual ignorants say again: "there aren't Google penalties". Know what? Your credibility is now ZERO.

Secondly, these blog networks can and will be nuked - but there are NOW other methods to kick G in the butt. People just have to be creative about it. The rat race is not over - and Google is always running in circles. Wanna bet profiles/comments/on page or socialmedia will be back full power soon?

Mark this post and check in 2 months.

Thirdly: I don't wish any harm to anyone in here BUT some people in this forum REALLY should get "penalized" or "filtered" or whatever by Google, so they can shut their loud talking mouth for good. I am dead tired of ignorants and sales pitchers.

You know who you are.

Fernando

[outwest]

I have yet to see anyone post proof that an entire network was deindexed
I have seen people say, well I checked my backlinks with so and so network and 5 blogs were deindexed (or domains)

big deal. Thats nothing
Where is the proof that entire networks have been deindexed? name the network>?

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by outwest

Where is the proof that entire networks have been deindexed? name the network>?

Wait. You seriously think that a network is going to announce that their domains have been deindexed? Thats not how it works my man. These site s make good money. They are not going to make an announcement and most of the time their users are not going to see an immediate effect. Since most links are on no authority pages you can buy some domains setup hosting and replace within a few hours. Replace PR domains over time.

Now I doubt that Google will really take the time to hunt down every domain on a network but you can lose good chunks at a time.

[piinc]

I was thinking of buying Digi Article Blaster. This does not sound good.

Thoughts?

[Mrsparrow]

I can't speak for others but I had a PR4 site in the ALN network and it got totally deindexed by google and PR4 became PR n/a. Doing "site:" and "info:" searches did not bring any results.

The site had a lot of bad content on it posted by other users. The articles barely made sense and they were largely duplicate content which could be found on many other sites.

Furthermore, a few days ago when I was checking the backinks of one of my competitors I saw that many of them came from a blog network (I don't know which one). Although the links were still showing in yahoo link explorer, all of the sites had PR n/a and searches "site:" and "info:" did not bring any results.

[linda009]

Originally Posted by Mrsparrow

I can't speak for others but I had a PR4 site in the ALN network and it got totally deindexed by google and PR4 became PR n/a. Doing "site:" and "info:" searches did not bring any results.

The site had a lot of bad content on it posted by other users. The articles barely made sense and they were largely duplicate content which could be found on many other sites.

Furthermore, a few days ago when I was checking the backinks of one of my competitors I saw that many of them came from a blog network (I don't know which one). Although the links were still showing in yahoo link explorer, all of the sites had PR n/a and searches "site:" and "info:" did not bring any results.

Really it is great one to have PR 4 site. Even I am having the same but not able to get PR still.

[Clyde]

The only similarity between all the networks that got deindexed is they all run on spun content.

Networks that only accept unique content should be safe, for now.

Don't lump up BMR with the other crappy networks please.

[stasin]

I was always led to belive that blogging networks are great for backlinking

[Ettienne]

Originally Posted by Clyde

The only similarity between all the networks that got deindexed is they all run on spun content.

Networks that only accept unique content should be safe, for now.

Don't lump up BMR with the other crappy networks please.

I believe you're right on this one, I have several pages all using different networks as sort of a personal study I'm doing, and one of my sites using an older (won't mention names, but was VERY popular a while back) blog network got nearly ALL keywords sandboxed.

These are KWs that were on page 1 for nearly a year! On the 26th (Feb), BAM! All pretty much gone, dropping 500-700 spots! That's crazy, but it's obviously the low quality spun articles that was blasted all over the place.

It was one of my first sites so I've never really touched it, but these major drops hurt quite a bit. After having about 11 KWs on page 1 and 19 on page 2, I now only have ONE KW in the top TEN PAGES. This happened alright.

Luckily my other sites are unaffected since my SEO skills improved since creating this 1st sandboxed site, but it still sucks. My rankings on this old site have started moving up slowly but moving from #598 to #514 in 3 days (of doing nothing btw) is nothing to cheer about.

[TinaYi74]

It was only a matter of time before this happened.

Though the networks are effective, they should only be one aspect of your SEO campaign.

Too many people rely too heavily on these networks that.

[piinc]

I've noticed many of my BMR links drop dramatically lately. This explains it. Is anyone else with BMR experiencing the same thing?