Google has been cracking down hard on Private Blog Networks

Cant agree more...

Hi Torrey, you might want to read the blog post. It deals with PRIVATE blog networks. Interestingly, not all of them are based on dropped domains with PR/DA.

Getting slapped all over...

Knows zippo about nada.

It's a trending topic, PBN at the moment. A lot of misinformation being sold and thrown around. Most people buy into it and drink the coolaid, ending up with networks of poisonous puke domains. The expired domain market is a finite thing, there is not enough to go around everyone. Sorry to break the news, but that's the truth.

Half the crap in auctions these days have been churned out 3 or 4 times from past networks. The other 49.9% are buyloisvouttonoutlet types, spammed to hell and back. But someone has been buying them. All of them....

The average Joe is numerically outgunned in every department by a factor of 1000, when it comes to buying up good networks. All that's left most of the time is average at best.

The bad news is, it's going to get a lot worse as the trend grows.

Maybe this is a setup for a new product market. Is there anyone out there that does not sell a PBN service that has been affected.

Something not right here......

I agree with you, PBNs are not dead. but many PBN(private blog network) sites,that are used to manipulate their rankings. Google has been slowly rolling out an update on this, that deindexes a ton of PBNs.

Bleh

They seem to be bending backwards to avoid other options. One which is pretty likely to happen at some point comes to mind on reading the above quote --

Google can monitor auctions just like register compass can. Doesn't take much to monitor auction data over the last few months and then cross check the sites that get set up that look and link like PBNs. Doesn't need to take anything to do with registry information or I presume they are suggesting - seeing past whois privacy.

Part of the problem when service providers get slapped is that they have a vested interest in coming up with something that doesn't reflect badly on them. Natural tendency that I would be tempted to lean to myself.

You sir are very hard to read. You switch from funny subtle troll to genuinely seeming like a newbie (which also could be a part of the funny, subtle trolling)....

It's the 3 that really throws me... Still playing poker?

Oh yeah RankHero, that heavily over priced service where you (used to) pay almost $40 or more for a single post at one of their network sites that they've probably picked up for $10,- with Hayden's domain sourcing method. What a failure. See they ain't accepting new customers anymore.

They didn't explicitely state that they didn't use private whois from what I've read but they did say they suspect whois data to be the cause of it. What I think they mean is that when the domain gets transferred to them that the whois isn't active for a short while and that Google might track that. Cause I really can't imagine they'd be so silly to leave privacy off for the whole time.

Nice link: http://www.nichepursuits.com/alright...etworks-again/

Funny opinion:

Pat Flyn: "I don’t know if this is a new algorithmic update, but that seems to be the most logical change."

Want to hear my opinion?

Almost a year ago or more there was an EMD update, which in fact focussed on smallish sites, Google had a good way to detect them. Now it seems Google is using that technique to pick out smallish PBN sites. As niche relevant is higher on the ladder these days it seems many people setup their private blog network sites like that, laser focused on one specific topic so in fact they look like a typical EMD site but then without the monetization. Google let's their slightly adjusted EMD update technique loose on it that doesn't tank but directly deindexes sites and there you go. Massive amounts of sites out of the equation. Add some other footprints like hosting and OBL patterns and there you go.

Does make me wonder, I ain't doing things perfect but my sites have a huge range of outbound links to tons of different topics and tons of posts due to the nature of my service where we place perm homepage links as well as roll off posts. Often people have something to nag about it cause it looks so unnatural and I obvious can't deny that, eg: it would never survive a manual review. But it does help hugely in avoiding footprints that are automatically detected by the algorithm, afterall I only lost few sites and the network where I lost a considerable percentage was all based on SEO hosting so easy to blame it on that when you look at the numbers.

Can't imagine the people behind RankHero would've used SEO hosting though, it seems there is plenty of budget available but somehow they never talk about hosting in any of their posts. Would they really've made such noob mistake?

Yeah I get that.

If I didn't build a network for my service I might've chosen the path of link outreach as well, sounds like less work to be honest.

