High PR Society Busted

You could well be right - with 700,000 penalty messages going out to GWMT accounts in Feb, Google probably received quite a few confessions.

I have enough evidence on my hard drive to give Google at least 15,000 blog network URL's!!

Yep. the number one error people are running around now for no reason at all is that deindexing is an update to the algo. Deindexing is almost always a manual process that is different from the algo. If deindexing were the algo then all sites being crawled would be hit around the same time but we have seen one network go under the radar for a while then another while others are untouched and then another.

Problem for the rental networks is rather than innovate just about every network has been setup up the same copy cat way with just slight differences between them. So by now google probably does have a fairly streamlined way of outing and deindexing them.


LOL - not many things recently have surprised me but it does surprise me that they are being that flat out obvious However it does underline the point made above. it they were deindexing algo wise they wouldn't need that information.

Totally agree here Yukon, if people actually reply then they are just idiots. All it takes is to say I used local company (made up name) seo services and not sure what they used and they will not tell me, they have confirmed they have removed the links they could blah blah and then see what happens.

But this has been a big scare tactic and a lot have not seen the penalty.

There is also the thought that they got lots of scared people giving out URLs and then assessed them manually and then created some kind of algo to identify and deindexed these domains?? Who really knows though hey ?!

This claim of google using webmaster tool reports to track down blog networks is way overblown though. The only way you are giving Google links they don't already have is if the links were not indexed. Google has the best backlink checker in the world that sees 100% of the links that figure into ranking on Google.

So about half of all the "SEO" warriors?

A blog network they control, thats even more blissfull... Forget money you spent renting or buy a few links...how would you like to waste Tens of thousands of dollars building a network that "You control" and have it nuked. We talked to a Private network owner and he used his network ONLY for himself and look what happened to him.


Private Network Owner "J"
- Fully private network of over 2000 sites. Only he posted on the network.
- Content was average quality.
- Lost 90% around a month ago.

As "J" lost his network, we compared notes. At the time, Our network was staying alive while his was getting destroyed. As it turns out, we were both using SEOHosting.com. We both had multiple servers with them and we noticed that his servers were getting taken down one by one. We had overlap with him on one server, and that server had around 50% deindexing for us. That day we moved hosting and locked things down and everything has been great for a month.

I just wanted to make a few points if I may...

1. Not all of those messages were about "unnatural links detected". So it's definitely less than 700k.

2. It makes no difference how many, they apply the penalties automatically. The process of identifying link sources is done semi-manually (by locating networks/sites), then they just follow the links and apply penalties to websites. There's absolutely no need for Google employees to manually penalize each and every account site.

3. I know at least 20+ people who got messages for anywhere from 1 to 20 websites and most of them have been hit by now (I'd say around 80%). Those who haven't been hit yet all got the messages not that long ago. For me personally it took exactly one week from receiving a message on two different websites (I don't have many sites linked though).

So yes, it is a scare tactic, but it is being fuelled forward by pretty harsh penalties all around. That's why it works so well.

Another thing (and why Google are OK with applying so many penalties) - the penalties expire over time. They de-index bad/spam blogs and the links naturally disappear. Over time, all of the penalized sites come back to their respective positions.

And more importantly, this proves that blog networks DO work and that they CAN NOT CURRENTLY be addressed by the algo - if they could, google wouldn't be doing all of this manual de-indexing.

This is good news for people willing to invest in their own private networks.

content is the king, but now "social media" is the king

This makes perfect sense and I have no doubt that the intellectuals at Google have instituted a system that involves a great deal of automation. It may even be close to your line of thought.

The problem I have with your theory is that sites are not recovering and if the "bad links" as you put it are actually been removed by Google themselves (through deindexing) then the penalty should resolve fairly quickly. Why are people's sites not recovering?

Remember these messages were going out to people from last year and from what I have read (no solid proof) many of these penalties have not been lifted.

Lastly, Mike did mention in a reply earlier that G probably has a way of outing a network by now with all the data they have collected recently. So the future of the conventional type blog network may be dead. It can be something as simple as: Worpress + High Posting Frequency = Red Flag - Check!

With that said do we agree that the deindexing of the network itself has to be done manually, or risk deindexing real sites if is an automated process?

I'm now wondering whether they actually used the WMT message as a scare tactic to find the networks or whether it was actually an agorithmic process that helped uncover the network. Seeing that the messages in WMT are actually been received after the deindexing of the network I guess the latter now makes more sense. :confused:

Receiving an email from Google coinciding with all of your rankings vanish is enough to scare most people. If your rankings vanish there's nothing to lose from requesting reconsideration which is when google asks you for as much info about the paid links as possible.

If google stick to this game, Private Blog Networks will never work because there will always be site owners ready to spill the beans if and when they receive a penalty. Considering these changes I think blog networks are 100% dead unless you alone own it and keep it very secret and well maintained.

Link building now has to be done in way that blends in completely with natural links.

Did you read my post? I always knew that negative SEO is and was possible.

