Google has been cracking down hard on Private Blog Networks

by 97 replies
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I know the first thought that comes to your mind regarding any crackdown on PBNs is whether they were used to link to a 'money site' or a tiered site. Think again. This recent crackdown is different. They're looking at site networking patterns. Looks pretty ugly. Just a heads up. (source link = not my site) PBN Sites De-Indexed, Manual Spam Actions on Money Sites

Anybody else seeing this? Care to share how your infrastructure is set up? Maybe there's a pattern there somewhere...
#search engine optimization #blog #cracking #google #hard #networks #private
  • ....Is it really a good idea to spell out how a successful private blog network is setup...on a public forum...maybe keeping that to private forums, or pm's would be a good call....cause I'm 100% sure google has forum lurkers at all major seo tactic forums (especially when greyhat/blackhat is being spat about)

    ..call me paranoid..
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  • The "P" in PBN stands for public. That tells you ALL you need to know.
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    • 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.
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    • 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.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • AHHH! So this is really funny.... And it might be sad.

    I visited your link to nohatdigital. Check it out, read it. Thought "Meh, okay." Answered a PM, grabbed a beer and then checked facebook. Got this ad:



    WHICH GOES TO:


    THAT HAS A TESTIMONIAL OF:


    I'll just let that sink in.

    Not that retargeting comes up much here....
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    • 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......
  • Banned
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  • PBN's are not dead for sure. Many PBN owner are quite happy so I don't think they are dead. And Google may be cracking down some PBN's because they might be doing something wrong.
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    • 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.
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  • Hi interesting subject close to my heart.

    I suggest, us Warriors forget the old-hat seo strategies. How long does it take for us to realise the times have changed?

    SEO should be confined to building a site using Google's current recommendations.

    A great content value site will be ranked--a site that attempts to fool Google with auto back-links or anything else unnatural--will be slapped, simple as that. It appears Google wants a fair level playing field.

    If we do that for our clients yes--they might be high ranked in the first instance after a spider crawl.

    I know someone that works for them--the crawl will put a red flag on suspicious sites, for later investigation. That red flag will appear on some Google employees desk, perhaps months later, and anything could happen.

    Warrior WSO's are still selling stuff like, "how to get a thousand back-links and be ranked high in Google etc."

    Did you know doing that very thing-- might get Warriors slapped?

    Now as Warriors are currently one of the top IM forum sites in the world--where do you think that Google employee is going to start with his or her research?

    IM has to change, not the old style sales-funnels and back-links, but new rich business ideas, that are real and wholesome, and a good practical business. I don't think Google wants us to depend on them and our ranking for our business. We do our own marketing, offline and on, to build our own business.That might be hard work.

    If we happen to be high on Google? well that's just a secondary prize for having a great site...smiles

    Regards

    Jim

    p.s. perhaps we don't realise--selling seo tricks that are unnatural, might hurt our client eventually.

    No I don't work for Google
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Banned
    I run 6 networks of 40 sites each besides my other network and once again the majority of deindexed sites are hosted on A-class SEO hosting (bit too late with moving the last batches).

    This go's pretty much against NoHat's observations that it has little to do with hosting.

    I do have to note that the domains on SEO hosting are my weakest domains, so maybe Google is more inclined to deindex weak domains vs strong domains.

    Another unimportant batch of domains that I hosted on another SEO host got affected quite bad as well, those domains were pretty weak as well and as I hosted them only recently as an experiment they contained very few content. So weak / thin domains at SEO hosting is asking for problems really.

    A more valuable / thick domain you should never even consider to host on SEO hosting.

    My legit PR3+ domains with plenty of content and hosted on shared hosting experienced a deindex rate of about 3-4 percent in the last 90 days so that's not too bad though much higher then what it used to be as previously it was like 2-3 percent in a year time.
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    • 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.
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  • Google have been attacking different types of links one after the other. PBN's seem to be the focus now. It is like one of the last few remaining forts left for SEO'ers after all the other forts fell one after another.
  • 1.Keeping a spreadsheet of what expired domains are linking to which money site can be time consuming
    2. Managing dozens of hosting accounts is annoying
    3.Domains should really be registered in different names to lessen footprint
    4.Setting up an expired domain is very time consuming – its like creating a real site! Install wordpress, themes, plugins, about page, logo or header, and more…all before you even post content. I had to do this 30 times before I even got started! (I didn’t make it through all 30 domains by the way…)
    5.A quality network should have real content that is both relevant to the expired domain AND the site you are linking to…means you need original content.
    6.Once you have a great network, then you need to go build your niche sites!
  • I don't use private blog networks.
  • I don't buy links, and when I exchange links, I take care to get a no-follow link 50% of the time. I get plenty of other do-follow links from content marketing, so I'm not too worried about those.
  • Dat advertisement though.
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    • 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?
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  • The network in question from OP is a network that sold links publicly, Rank Hero. I'm thinking some of their personal networks were also hit due to using rank hero in combination with other networks and using same hosting and strategy as Rank hero networks.