For IM'ers that outsource it's often hard to turn a profit with affiliate sites as the costs are quite a bit higher so you really need to know the ins and outs or you'll probably break-even at best. I have few IM clients btw, but the ones I have do scale and have many campaigns with me. For the rest it's mostly real (small) businesses that easily turn a profit as the costs are so low, they don't have time to either setup a network and often their niche isn't very suitable for link outreach so then there's not much choice really.

As for risk, well a money site is easily replaced and the old one can easily run besides it for existing customers so I don't see the risk as a huge thing. Afterall, not ranking is no new customers either so nothing lost really.

Now with what????

Seriously. What's new? Whats changed? Was RankHero bigger than BMR? So the people behind another big "rent space on my PUBLIC blog network" got targeted and a few people who write things like this as well

Its an admission that what crap fashion linking and content we all know might get you in trouble well...um.....gets us in trouble. This is just like when autobot link spammer get their sites slapped and then cry "SEO is dead The sky is falling" simply because they got slapped doing what they knew they might be slapped doing.

Meanwhile with all the PBN owners I know I don't hear many of them crying. Of course none of them are big renters of links that people know the name of their service because they are well kown for renting out links. They Put the word PRIVATE back in PBN.

Probably the best post on it I have seen and mostly because it skips the hype and sky is falling junk.

Thanks for the link out.

Happy to answer any questions anyone has on my post or PBNs in general - Within reason, of course

Thanks, that's what I aim to do!

Stay away from SEO hosts and cheap hosts. Get "normal" hosting like hostgator and Godaddy for your PBNs.
Don't use spun content. Link out to a few authority sites (edu/gov/cnn). Interlink your site.

With these simple techniques, changes of de-indexing is greatly reduced.

I only had one PBN de-indexed recently and it was a PR 6 TF 37. Reason was the cheap host even though this site was on a dedicated IP.

Check out SiteWink to help Manage your PBN http://www.warriorforum.com/warriors...ewink-com.html

That's assuming they got their seed data from BH sites and BH ads. Dropped domains appear on the radar, bro. It's not very hard to figure out if a domain dropped. That's a MASSIVE RED FLAG.

From what I see across several networks the only difference between 5 and 50 percent is SEO hosting.

I don't know how RankHero hosted their network, to bad they don't give out any info about that, which is for me already a reason to believe they didn't care much about that.

Not yet, but it's in the pipeline.

There are many factors re footprints, which have to be considered and adjusted well at a PBN, but most important is the domain and what I see here, people are speaking about expired domains from auctions, which in my opinion is a massive footprint!

We never find expired domains in auctions, but scraping good old google for domains that are just are laying around to be collected, using different techniques. Most of such domains have a clean link profile and leave no footprint at all, as they were never listed at auctions or used in linkfarms.

If you than take actions re all what was already said, you should be save of google detecting your PBN.

The point is to select your domains carefully and to filter out low quality spammy domains for example with MajesticSEO CF / TF ratio.

Cheers
Dan

You won't find that. You can find plenty of people that have experienced it though.

Exactly. It's all about how you play the game. Nothing wrong with the game itself. Until and unless Google comes up with an algorithm that actually can read and analyze text and make judgment calls like a human being, Google will always be vulnerable to manipulation.

Hello Pixelcreative,

In order to hide your footprints and develop a lasting and profitable PBN, address the following changes you should make:

Please avoid creating your 50 corporate websites with the same ip/nameserver.
Each site should have a unique ip, otherwise you're just creating a huge footprint.

Change every site/domain registration to a different owner name, email, address, phone, etc.

Do not crosslink your PBN's, they need to stand alone and only send links to your money site or authority site.

Much Success to you!

^^ if PBN's are getting hit, why aren't you creating them smarter? Why don't you treat them like your own websites? Why throw rehashed content on only one page? Why just link to your homepage? Why not mix up themes and cms's? Why not randomize and strategize? Why not monetize them on their own?
Why not build an empire!

Two things I will say to that. First, your comment about fighting the tide is kind of hypocritical when you are advocating guest posting. Guest posting has also been in Google's sites pretty heavily this year.

Second, Google is really targeting public networks. Those that understand how to build private networks are not getting hit.

You can criticize the method of using private networks, but that part is just totally untrue. Outreach takes far more time and effort than setting up a private network. That's the whole reason people started setting up private networks in the first place.

Whoa there chief, I hope you're speaking hypothetical