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Went Hot: March 27, 2008 - 4:27 am
Posted By: theGypsy 46 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk)
Category: Google SEO
The orignal post it here; http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/reinclusion-request-indigoclothing.html and here; http://sphinn.com/story/36674
Dave N - as I said SES NYC and say again Buying and Selling links is just not worth the risk !
10 Comments
Comments
If only we were all so lucky to get this kind of explanation. Goes to show most people out there complaining that they didnt do anything wrong, probably did in some form or another.
True it is Jaan... the delay time is interesting as is the fact we were originally only (apparently) seeing visual PR adjustments... now we know there is a ranking cost....
there has always been some cost,.,
Hey Dave... I was following this adventure and it is still quite interesting as far as the timing is concerned. I wonder if we've heard the last of this ( paging Mr Cutts... paging Mr Cutts) - are we grandfathering paid link infractions?
I know a guy who registered 2 years ago with Text Link Ads for testing purposes and hasn't used paid links ever since on that site and was penalized (both PageRank and rankings) anyways.
The 6 month delay in Google reacting even though no infringement occurred during the 6 months is particularly troubling.
I noticed that Matt tried bunch together link sellers and link buyers, but this an example of a seller that has had his rankings affected, and I can understand that because selling is something that the site owner can control.
But as far as I know, the only thing that Google has done to link buyers is knock down their toolbar PR.
I just can't see how Google could ever truly penalize a site for "buying" links (in terms of affecting rankings). If they did, it would open a pandora's box of momentous proportions.
Every unscrupulous webmaster out there would just start buying paid links and pointing them at their competitors.
I can understand a sliding scale of sorts (like if a site only has a small number of links and most of them are paid) but for sites with a relatively large portfolio of backlinks, how could they ever institute a hard and fast "link buying" penalty?
In other words, I just can't see a site like ESPN losing their rankings because they buy some links here and there.
I buddy of mine turned me on to an example of what appears to be a penalty for blatant link buying, so I stand corrected for the timebeing.
blatant link buying = blatant forum signature link spamming?
Could be...
The 6 month delay in Google reacting even though no infringement occurred during the 6 months is particularly troubling.
Ok, for bwelford and anyone else reading this, apparently Matt Cutts informed someone else that this is not a new penalty, and that actually the site had been penalized last year. Reading back through what DaveN wrote, which I often find difficult to follow, he never actually said this was a recent penalty, everyone just assumed.
"Every unscrupulous webmaster out there would just start buying paid links and pointing them at their competitors"
That used to be my mantra, and...I think it still holds, for the most part. I suspect --no proof, just intuition-- it would be exceedingly difficult for a competitor to set up such a huge paid link scheme that it resulted in getting your site significantly dinged in rankings. If that's a fact, then it follows that, if Google were to "perceive" that your site is the recipient of a sufficiently large enough inflow of what appear to be paid links, the likelihood of it being sabotage would be tiny...and rankings penalties if not outright banning would ensue.
The key here is the phrase "sufficiently large enough". How many paid links would be too many? That's a gamble I'm currently not willing to make. [:-)]