February 26th: PBN Apocalypse

[Heiko]

So then I take it that you haven't received anything in your GWT?

recieved nothing, does that mean its not a penalty?

What's your sites language btw? English or Germany?

Germany

 

[RayChand]

you probably just bought PBN services which arent real PBNs but link farms and google already hated those +15 years ago..
just dont take the easy way out and be lazy, but build your own PBNs then you wont get panalties for "unnatural links". i never got that message and i promote sites with xrumer lol
its only when you buy links that you get this msg it seems.

Thats quite funny. Google doesnt announce your site to be spammy even after using xrumer links because probably it assumes you to know that you are using blackhat while PBN users try to be under the radar and hence it makes sense for google to announce "we caught you".

On another note, PBN still remains the most effective method to gain rankings albeit you should do it differently than every other PBN and public PBNs can land you in trouble especially the ones where there is no restrictions on number of OBLs. For this to happen, google doesnt do any updates, it is an ongoing process and can deindex any PBN network on a sunday morning as it is algorithmic and there is no manual reviews for it.

recieved nothing, does that mean its not a penalty?

The moment a network is deindexed the rankings of OBLs start dropping and panic sets in. Your site personally need not be handed a penalty for rankings to drop. Your PBNs may have got a penalty or deindexed altogether.

Maintain high quality private network or get in to a small private only network operator, of course it may not be cheap and you may need to pay monthly subs.

 

[itz_styx]

Thats quite funny. Google doesnt announce your site to be spammy even after using xrumer links because probably it assumes you to know that you are using blackhat while PBN users try to be under the radar and hence it makes sense for google to announce "we caught you".

doesnt make sense ..then google wouldnt rank those sites if they knew its all spammy, but they do for years. no issues at all.

 

[what_hat?]

I am not currently using PBN links for my own sites, I build PBNs for others and charge that amount.
I am in competitive niches, but handle things differently for my own sites at this point.

Would you mind elaborating a little more about that? How do you handle things for your own sites?

 

[mzonas]

None of my clients nor my own sites have been hit. Still ranking strong. For the past couple of years I have not bought PBN links as I build my own. Just build your own PBN and make sure that blogs look like money sites with fresh content, etc ... and you won't get penalised.

 

[Diplomat]

What we have heard past week that low quality PBN sites got deindexed. I mean with poor quality content, no formatting, thin/dupe content, etc. We saw a bunch of sites that got deindexed and it was so obvious that the quality of those sites was very poor.

This is the reason why we always keep telling our customers to build high quality content. No matter how good your site looks, if your content sucks, you will get deindexed. PBN is an investment and a useful tool not something you throw quickly up and expect to rank for ridiculous keywords.

 

[drogon]

i got hit pretty hard around the 15th and around the 20th of feb. lots of my pages flew back to 8th and 9th pages. High quality pbns mixed with high quality links

What anchors did you use? Exact match, partial?

 

[lifehero]

Partial and branded

 

[RayChand]

doesnt make sense ..then google wouldnt rank those sites if they knew its all spammy, but they do for years. no issues at all.

I didnt say google wouldnt rank, google does rank PBNs also till they are caught. Any blackhat method works only till they are caught. But you are definitely right, all those techniques and PBNs even work today if done correctly.

None of my clients nor my own sites have been hit. Still ranking strong. For the past couple of years I have not bought PBN links as I build my own. Just build your own PBN and make sure that blogs look like money sites with fresh content, etc ... and you won't get penalised.

What we have heard past week that low quality PBN sites got deindexed. I mean with poor quality content, no formatting, thin/dupe content, etc. We saw a bunch of sites that got deindexed and it was so obvious that the quality of those sites was very poor.

This is the reason why we always keep telling our customers to build high quality content. No matter how good your site looks, if your content sucks, you will get deindexed. PBN is an investment and a useful tool not something you throw quickly up and expect to rank for ridiculous keywords.

After seeing the above its quite obvious that public PBNs have got hit hard

 

[patriotnews]

Would you mind elaborating a little more about that? How do you handle things for your own sites?

I started traffic stacking first off, which means I rely less and less on search engines.
As for what I do concerning SEO specifically, I focus on guest posting, infographic sharing(not just as a guest post, but I'll put infographics on my site with a share code giving me a backlink), I'll post PDFs in readers on my pages(then a share code to put up the reader on your page, in the basic code is a branded backlink for credit), I pay to have tools built(like specialty calculators) which I send out to groups and such to score backlinks. I do all sorts of things like that.

 

[Epicster]

Got hit, Disavowed more than 560 Domains already, Filed reconsideration. Lets see how it goes.

 

[MoneyValue]

Got hit, Disavowed more than 560 Domains already, Filed reconsideration. Lets see how it goes.

Same here. Removed 500+ backlinks, and filed for a reconsideration yesterday.

 

[what_hat?]

