No Report for PBN Services is No More Acceptable!

[seomasterz]

Hi,

I have been buying PBN service from very long time here in BHW and i must say, i have spent hundreds of dollars for my number of clients website. Since PBN is quite vulnerable, all the seller resist to send reports for the work. However, i am start to convince, some of the seller using above argument for their advantage. Just recently, i paid $100 for the PBN and seller did not even bother to send me email or inform me about the completion. When i asked about whether he has completed the work. He just simply replied with yes.

Normally, seller send out report keeping their PBN links hide, which off course is still useless but at least as customer i have no other choice to believe on OP. I personally believe this practice should be limited now. We have lived with this argument for almost two years now.

Please note, some users will suggest me to keep an eye on my website backlinks or google webmaster. However, if i put this argument to seller that "i have checked my website backlinks, i can not find any new backlinks" The response from all the seller is unanimous "We have blocked all the crawler ip's in order to protect our network.

I would request to admin please designed some mechanism for this issue.



Thanks

 

[AngelSeo]

Hi,

I have been buying PBN service from very long time here in BHW and i must say, i have spent hundreds of dollars for my number of clients website. Since PBN is quite vulnerable, all the seller resist to send reports for the work. However, i am start to convince, some of the seller using above argument for their advantage. Just recently, i paid $100 for the PBN and seller did not even bother to send me email or inform me about the completion. When i asked about whether he has completed the work. He just simply replied with yes.

Normally, seller send out report keeping their PBN links hide, which off course is still useless but at least as customer i have no other choice to believe on OP. I personally believe this practice should be limited now. We have lived with this argument for almost two years now.

Please note, some users will suggest me to keep an eye on my website backlinks or google webmaster. However, if i put this argument to seller that "i have checked my website backlinks, i can not find any new backlinks" The response from all the seller is unanimous "We have blocked all the crawler ip's in order to protect our network.

I would request to admin please designed some mechanism for this issue.



Thanks

Its quite frustrating to not see any links, however asking to see the full report is quite problematic. This means yours (or your clients) websites will be exposed to anyone who bought the service as well - as he can simply check all other outbound links and see your website exposed. Also if someone get his website hit - and he start disavow-ing the PBN links, the whole network will be hit, and your website penalized as well. This just happened the other week with the Wolf network. So its a matter of trust, really.

 

[Zwielicht]

Hey @seomasterz,

I've seen this complaint come up before. Off the top of my head, the only solution I can think of that would keep both the customers and buyers happy is to require PBN sellers to create reports for their clients regardless of whether or not they send them out. This way, if an issue comes up, the seller can send the report to the moderator handling the dispute, who can then confirm with the buyer that the links they ordered were created. Sellers can't argue about their link network being exposed to clients and buyers can have a more proper order confirmation.

 

[BHW-News]

Hi,

I have been buying PBN service from very long time here in BHW and i must say, i have spent hundreds of dollars for my number of clients website. Since PBN is quite vulnerable, all the seller resist to send reports for the work. However, i am start to convince, some of the seller using above argument for their advantage. Just recently, i paid $100 for the PBN and seller did not even bother to send me email or inform me about the completion. When i asked about whether he has completed the work. He just simply replied with yes.

Normally, seller send out report keeping their PBN links hide, which off course is still useless but at least as customer i have no other choice to believe on OP. I personally believe this practice should be limited now. We have lived with this argument for almost two years now.

Please note, some users will suggest me to keep an eye on my website backlinks or google webmaster. However, if i put this argument to seller that "i have checked my website backlinks, i can not find any new backlinks" The response from all the seller is unanimous "We have blocked all the crawler ip's in order to protect our network.

I would request to admin please designed some mechanism for this issue.


Thanks

Honestly, I agree with you. When we carry out reviews of the service, we insist we get a full report, whether or not the seller offers that as part of his service. If we don't get a report, we can't verify the work's been carried out, so we won't approve it.

I understand some sellers want to keep their PBN's private to protect them but, again, I don't really understand this if you're selling a good quality service. A decent site on a good PBN can only sell a few backlinks before they get progressively less valuable for a variety of reasons. Good PBN sellers will be updating their networks and adding new sites to replace the sites that have saturation level OBLs. That's not a cheap or fast thing to do, which is why good PBN backlinks are not cheap. So as long as the OBL's aren't too high, providing a report isn't an issue as the site won't be getting new backlinks past a certain point, so it'll be limited to only a few people who have the links on there. The biggest risk is being reported or spammed by an unhappy buyer.

