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Google Penguin 2.1 penalizes do follow backlinks from blogs?

by alphabanter
12 replies
  • SEO
    • |
So one of the first analysis on Penguin 2.1 claims that Google now penalizes do follow backlinks from blogs:

hxxp://www.hmtweb.com/marketing-blog/penguin-2-1-analysis

Can anybody confirm this? If this is true, about half the backlink services offered in the Warriors to Hire forum are worthless because they are do follow blog packages that will damage your site's ranking.

This doesn't make any sense to me because 95% of blog owners out there probably don't even know the difference between follow and no-follow links and unless the blog software they are using by default sets links to no-follow, most blog owners probably just link normally, which is probably a do follow link.

Can anybody else confirm that Penguin 2.1 is indeed penalizing do follow blog backlinks?
#backlinks #blogs #follow #google #penalizes #penguin
  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    Pure garbage for two reasons

    A) Ton loads of well known bloggers with top ranking pages link followed to sites they recommend.log networks are blogs and those with good content and setup saw no drop

    B) Anytime you see an algo rollout on Friday and an alleged SEO claim to have it all figured out by Monday the one thing you can figure out is the SEO really isn't a good one. Since last Friday the one site on one keyword I had that got hit has regained over 60% of what it lost

    P.S. I use alot of blog fllowed links to many sites and no other site was affected except one site and only one keyword
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  • Profile picture of the author agadha
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    • Profile picture of the author PBScott
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  • Profile picture of the author streetpipscom
    Well if it is true we have nothing to worry about because mostly of the blogs today are no follow.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lokahi
    If that were true then even the big dogs of internet shopping like QVC and Amazon would get taken down as they are regularly linked to (with do follow/no follow links) by 'helpful' bloggers who are talking about their daily deals.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Originally Posted by alphabanter View Post

    If this is true, about half the backlink services offered in the Warriors to Hire forum are worthless
    Whether it is true or not, way more than half of the backlink services offered in the Warriors for Hire section are worthless.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve Waller
      First off, if you are talking about blog comment links then you may have found them to be less effective long before Penguin 2.1 but penalize is not the word I would use - ignore is probably closer to the truth.

      So sites that were somehow still ranking based on dofollow comment links might have seen their rankings tank not because they were singled out and penalized by Google but because the links are simply not considered any more (or more accurately down weighted as every link is still considered even if it is subsequently ignored).

      If you are talking about do follow links within blog posts themselves, I'd wager that these are still very effective and are not being penalized at all - for many of the same reasons as have been pointed out by others.

      I myself am a "real" blogger who maintains a blog for no other reason than it's on a subject I'm passionate about. I link out to countless other sites without them asking me to do so - why would Google want to penalize this?
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      • Profile picture of the author Jeffery Moss
        Originally Posted by Steve Waller View Post

        I myself am a "real" blogger who maintains a blog for no other reason than it's on a subject I'm passionate about. I link out to countless other sites without them asking me to do so - why would Google want to penalize this?
        Some years back, I read an interesting article that stated Google actually likes sites that reference other sites. At the time, the internet was much smaller, so Google wanted to connect site inter-connectivity. These days, it can't hurt a site to act as a reference source for others. Google will know the good thing you are doing.
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        • Profile picture of the author rjonesx
          Penguin is very complex - it is not as simple as just 1 thing matters and 1 thing doesnt. They all matter now. It is the pattern, the intersection, of all your optimization techniques that reveals you, not your over-ambitious use of one tactic or another. You should check out the OpenPenguinData project for their statistics or use the Penguin Vulnerability Score built on their data at PenguinAnalysis.com
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          • Profile picture of the author FranksToys
            Originally Posted by rjonesx View Post

            Penguin is very complex - it is not as simple as just 1 thing matters and 1 thing doesnt. They all matter now. It is the pattern, the intersection, of all your optimization techniques that reveals you, not your over-ambitious use of one tactic or another. You should check out the OpenPenguinData project for their statistics or use the Penguin Vulnerability Score built on their data at PenguinAnalysis.com
            Thank you for pimping your service on every thread you are participating in. We appreciate that here. No really, we do.There's probably another 200 threads you could bump with the same plug. We look forward to that.

            Back to the topic at hand - Google isn't specifically targeting any one thing with Penguin. But it is a combination of a backlink profile that determines whether or not you were hit by a penalty. More often than not that means over-optimized backlinks, with exact match anchor text targeting pages on your site. Most SEO's didn't build a natural profile that Google looks for and relied on using services limited to very few keywords and URLs being backlinked.
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  • Profile picture of the author nik0
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    Originally Posted by alphabanter View Post

    This doesn't make any sense to me because 95% of blog owners out there probably don't even know the difference between follow and no-follow links and unless the blog software they are using by default sets links to no-follow, most blog owners probably just link normally, which is probably a do follow link.
    What's the definition of a blog?

    Is it defined by the name of a platform like Wordpress?

    I don't think so.

    How would Google know the difference between a news type of site like Forbes vs a very popular blogger?

    They don't.

    There is no footprint to define for a blog, sure Wordpress and such leave footprints, but Wordpress is not only used by bloggers.

    Maybe you mean web2.0 blogs? Yes those are mostly used by bloggers but they can't mass devalue that and even if they can what would we care, those things don't pass any juice anyway without a serious amount of work/backlinking.
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  • Profile picture of the author derekjansen
    Its all about context. If it's a natural link which adds value to the post and doesn't use overly commercial anchor text, it will never be a problem.

    The issue arises when links are clearly spammy/unnatural/incentivized in some fashion.

    Don't sweat it
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by derekjansen View Post

      Its all about context. If it's a natural link which adds value to the post and doesn't use overly commercial anchor text, it will never be a problem.

      That's not true at all. When 500 other links show up on the page to porn, gambling, viagra, pay-day loans, and a heap of other trash, it is a problem.
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  • Profile picture of the author jimbobo2779
    Obviously not. People really do over think things these days.

    Just get as varied a backlinking profile as possible from different sources, nofollow and dofollow with lots of anchor variation and don't post the same content along with it and you will be fine.

    People that worry about high PR, dofollow only links are really setting themselves up for a big fall as that is not a normal looking link profile at all. You should try to emulate a natural looking link pattern, if you post something that people find interesting they will be talking about it on blogs, forums, bookmarking sites etc and these will range in their PR, age, dofollow and content so just mix it up and you should be fine.

    I have been consistently ranking sites with this for many many years now and have never been hit negatively by a google update, just don't over think it. Oh consistency of links is a thing to be concerned with, don't build thousands in a few days and then stop.

    Ultimately if your website is not trash you stand a good chance of never getting massively penalised. Add content regularly and keep it unique and engaging.

    Just a few things to keep in mind for consistent growth.
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