This is why you got f'd by SAPE

[TropicalSun]

the main reason people got caught is that they were fucking lazy.

using little or no strategy when using sape. little or no diversity. not even reviewing the sites.

lazy seo will always get you penalized sape or not.

 

[taxhit]

I had some sites using SAPE get hit in this recent Google push. Does anyone have good advice for 301'ing my penalized site to a new site to try and recover rankings faster? Is there one method that works better then others?

301 just the homepage? or should I 301 every page on the old site to the new version of that page on new site?

What are your thoughts on simply cloning the old site to a new domain/IP (same content and url structure)?

Input is welcome!

I would like to understand this better as well. Not sure I understand how a 301 fixes the problem. Yes, you have a new domain but the same bad links are in place. What am I missing?

 

[irdeto]

I would like to understand this better as well. Not sure I understand how a 301 fixes the problem. Yes, you have a new domain but the same bad links are in place. What am I missing?

I personally agree with you. A 301 may have a positive effect on new site initially but it is my understanding that the penalty will pass down. I am yet to test it but it just seems like its probably more sustainable to start a new site.

 

[Windmill]

SAPE's network is filled with hacked websites - how else can they grow it so rapidly? Hence SAPE backlink profiles often have tonnes of deleted links in them when you throw 'em into majestic SEO. SAPE is highly illegal. No one is going to prosecute you, but morally, it is very low on the scale of the BH activities. Not that you should necessarily care

Russian marfia is running this dude. Its dodgy as fuck.

 

[howard_hughes]

NO it's NOT Hacked Sites.

You Could Participate In Selling Links Yourself, If you meet the criteria.

It's Growing So Fast, Because Its An EXCELLENT (BH) Platform & one of Its Kinds (Not Talking About CopyCats / Resellers Here)

No Its Not Illegal - Its BlackHat but Not Illegal & Definitely Not Immoral LOL

Russian Mafia? lol, Im sure they have better stuff to do Like Kill People

SAPE's network is filled with hacked websites - how else can they grow it so rapidly? Hence SAPE backlink profiles often have tonnes of deleted links in them when you throw 'em into majestic SEO. SAPE is highly illegal. No one is going to prosecute you, but morally, it is very low on the scale of the BH activities. Not that you should necessarily care

Russian marfia is running this dude. Its dodgy as fuck.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

NO it's NOT Hacked Sites.

You Could Participate In Selling Links Yourself, If you meet the criteria.

It's Growing So Fast, Because Its An EXCELLENT (BH) Platform & one of Its Kinds (Not Talking About CopyCats / Resellers Here)

No Its Not Illegal - Its BlackHat but Not Illegal & Definitely Not Immoral LOL

Russian Mafia? lol, Im sure they have better stuff to do Like Kill People

Glad to hear an experienced member clear this up.

 

[gorang]

It won't just be the tlds. Google can simply login and see the URLs of the sites in the network, it couldn't be easier. But even if they didn't have the URLs from SAPE's system, they can still find the whole network using basic logic. For instance, they pick out 1000 most used SAPE sites in the network, they then record all of the outbound links that these SAPE sites point to, then they analyse the neighbourhood of all of these sites. They will all have SAPE sites in common, at which point they have a very targeted list of sites selling SAPE.

There are many ways of finding SAPE/blog networks, if Google combines them, then it will make for a very effective system which is actively taking down most of the network in a few months.

It really comes down to being smart with your networks, first point is to never used a link selling network which gives you the URLs where you get your links.

 

[mickyfu]

I GOT WHACKED on Sunday like many others. If you didn't, more power to you. But STOP SPEWING THIS COMPLETE BULLSHIT that people who are getting banned have no clue what they're doing, because I forgot more about what I was doing than most morons will ever know. And I got whacked.

Obviously not quite the SEO guru that you have labeled yourself as, must have forgot that Sape is used for churn and burn, who gives a fuck if their Sape sites get hit?

 

[drogon]

To OP your info/theory is inaccurate. I have been using Sape for 10 months and have my own account. I have ranked sites with mostly .ru and also ONLY English com/net/org sites and few European with wide variety of keywords and still got sites that use the links penalized so its not just about the TLD but the actual while network is current fully under the big G radar.

 

[YouMadBro]

Not all SAPE links are hacked links but there is a good percentage at SAPE that are hacked.