When sellers don't provide reports, there's no way of verifying that the work's been done. Oh, and that's another bugbear of mine "the backlink won't show up because we blocked crawler bots".

So, you've got a high-ranking, authoritative PBN site (presumably because that's what's worth the money) and you're actively de-ranking it by preventing it being found by crawlers? And yes - I know that the crawlers will ignore robots.txt instructions to crawl a site but we're seeing more of the crawler traffic being blocked server-side. And of course, that means the work "provided" has absolutely zero visibility. So the seller's saying "trust me, you can't see what I've done but just wait, your site's going to start ranking very soon" and then when it doesn't, there's a huge swathe of excuses that can be used for why it's not ranking. "Your site has poor content" , "your site's got a hidden penalty", "it's a competitive niche".... etc etc

Speaking purely for myself, I wouldn't buy a PBN service that didn't provide a report. I understand that some buyers actively prefer this because they think it keeps their site more hidden and therefore safer, but I'm not convinced. I've seen far too many reviews where my test site has been tanked by a poor PBN service that doesn't provide a report as part of their service. (yes, they still had to give me a report, and no, they didn't get approved... ) There are good and reputable sellers out there which don't provide reports and for a good reason. Unfortunately, that's a big loophole and requires a leap of faith which can be taken advantage of by bad sellers.

Perhaps it might be useful to ensure that sellers clearly state whether they provide a report or not, and then let the buyer decide if this is a risk they want to take?

 

[NawtyBoy]

What one can do is if he is suspicious he should report it to the mod and the mod can ask the seller to provide the link for him to see.. That should not be a problem as the mods on BHW are trustworthy.

 

[MisterF]

Hey @seomasterz,

I've seen this complaint come up before. Off the top of my head, the only solution I can think of that would keep both the customers and buyers happy is to require PBN sellers to create reports for their clients regardless of whether or not they send them out. This way, if an issue comes up, the seller can send the report to the moderator handling the dispute, who can then confirm with the buyer that the links they ordered were created. Sellers can't argue about their link network being exposed to clients and buyers can have a more proper order confirmation.

This makes sense, because once a seller reveals the domains then potentially it's gone from being a private network to a public one. Another issue for the seller, is buyers who then decide the rankings haven't improved overnight so decide to spam 20k links to the PBN link.

Just my own personal opinion here.

 

[Impulse]

Hey @seomasterz,

I've seen this complaint come up before. Off the top of my head, the only solution I can think of that would keep both the customers and buyers happy is to require PBN sellers to create reports for their clients regardless of whether or not they send them out. This way, if an issue comes up, the seller can send the report to the moderator handling the dispute, who can then confirm with the buyer that the links they ordered were created. Sellers can't argue about their link network being exposed to clients and buyers can have a more proper order confirmation.

That would also make handling shitlist threads very helpful as well - if it were a requirement, sellers could send their report to the moderators handling their shitlist.

 

[BHW-News]

This makes sense, because once a seller reveals the domains then potentially it's gone from being a private network to a public one. Another issue for the seller, is buyers who then decide the rankings haven't improved overnight so decide to spam 20k links to the PBN link.

Just my own personal opinion here.

It's a good point, certainly but then again, if I were a seller, I'd want to make sure the buyer understands what they're buying and what makes the links valuable, because activities like those you've described are counterproductive to both parties. Sellers like @t0mmy will actually refuse to sell backlinks to a buyer who isn't aware of the risks and doesn't know what they're buying.

And the cost of a good PBN backlink won't be cheap because it'll reflect the extra care and additional risk taken by the seller. If a PBN service's price seems too good to be true, then it probably is.

 

[Rachmaninoff]

OP if I were you, I'd check the PBN links on GSC because they can not block Google's bot. If the links are not there in a month or so, it's possibly they didn't build the links or their PBN are deindexed. From there, you can complaint to the sellers.

 

[Finn]

While I understand the need for full reports, let me tell you the point of view as a seller. For example, in my service, I am clearly stating within the FAQ section and advertisement that we do not share the full URLs inside of the work reports. To name only one security issue here - Once you are doing so, there are inexperienced customers existing who will blast these links with GSA which is never a good thing for the PBN itself. I have been there so I saw this already happening.

On the other hand, every customer is able to detect the links via Google Search Console a few weeks after indexation. So, there is always a way for buyers to check what kind of work has been delivered as long as you don't order from multiple sellers at the very same time.

