BMR GONE-is it a blessing?

I have avoided most of the networks that got hit for a while now, but I only thought of the upside when I read this post. Might have to take a look at my stats!

My traffic has nearly doubled as all the spammers with poor sites are loosing ranking. I'm elated.

"If you having blog problems I feel bad for you son.
I got 99 problems but a niche ain't 1"

Love it.

High PR blog networks are great. It almost feels like cheating it is so easy to rank with them. But it all has to be part of balanced approach.

I think this is a massive blessing for those that DON'T rely on such public networks as ALN and BMR.

They leave a huge footprint due to lax rules by the network owners and operators.

Too early to celebrate. Google is rolling out more major changes in coming weeks. I'm also seeing record traffic but also have sites go down. The benefits of a lot of sites. Not jumping up and down...yet.

Sad that they're gone now. Google is watching us and pushing us to right direction. Somewhat a blessing for all of us.

I have not noticed any activity yet. I hope this time they do not hit so hard.

Its always better to go whitehat and manual way, atleast we will remain future proof

just the like any thing in this world good and bad will prevail. So they will come back with some thing new, yes for now - It is OK. Just take this small opportunity to build your site , Do not sit with it . Work Harder...

ok.. what do you consider whitehat in the first place? when I come to think about it, all SEO is black hat!! creating any type of links are used to manipulate search engines whether its a web 2.0, buying links, blogs, forums, etc.

In fact, white hat means doing nothing but ONLY super-duper content and waiting people to link to you..

So stop saying you're doing white hat... u just ain't caught yet, and when you do, its now black hat.

I' used ALN for most of my sites and though they have dropped, I don't feel bad about using them. My clients pay for results and using a network is an ends to a mean as well as any other form of SEO. I agree with rodanglee that there is very little that is pure white hat, most everything is at the best some form of gray hat.

Possibly. Some will definitely benefit from its shutting down.

Come on now, were you REALLY surprised?

WOoooooooooooooooo...i just wanted to start learning about them BMR and using it... and they are gone...!

A 100% 'white hat' approach would be to keep adding content and focus only on on-page SEO. If you follow this rule, you might not rank at all.

Guess it is both a blessing and a lesson. For those who used it as their main link building it is a lesson to make sure your link profile is as diverse as possible (if you had done this then you will see a negligable effect of the deindexing). For SEO companies using them, shame on you :p

For those who did not really use it much then it probably will be a bonus for those sites dropping around them.

A few points.

1. The deindexing of blog networks has hit a few of the leading ones, but not all and not completely. No doubt people will figure out a way to adjust to the new update and benefit from this again. (indeed I'm already doing some of that with my own network.

2. Yes, some will benefit from this almost by definition as what they are using is still in place, and others will benefit from a future Google Slap of something you may be using.

3. I was at a SEO seminar with Tor Black and he was very quick (and frequent) to remind us that by Google's definition ANYTHING we do off of our own sites is Black Hat as it is an effort to manipulate their rankings. Google would like for their results to be the end result of what happens naturally online as people other than site owners and professional SEO folks bookmark, comment and interact on social sites about other people's sites. Of course they don't think that about their own stuff as they manipulate things to their benefit constantly. But you have to look at Google like Facebook. It's their ballgame so we either play by their (ever changing) rules, or go find a new game.

No one benefits here... We are brought face to face with the fact that we are quite powerless on the whims of Google.

I am honestly surprised that it took this long for Google to de-index these sites. I mean, how tough would it be for Google to open an account on any of these networks, post their own articles, and know exactly which sites participate in the networks?

I've noticed a boost in rankings today as well... Cool!

James Scholes