    Nohatdigital also mentions using the same whois information without privacy, could be a major factor as well.
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    • Banned
      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?
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  • The number one reason I never set up my own PBN was because there was way too much involved in it to setup properly. Now with this, it's going to become even more expensive and time consuming to setup and manage. Personally:
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    • Banned
      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.
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  • It was only a matter of time before Google started to get more serious about dealing with blog networks. So if this is the start of a serious effort it wouldn't surprise me.

    It wouldn't take much effort at all for Google to wipe out the networks of all the providers advertising their 'Private' blog networks for public sale. As well as all the networks propping sites up in competitive niches. Most blog networks are very obvious.

    It would probably take one Google employee about a day to take down all the networks that are advertised for sale in this forum, and forums like BBHF, BHW, WF etc.

    That alone will cause enough reverberations to put off the majority of people from buying these services, and make it a far more costly venture for everyone concerned. A lot of people would be priced out.

    It was always going to end this way. If not now, then it's coming soon.
  • Another thing, everyone and his dog seems to be jumping on the 'teach all the newbies how to build a PBN to rank their sites' recently

    You know the end of the craze can't be far off when that happens.
  • Great post on the PBN deindexation at GodOfSeo here:
    Blog Networks, Ban Hammers & A Whole Lot of Fear




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    • Probably the best post on it I have seen and mostly because it skips the hype and sky is falling junk.
  • Just Google creating more fear in SEOs, don't buy into the hype. I keep reading about a PBN algo, but I still see and know of plenty of networks alive and kicking.
  • So in essence is it NOT good to try and block robots?
  • https://www.seroundtable.com/google-...rks-19196.html

    I think they're doing this before launching Penguin 2.0 because it wont be able to algorithmically weed out well built PBNs.

    And maybe they're doing this to scare people away from building PBNs....
  • I have seen many sites which are slapped by Google all got links from PBN but Many of Sites not slapped from goggle which got the links from PBN site But i think the reason behind that most of PBN Sites Add Too many sites in the blogroll But which are not slapped they add only one or two site in blogroll
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    • 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!
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  • Unless I'm reading this article wrong (on the link in OP), the site(s) were being targeted for thin content, which can actually happen to any site, not just one in a private blog network. If this nohatdigital is the real deal of SEO, why aren't they just hiring professional writers instead of relying on low paid interns to run PBN's for paying clients? There's real money involved right? Or, are these PBN's being used to rank nohatdigital? Either way, that site will likely suffer in one way or another due to bad content on sites linking to it.
  • All mine are good...
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    • 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
  • More fear mongering by Google and people are eating it up. Keep hearing about this mass reindexing but only really reading about a few major pbn sellers getting shut down. They sold publicly, it was bound to happen.
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    • 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.
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  • Google will almost certainly scare some people away from the PBN tactic with this crackdown but I haven't yet seen anything to indicate that it is a completely algorithmic change.

    My guess is that certain features or footprints raise red flags and then sites are checked manually if enough flags are raised. I doubt many/any network has survived completely unscathed but the difference between some people suffering a 5% loss and others suffering an 50%, 60%, 70% loss is not a trivial one.

    There are probably reasons for such huge differences and it is up to you whether you work out / find out what these differences are and then adjust your approach accordingly.