If there are zero links coming up via Google Search Console even 3-4 weeks after indexation, then this is an alarm signal, and every buyer should confront the seller with this fact. But sharing full live link reports with everyone is never a good idea in my opinion and will make your PBN potentially last much shorter. Besides, there is always the option to share the full live links together with a MOD, which can confirm the work has been done on his end.

 

[davids355]

This is a really difficult one - there are advantages and disadvantages for both options as far as I can see -

If the seller provides reports, the buyer has some level of transparency and can see what they are paying for. But the downside is it immediately puts the network at risk.
If the seller does not provide reports, the network remains relatively safe from exposure and from link building abuse, but it opens up the possibility of abuse - the seller could under deliver, or deliver low quality links and the buyer has no way of providing this.

Maybe we just need some more clarity from the sellers on what is or is not provided in terms of reporting. And/or perhaps it would be feasible for sellers to provide optional reporting at a higher cost?

Also, I suppose that if a sellers network is exposed as a result of providing reports, then perhaps they are over-selling the network? ie no buyer should ever have access to the entire network, or even a large percentage of it, as that is a recipe for disaster in terms of footprint. As far as the PBN sites getting blasted with GSA and so on, I am not sure about that one, I suppose the lower cost services are likely to suffer from that, whereas someone paying for premium PBN links might be less likely to engage in those tactics??

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

Hi,

I have been buying PBN service from very long time here in BHW and i must say, i have spent hundreds of dollars for my number of clients website. Since PBN is quite vulnerable, all the seller resist to send reports for the work. However, i am start to convince, some of the seller using above argument for their advantage. Just recently, i paid $100 for the PBN and seller did not even bother to send me email or inform me about the completion. When i asked about whether he has completed the work. He just simply replied with yes.

Normally, seller send out report keeping their PBN links hide, which off course is still useless but at least as customer i have no other choice to believe on OP. I personally believe this practice should be limited now. We have lived with this argument for almost two years now.

Please note, some users will suggest me to keep an eye on my website backlinks or google webmaster. However, if i put this argument to seller that "i have checked my website backlinks, i can not find any new backlinks" The response from all the seller is unanimous "We have blocked all the crawler ip's in order to protect our network.

I would request to admin please designed some mechanism for this issue.

Thanks

If you bought PBN links and do not believe the seller did the work, ask him to send me the report and I'll make sure your links are in place without exposing the sellers' sites.

I can check that lying on my couch with my 7 year old iPad in minutes for you and would be happy to do that.

 

[SuperNoobInc]

If reports are important to you then you should only buy from people who provide reports. It's a free market and if sellers see this become a trend from what buyers want, over time they will bend to the market or they will see their sales stall.

If it's only a few people who want reports to be provided and the majority are happy with how things are then it would not make sense to out rule or ban the current methods. Pandering to these people when there is a simple solution would be pointless.

I don't buy from PBNs that provide reports as I know ANYONE can place an order, get the PBN domains and then I may as well go and build some Web 2.0's instead. Everyone on the network is at risk if these reports are public and shared, including the seller after making an investment into building the network and the buyer after paying for the links. @Finn is correct, you will see the links trickle into search console over time (but lately it's been very buggy).

If you don't trust the seller (after reading the thread) to provide good work, don't order from them. There are lots of good sellers on this forum with long histories of providing good PBN links.

As for providing reports to mods, I can see that being good for specific cases when a query is raised but I don't want it to become the norm. The less people who know about my money sites and niches the better. The P in PBN is for PRIVATE. Private does not include sharing the details with a bunch of people I don't know.

Buying PBN links will always be hit and miss, you have no control over anything. That's the nature of the product and has to be accepted before you buy. The only way you get control is investing much more money and building your own PBN. If you don't like this then go and order another type of link, that's just how it is.

So, you've got a high-ranking, authoritative PBN site (presumably because that's what's worth the money) and you're actively de-ranking it by preventing it being found by crawlers? And yes - I know that the crawlers will ignore robots.txt instructions to crawl a site but we're seeing more of the crawler traffic being blocked server-side. And of course, that means the work "provided" has absolutely zero visibility.

The crawlers most of the sellers talk about are SEO tools like Ahrefs and Majestic.

They have nothing to do with your ranking on Google, all they do is help your competitors spy on you. It makes 100% sense to block these tools because nosey SEO's and competitors will look into "how" you're ranking (if you're doing things right) and the moment they find PBN links they report them to Google. Those reports by Google are looked at and dealt with, I've done this myself on my competitors.

PBN owners (with brains) are not blocking Googles crawlers, so saying they are "deranking" these links is untrue. What they are really doing is cloaking.