I am however saying that it would not be smart if Google now starts de-indexing target sites, simply because it would put this fact in to broad public spot light. But this can not be Google's intention - rumors have always been spread that negative Seo is not possible (and there is a reason those were spread because Google doesn't want this becoming general knowledge! The idea that negative SEO "is impossible" needs to be kept alive. Get it? What do you think happens if those alleged 700.000 webmasters who got the GWT love letter seeing their site penalized - 500.000 of those people might still believe negative SEo is not possible...but they might find out the truth once they realize it needs merely "some bad links" to blast a site into oblivion?)

For this reason, Google will NOT blindly start de-indexing/punishing target sites. (Why would they even need to with all those links lost now anyway?)

Please read my post again so you understand.

The problem here is that this means when you are in competition with someone, all you need to do then is to hit them up with some bad backlinks and they will get blasted. I've seen this done to sites before. Google had come to realize this and halted a lot of their de-indexing of sites for what amounted to exceptions to what was being done.

Quite a few blog network owners have said they can't find a common denominator across the networks hit but there is one common denominator - they were all used in link building schemes.

One of my sites used links from no less than 6 Private Blog Networks and if Google analysed my entire backlink profile because they found links from one network, there's a good chance they would discover the the other networks... Cross infection

Whatever google have developed behind the scenes it's hard to deny that they now have an effective way of discovering Private Blog Networks.

Sorry but this is

utterly and completely false

But before I answer that - my condolences on losing that arm of your business. However -


Several private networks are totally untouched and will continue to be untouched because very private networks can be made to look extremely natural even to the point of being natural in every way like a regular web site.

We all know why these networks were deindexed. IF the algo could take care of them there would be no reason for Google to deal with them. the algo would just nuke them. The fact that they were deindexed indicates Google wanted them out of the index entirely because the algo CAN NOT limit them if they remained. So google did not find a way of getting at all networks anymore than they could get at every site selling links or people buying them.


In order to knock out ALL networks Google would have to have the power of mind reading to know certain sites are linking for SEO reasons because the sites look. behave and even have traffic and users just like a regular site . I realize thats hard for a rental service provider to grasp or those who set their networks up like service rental providers but it is a fact. IF you said rental networks are dead and those who set their sites up just like them are dead then that would be true.

I have not found a single deindexed site yet in mine. But of course I do the unthinkable to a service rental provider or those that copy the rental networks lead - I have less than 8 links on my pages and I work the links into the theme of the site and the content is all original. I don't just link to SEO Sites but other non SEo target sites. Every day bloggers refer to various sites talking about all kinds of things but they make sense to what that blogger covers on their blog. People building networks got the idea it was some great cash machine and all you had to do was buy the domains scrape and spin content to them, autmate WP posting and Kabing - cash! Some network "Experts" even dropped several HIgh Pr sites on the same IP address . No one cared about security or that the pages ended up looking so incredibly obvious that the moment anyone on the network ranked for anything lucrative their competitor was going to report them for OBVIOUS rented links.

I have taught 50+ people from WF alone how to build networks and I have received no reports (none of them were renting out spots and publicly advertising their networks though ) from any of them. I am by no means claiming none of them ever will but there is a HUGE difference in how people build networks and you can't make a blanket statement like you just did to fool yourself and others that everyone is in the same boat.

I realize you have a vested interest to claim that its just the way things are why your network was deindexed because it might be painful to admit that some things were done wrong but the facts are there are vastly different ways of building networks and you did MANY THINGS wrong with your network

A) You and the network owners you are talking about spun like crazy. Your partner has already admitted that the private network owner he was referring to had 2,000 sites and spun like crazy to populate them.
B) Some Networks actively Solicited people in sales copy to post "garbage content" - thats a quote - not me making it up
C) you like most people building networks posted way too many links per page on way too many different subjects by way too many authors (who couldn't care less about the network itself) on sites that anyone here could identify as a network one second after viewing it
D) You put too many domains hosted on the same hosting company.

and quite a few more things wrong (eg. Your PR 5 and PR6s should have been used in a support fashion not directly to money sites)

So look I know things are rough now. I'm not writing this to dump on you. Its not nice to lose a business in one day like you have and I know that the human tendency when going through that is to not want to look at ways in which you could have averted it because that means you might have to admit you made mistakes - but you can't make the blanket statement you just did. Its false.

You will no doubt claim everyone will eventually get wiped out because you were but the reality is NOT ALL networks were or are built the way you built yours and the way everyone so far I have seen deindexed built theirs.

YES!!! Haha!!! Quote of the month!

HAHAHA Love it.

Man, you guys are going to LOVE what we have come up with. I'm really excited about it, its just not quite time to share it yet. But trust me, the game is far from over and things are about to get REALLY interesting!

How much do you offer them for a guest post? And is it a one time payment or monthly thing?

Most of then are posts. But they still gain PR over time and some even stay on the homepage for a month or more.

Not always. Look at some of the most popular blogs out there - they always link out with anchor text. You don't need loads of these. Just 5-10 posts can put you on page one for a $5/day Adsense keyword. Mix in your own network, some quality blog comments, a PR to one of your pages and some quality social bookmarking and you can hit position 1 for multiple keywords.

Ya... They messed up bad. I proved it to myself. You can too, find a thin longtail site and blast it. No way they can keep it like this. Destroy your competition WSO's coming soon...