Penguin 3.0 - real explanation?

Just a more aggressive version of the previous penguin updates. Lets stop putting it on a pedestal.
 
They are sort of saying the right thing, far more knowledgeable than anyone you'll find in the white hat world or at Moz anyway!

I'm doing a case study on 178 domains, my data points to the same stuff - especially crap directory links.
 
I was also thinking the same thing, they mentioned that "Do Not Worry About Blackhat Links or Negative SEO"

is that correct?
 
I completely disagree with the post. If all that Penguin did was erase the value of a link than why did my rankings recover with the last penguin refresh when the only thing I did was REMOVE links for the past year? If those links were essentially valueless and of no harm, than why did that fix my problems with penguin? If after a lack of high quality links was the issue why couldn't sites recover from penguin until the refresh, regardless of new high quality links?

I think it's delusional to think that negative SEO does not exist and the real problem is the lack of high quality links.
 
I agree with their conclusions. Negative SEO seems not to work anymore or at least as well as it did in the past. A month ago, I blasted one of my sites with do-follow GSA blasts. Guess what happened? Nothing. No movement up, no movement down.
 
Interesting post, I only use spam links from GSA, senuke etc for anchor text diversity, when it comes to my main keywords then it's PBN's and high quality web 2.0's etc all the way and none of my sites were hit.
 
maybe the first version of penguin penalized you and now they changed it to just take away backlink juice pointing to you they suspect to be un nautrual.
 
I don't think that article is too far off. Their evaluation of what is "high quality" or low may be debatable, but the gist of the idea is fairly sound. If it were handing out penalties you would be seeing notices, rather it very well may just be devaluing crap, or suspicious links. This is great news for the future, as this stance will eventually make negative SEO completely impossible in traditional methods.
 
Bofu > all. I would trust his analysis over anyone. The fact that he has all of that data at his fingertips in the form of tracking thousands of affiliate sites makes him that much more credible.
 
It looks the SERPS are much more cleaner than before and little precise for the keywords I am tracking. I could say, Now it looks like there is a high chance that the penalty is removed and the links are being devalued at least in some cases.
 
He has a clearer picture than you and I... but only a clearer picture of affiliate websites. Which may or may not react like other niches. None the less I think he's on point as well.

Bofu > all. I would trust his analysis over anyone. The fact that he has all of that data at his fingertips in the form of tracking thousands of affiliate sites makes him that much more credible.
 
So is he saying the truth about getting more authoritative links??
 
Personally these last few days I have seen pretty significant drops, one of my sites have gone from page 1 rankings to ending up on page 5 - 10 and that site is completely white hat. Not a single spam link built with a clean link profile and only links from high authority sources like yahoo news and other high auth niche relevant sites.
Mean while my competitor has a paper thin content with with at least 20 - 50 words on each page and still ranking, I have sized up the 2 link profiles on ahrefs, my site has at least 30% more high quality links...Im kinda stumped.

We write anything from 500 - 1000 word unique articles. On page is very clean and natural with the use of long tails and page interlinking and everything else you need to look like you not trying to game the system.

Anyone have similar problems with their white hat sites? I hope its just fluctuations.
Also I have checked for Neg SEO and nothing.
 
I am suspecting:
1) keyword anchor text % threshold has been lowered
2) penalty seems to be at the page level, and if home page hit other pages may start ranking where use to rank on home page, all pages may drop because home page hit, but promoting individual pages that don't have penalty may rank just fine, delete and replace individual pages with new pages so can rank without penalty
3) if 1 site flagged and have more sites that can be tied to flagged site (same hosting, etc...), they may get penalty also (I have sites where used same type of links but they were not hit but they are on different hosting and had diff. registrar of my sites that took a hit)
4) randomization and/or certain niches targeted causing confusion why some sites hit and others were not
5) penalized pages will not recover until next penguin..so might as well make a new pages or sites (not sure if disavowing bad links and 301 redirect may cause reevaluation before next penguin as claimed here http://www.linkresearchtools.com/case-studies/google-penguin-recovery-redirect-method/)

Need to test out my suspicions including building new links to penalized page vs. creating a new page and building links, both pages on same domain, to see which ranks better.
 
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From what I see, I'd say that penguin doesn't like forum profile links, especially if anchor text is diversified.
The other problem with those links is that it's not easy to clean them up as those spammy forum owners don't do anything and it's impossible to contact them.
 
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