For any who doesn't know, there is a nice little bot going around since last year bruteforcing Wordpress sites to inject links; this is part of the SAPE "group" of activities controlled by the Russian underground. In fact I would say the % of hacked links for .com/.net is pretty high as the hack attack is quite difficult to notice by your average Wordpress idiot (i.e. average user). I actually let the bot access one of my dummy sites and I was LOLing hard when I saw where the links posted were pointing to.

 

[Windmill]

NO it's NOT Hacked Sites.

You Could Participate In Selling Links Yourself, If you meet the criteria.

It's Growing So Fast, Because Its An EXCELLENT (BH) Platform & one of Its Kinds (Not Talking About CopyCats / Resellers Here)

No Its Not Illegal - Its BlackHat but Not Illegal & Definitely Not Immoral LOL

Russian Mafia? lol, Im sure they have better stuff to do Like Kill People

Quite seriously - and I mean quite seriously - Russian marfia IS involved in SEO (and all sorts of other black hat online activities) and they makes tonnes of money. And the SAPE network is filled with tonnes and tonnes and tonnes and oh-so-many tonnes of hacked websites - I didn't realize that people didn't know this.

 

[rezos]

google has access to the list of sape links. I can't think of another way google would have caught me. I bet they just pull all the links every few weeks and then just wait and see if a site shows up on multiple domains from that list.

 

[DBMEDIALLC]

That's interesting. I knew SAPE was a Russian network but I had no idea some of the sellers of SAPE links here were purely targeting .ru links. Huge red flag. Although I agree, I doubt Google uses TLD's to enforce penalties and unnatural link notices.

 

[RedMango]

Variety is the spice of SEO. Don't rely on SAPE. Don't rely on one strategy. Mix it up. Fuck around with it. Think how 'real' sites rank in certain niches. Some favour social more than others. Others really don't ie. construction niches aren't really 'socially' talked about, but then again, it's good to have some social accounts to push out those sites that don't use social. Fuck about with it and test it until you know certain aspects work. By the time you do that, things would have changed in SEO...but that's the game.

I've been burned by Sape in the past. I've also created my own account and am being very picky about what I choose. Trust no one, learn, read, learn, test, do it yourself. Don't read shit like that Matthew Woodward guy. Some dick in his parent's basement with an ego and bunch of shitty opinions. Same as most SEO guys really. I don't post much and don't claim to know it all. I come here to learn but I do so by reading between the lines and reverse engineering big players. Don't be a sheep. Unless the sheep drives a Ferrari.

 

[caroline1977]

Yeah is ahrefs

 

[delboy2010]

Ratios have to be right!!

Sape links are very powerful (if you use the right ones i.e. not the cheap ones where you can get 100's for hardly nothing) remember even with amazing services like this nothing comes from being cheap, are the rewards good? well spend like they are!!!

Use these links in moderation hitting your anchor texts and mix up with loads of other platforms, Sape makes a very very very small % of my links and the ones that are I spend good money on and filter myself, I NEVER give my link building to 3rd parties, they're never going to look after your campaigns like YOU WILL.

 

[lover]

Ratios have to be right!!

Sape links are very powerful (if you use the right ones i.e. not the cheap ones where you can get 100's for hardly nothing) remember even with amazing services like this nothing comes from being cheap, are the rewards good? well spend like they are!!!

Use these links in moderation hitting your anchor texts and mix up with loads of other platforms, Sape makes a very very very small % of my links and the ones that are I spend good money on and filter myself, I NEVER give my link building to 3rd parties, they're never going to look after your campaigns like YOU WILL.

So what kind of filters you use for your Sape links?

 

[MatthewWoodward]

This is from his blog:
"However in the end, I decided against using SAPE as I thought using illegally hacked websites to gain my first position was a ?bit too black hat?, even for this case study. Read more: http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/experiments/ranking-for-rand-fishkin/#ixzz2fAYkl72D Follow us: @mattwoodwarduk on Twitter"

I didn't write that post that comes from Charles/godofseo

But I wouldn't be surprised to find that a lot of sites in the SAPE network are hacked. Its not exactly hard to do and russians have a certain reputation with hacking ^^

 

[nanavlad]

Sape is like any other bubble
the guys who got in early made a killing

Now too many users and the value is harder to find.

Time to move on and find the next Great blackhat method.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

Time to move on and find the next Great blackhat method.

Judging by the latest update, the next great blackhat method is xrumer.... My tier 2 sites I made months/years ago for throwaway are suddenly wasting my money sites