I started traffic stacking first off, which means I rely less and less on search engines.
As for what I do concerning SEO specifically, I focus on guest posting, infographic sharing(not just as a guest post, but I'll put infographics on my site with a share code giving me a backlink), I'll post PDFs in readers on my pages(then a share code to put up the reader on your page, in the basic code is a branded backlink for credit), I pay to have tools built(like specialty calculators) which I send out to groups and such to score backlinks. I do all sorts of things like that.

Hey @patriotnews , thanks for coming back at me, I really appreciate it you sharing your tactics. Sounds like you are going more the whitehat route, investing in content and finding some other traffic sources than search. Would you say that for a competitive niche that makes more sense than investing in a big PBN? I don't mean if it makes more sense because you don't risk getting your links deindexed, I just wonder if it makes more sense from a purely financial point of view, because it's cheaper to get quality links going WH in a competitive niche than paying for a large (and good) PBN.

 

[SmartPlay]

I am not sure what is going on but from yesterday I get huge google improvements. I have never bought PBNs and I have never done any seo on those sites. They received maybe 2 visitors daily from google, from yesterday they receive 20 per day.

Moral of the story, NEVER BUY PBN. Sooner or later big G will find it and you'll burn with it.

 

[TheVigilante]

I haven't tried pbn before but as time goes on it might become a hit and miss method

 

[TheVigilante]

I started traffic stacking first off, which means I rely less and less on search engines.
As for what I do concerning SEO specifically, I focus on guest posting, infographic sharing(not just as a guest post, but I'll put infographics on my site with a share code giving me a backlink), I'll post PDFs in readers on my pages(then a share code to put up the reader on your page, in the basic code is a branded backlink for credit), I pay to have tools built(like specialty calculators) which I send out to groups and such to score backlinks. I do all sorts of things like that.

This post alone has golden tips that on forgets to use

 

[Wiggles]

Feels like this is a good way for Google to get all of the paid pbns out of the way.
Hit guys who've clearly been linked to a few too many times hard.
They all run for the disavow button and give up all of the domains up that they've bought from, which then shuts down most of the sector.

Clearly if bad pbns ultimately take sites down then anyone can crush the competition with fiverr gigs. Cheaper the better.

 

[dlyhai]

We are all aware of Google's frequent updates in the past few months, but I believe the update on Feb 26th deserves its own attention.

I've been in talks with several other SEOers that have experienced a manual penalty for "unnatural links" on Feb 26.

It's hard to know what sparked the mass penalties, but it is safe to say that Google has made a targeted effort to go after websites utilizing PBNs.

I have a website that is over 3 years old. Tons of content (very high quality), and had many great natural editorial links, but did also receive PBN links. The site was growing in traffic and revenue, month after month. We're talking about a site that makes $xx,xxx per month, so it wasn't set up to be a fly-by.

Either way, Google decided to bring it down due to use of PBNs, and has done the same to others in the forum.

I'm also not ignorant to the fact that not everyone who uses PBNs was hit. Heck, I have two other websites that have been using the same PBNs, and those are not penalized at the moment. Even more so, I know of two other websites, that pull in 500k+ organic visitors per month across their keywords, that are ranked solely due to the owner's own PBN.

If you've been hit on that day, please share what you think it may be.

I also don't believe any of us should mention any specific PBN sellers, since this seems to be a move by Google against the tactic as a whole, and ultimately, we all know the risks of using anyone's PBNs.

How many sites on your PBN?

 

[RayChand]

I am not sure what is going on but from yesterday I get huge google improvements. I have never bought PBNs and I have never done any seo on those sites. They received maybe 2 visitors daily from google, from yesterday they receive 20 per day.

Moral of the story, NEVER BUY PBN. Sooner or later big G will find it and you'll burn with it.

Yeah, you have massive traffic because you are not using PBN, if u know what you did then share it here

I haven't tried pbn before but as time goes on it might become a hit and miss method

Every SEO if done correctly is never a hit and miss, but if you are impatient and reckless with SEO then yes, its always a hit and miss

This post alone has golden tips that on forgets to use

Nothing to beat organic traffic hence everyone runs behind SE traffic as also organic traffic converts well

Feels like this is a good way for Google to get all of the paid pbns out of the way.
Hit guys who've clearly been linked to a few too many times hard.
They all run for the disavow button and give up all of the domains up that they've bought from, which then shuts down most of the sector.

Clearly if bad pbns ultimately take sites down then anyone can crush the competition with fiverr gigs. Cheaper the better.

Basically public PBNs are the ones taking the hit. And anyone pointing 500 links from PBNs to their money site is waiting for trouble. Rather than 500, 50 high quality private PBN links would have held the rankings and survived the onslaught. I do have clients who run private PBNs and have not been touched. By private PBNs i mean those run by you exclusively for your money sites.

 

[blinggam]

I am not sure what is going on but from yesterday I get huge google improvements. I have never bought PBNs and I have never done any seo on those sites. They received maybe 2 visitors daily from google, from yesterday they receive 20 per day.

Moral of the story, NEVER BUY PBN. Sooner or later big G will find it and you'll burn with it.

> only 2 visitors a day
> never buy pbns