Blocking these SEO tools completely to just a 503 or 404 page is stupid. What they should be doing is serving other content instead like "domain for sale" pages that are a natural part of the web but of no real significance to SEO tools.

 

[Frap]

I have a solution that will definitely work.

Why doesn't BHW have someone or several people(preferably highly-trusted individuals/mods) take charge of all PBN orders?

Meaning, for every PBN order, we'd have the seller communicate with the Mod/Person in charge and show them that the order was indeed completed.

Obviously, this wouldn't be done for free. I believe the person in charge should receive a fee. This can be split between the buyer and seller. Although, as a PBN buyer, I would be glad to cover all fees involved...

Why this will work? It's not complicated. I've been active on another forum for years. This forum frequently sells virtual currency/in-game gold and a MiddleMan is always needed. This MiddleMan acts as an escrow service. The MiddleMan is usually a highly trusted individual on the forum. I've never had a problem.

We can offer highly-reputable individuals a sort of MiddleMan Badge. If a buyer needs something verified, he would just contact any individual with that badge and discuss terms.

It will be even easier for this as the Mod/Person in charge only needs to verify that the links ordered were indeed completed...

This is obviously dependent on how much trust we put in this so-called MiddleMan, but this can certainly be monitored...

Obviously a few other terms can be added, but this should work.

We need this. A PBN seller can technically get away with $1000's in free orders with the sellers never knowing... There has to be some sort of Seller-Protection.

Let me know what you guys think? @BassTrackerBoats @Finn @davids355 @Apricot

 

[royserpa]

Hey @seomasterz,

I've seen this complaint come up before. Off the top of my head, the only solution I can think of that would keep both the customers and buyers happy is to require PBN sellers to create reports for their clients regardless of whether or not they send them out. This way, if an issue comes up, the seller can send the report to the moderator handling the dispute, who can then confirm with the buyer that the links they ordered were created. Sellers can't argue about their link network being exposed to clients and buyers can have a more proper order confirmation.

The best solution would be NOT to give out reports, but if the customer wants to open a dispute with bhw mods, then, they can share a report with the mods.

Also, a seller can tell their customers that they won't be giving any reports and if they don't like it, they can go F themselves and go with a seller that will allow for these weaknesses, man.

 

[Sherb]

IMO...

@Zwielicht 's idea of always needing to make a report is stellar. The downside of that is when, months down the road someone's PBN gets deindexed and a ton of links disappear, they can use the "Oh it's been so long I only keep reports for X months" line. If something like this was implemented, it would have to be clear cut rules that were agreed upon by the seller in writing before the thread went live. As @WilhelmScream added, that would surely ease the shitlist process as well, especially with hawkeyes like @BassTrackerBoats couch-checking reporting.

@Apricot is spot on. If you buy cheap PBN links that seem too good to be true, they likely are. Work goes into maintaining PBNs. Domain renewal fees, hosting fees, article writing, scraping of expired content, posting articles with proper formatting, and much more. I had someone working 20 hours a week on mine, and that was with hosting through EBN who handled a lot of the IP/WordPress related work. Selling $1 "permanent" PBN links without reporting should raise some serious alarms, regardless of how well-branded they are (BATMAN AND MOBBIN' PBN V12 - BRUCE WAYNE AND JIMMY HOFFA TEAMSTER UP TO TAKE DOWN THE SERPS). Cheap stuff isn't working much these days. And even the expensive stuff that is run like a tight ship can and will experience major issues, as we have seen recently.

While I think @Frap 's solution is solid, that requires a TON of backend work and commitment from a lot of people to set up an in-site escrow system, division of fees, appointment of those willing to escrow, post-order verification on every order, determination on when that would take place, all so people can ensure they got their $50 worth out of a handful of links. Would these links need to be re-reviewed at set times, etc? Who would verify trust in the middleman?

If it was up to me, I'd temporarily ban the sale of PBN links on BHW and close all related thread. Force re-submission and require reporting to be sent to a locked-down box with every order. Some of the older PBNs that have been hammered with whoever wants to buy for years will show with lowered metrics and hundreds of irrelevant OBL. Meanwhile, newer and better managed PBNs like @Finn 's will breeze through a re-review.

WHY TO NOT REQUIRE REPORTING SENT TO THE BUYER

Remember, if Google is clearly cracking down on PBN links, it's crucial to realize that BHW is one of the largest, if not the largest provider of a marketplace for sellers of these links to congregate. All it takes is one buyer to cherry pick the PBNs that provide link reports to the buyer's once the tasks are complete to buy up links on 20+ PBN services, then report/disavow all those links to wreak havoc on hundreds to thousands of link buyers. Look how many buyers came out of the woodwork when @splishsplash 's PBN was compromised, and he was one of the most stringent sellers I've ever seen outside of @t0mmy the juggernaut.