    Much of it, in my eyes, will come down to how well you monetize your rankings and traffic once you get them. If you're good at it, you can re-invest in making your current network sites resemble real sites and build out more sites to diversify risk.
    • [2] replies
    • Banned
      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.
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  • Banned
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  • How exactly Google is identifying the trffice comming from the private network blogs??
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    • 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
  • Right. It is predictable that Google will try to knock out anything that it sees as manipulating search results.
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  • I understand that putting sites on hosting marketed as SEO hosting is basically putting your sites on hosting with a target on it. This makes a kind of intuitive sense, but I haven't found a reference from Matt Cutts specifically saying that SEO hosting is risky.
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    • You won't find that. You can find plenty of people that have experienced it though.
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  • You have to think about low hanging fruit. Low hanging fruit is buying hosting on a SEO host, finding out the IP and then punishing those on there. That's low hanging fruit.

    Link sellers. Buy a package, find out what links are set up, punish those sites and all the links on them. These are really really easy to figure out as anyone here can do so with commercially available tools. BMR, etc

    Make your site a high hanging fruit, and it stands a much better chance
    • [1] reply
    • 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.
  • Mostly I read all stuffs above.

    I'am newbie for PBN. Trying to make my own seo with PBN locally.

    I have 50 corporate website in dedicated server ( same ip/nameserver)

    And 40 high PR domains PR3-7 with fresh content. ( Developing each day)

    What do you offer me?

    - Seo Hosting or Dedicated, VPS? Which is better ?
    - Registration footprints ( do we hide or change all registerer) ?
    - Cross linking..

    and your advices in advance.

    Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • 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!
      • [2] replies
  • I know a few of you guys already kind of said this before but I don't get why you are all fighting the tide.

    I mean seriously, if PBN's are getting hit why are you creating more?

    Link outreach and guest posting works wonders, and honestly is pretty dang easy to set up.

    If you really want a PBN wait for this whole thing to blow over and then start building them again, Google has a habit of cracking down on a strategy and then letting it go. I've found that a lot of old link building strategies work again.
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    • ^^ 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!
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      • [1] reply
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  • Google's Update always hits on negative and spam activities website. And if you know, there are lots of SEOs doing Guest Blogging which is too much and consider as a Spam activity. So Google has penalized some Guest Blogging networks recently.
  • PBN Still alive..Whereas guest blogging no-longer..
    As i observe high trust flow backlinks work well. I use a link wheel which measures moz rank- (trust and flow) still works. So if you can create PBN like that with diffrent ip's. it will work too.
    • [1] reply
    • 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.
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  • A PBN per se isn't the problem, it's low quality PBNs that's the issue.

    If you build 100 high quality websites you have a high quality PBN, if you are careful how you use the network to make money Google won't have a problem.

    Take shortcuts, low quality content, thin content etc... and excessively use the network for linking to money sites and expect to be downgraded long term.

    Taken well over a decade to build my network and have made all the mistakes (some deliberately for SEO tests) and the high quality sites within the network generate decent traffic, the low quality sites aren't doing anywhere near as well. I'm removing the lower quality parts of my network, will probably get rid of over 50 domains medium term: will concentrate on a smaller number of high quality sites.

    Can you build a crappy low quality network and rank a money site?

    YES.

    Are you guaranteed to avoid a Google slap long term?

    NO.

    Google is trying to devalue the low quality networks from it's indexed. If you own a 100 high quality domain network on one IP address you should feel safe inviting a Google manual reviewer to view your network. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with building a network to make money.

    David
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    • Whoa there chief, I hope you're speaking hypothetical
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  • Banned
    It's funny reading how people go about the same subject (PBNs) in different ways. Personally I'm all for building out network sites because my goal is long term money, I want my sites to generate money 10+ years from now.

    I don't buy into some niches can't generate traffic to help build links (ex: local plumber) because something as simple as a local plumber has access/knowledge that the average person doesn't have.

    Example, a single network site for a local plumber link network could be a keyword optimized image gallery based on images taken at plumber job sites on an iphone (quality images) & uploaded to a domain giving away images to the general public (public domain images) which would generate a ton of traffic built backlinks over the lifetime of an offline local plumbing business.

    That's how you get traffic to participate in building network link profiles. Obviously I still optimize links.

    It's not complicated...
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    Google has been cracking down hard on Private Blog Networks

    I know the first thought that comes to your mind regarding any crackdown on PBNs is whether they were used to link to a 'money site' or a tiered site. Think again. This recent crackdown is different. They're looking at site networking patterns. Looks pretty ugly. Just a heads up. (source link = not my site) PBN Sites De-Indexed, Manual Spam Actions on Money Sites Anybody else seeing this? Care to share how your infrastructure is set up? Maybe there's a pattern there somewhere...