If I went to the largest PBN provider sending link reports at the end of the service right now and bought up ten services from ten emails, even if they only reported half the links, I could end up with the URLs for their entire PBN easily. A couple hundred bucks and I would have the ammo needed to take down the whole PBN with a report to the webspam team. What if someone working for Google's webspam team had a budget of $10,000 to do just that?

ADVANTAGES OF CLOSING PBN THREADS AND STARTING OVER WITH FORCE REPORTING

• Stronger insight into reporting and better safety of the buyers
• Locked down paper trail for sellers that can be used in the case of a shitlist to prove work was completed
• Increase in overall quality of the SEO Packages and Link Building sections rampant with low quality services and spam post inflation
• Instant cleanup of 20+ item sticky sections where at least seven of them in Link Building's stickies alone are PBNs
• Minimal additional work for moderation outside of an initial flood of "new" services
• No need for any changes to the backend of the website

POTENTIAL DISADVANTAGES

• More involved work for moderation to review and approve these services
• Need a good way to lock down the reporting repository area
• Drop in BHW revenue due to a drop in sticky purchases, banner advertising, and email blasts from PBN sellers
• Garbage-quality PBN sellers could have their revenue stream cut without a backup

I could see force reporting to a central moderation team only to be a great change that would provide better safety and security for both the buyer and seller, as well as helping problems like what happened with the Wolf Network to have a far lower chance of occurring.

 

[coolsheet]

I think it's best for everyone that we leave things the way they are. I don't feel the system is broken. It works, not flawlessly, but it works. Anyone who's buying cheap PBN links...........well there's a lot to say, that i probably don't need to. I wont purchase from someone who provides reporting.

 

[Unreliable Witness]

I like the idea of a link escrow service. I'd be tempted to offer the service.

Anyway, the risk that a buyer exposes a PBN could be managed better by the sellers as well. The discussion is currently on vetting the sellers, but the buyers could be vetted to some extent.

As a buyer, I'm concerned about the quality of other buyers on the network. Not allowing links to gambling or porn is one thing (except I've bought PBNs that claim this is forbidden only to find links to those types of sites), but links to thin affiliate sites selling very different products or services, or to other less well designed PBNs are probably just as risky. Without a report, you can't identify your link neighbourhood.

As a buyer, I'd prefer reports to know that the work has been done. Search Console simply isn't reliable.

But I'd also prefer to buy links from a seller who protects his or her network as closely as possible - not just by blocking crawlers and having high quality content, but by keeping the quality of OBL high. Of course, that would come at a price because of the extra work vetting clients, and the fewer clients who make the grade.

I acknowledge there is a point at which the cost/risk profile might mean that for many high quality buyers, building a private network might be cheaper than buying into a marketplace one.

If you're thinking how buyers might be vetted, you could look at the site that will be linked to, as well as the member's posts on BHW. You could also have a Skype conversation. I'm not saying its simple.

 

[SunnyLeon]

If you bought PBN links and do not believe the seller did the work, ask him to send me the report and I'll make sure your links are in place without exposing the sellers' sites.

I can check that lying on my couch with my 7 year old iPad in minutes for you and would be happy to do that.

I won't quote all admins here, because they pretty much agree and say similar things, but you do understand guys that you're giving yourselves a lot of workload, right? Saying "just open a shitlist thread or ask a mod to check your order" will make me do this almost anytime I place an order, because I do want to make sure I get what I pay for.. The seller should be really trusted for me not to ask a mod to check the report for me.

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

I won't quote all admins here, because they pretty much agree and say similar things, but you do understand guys that you're giving yourselves a lot of workload, right? Saying "just open a shitlist thread or ask a mod to check your order" will make me do this almost anytime I place an order, because I do want to make sure I get what I pay for.. The seller should be really trusted for me not to ask a mod to check the report for me.

I'm not saying open a shitlist thread - I'm saying hit me up and I'll help out.

I help out a lot behind the scenes as do all the staff members and a shitlist is not required 98.4% of the time.

If someone needs a hand we offer it.

If one buys here and does not get what they pay for I'm all about helping them out if possible. There are some technical things I cannot help out with but the SEO stuff I have a solid handle on as I do that for a living and am always open to lending a hand.

If you think you didn't get what you paid for, hit me up.