The Calculated Risk of Using PBNs

[hekke]

This thread was inspired by a comment I got on my journey saying the following:

"In the OP you said your main goal is to flip the site for $100k.. but here you are saying you don't give a shit about PBN quality as long as they rank you. Which will potentially lead to a site wide deindexing for you or the person who buys your site.

You're really going to rip someone off for $100k?"

So today I just want to rant a little about the usage of PBNs, and the calculated risk that comes with it.

Definition of calculated risk: a hazard or chance of failure whose degree of probability has been reckoned or estimated before some undertaking is entered upon.

So, we have all have seen the signatures here on BHW with "100% super-safe PBNs", and we have all, at some point, been interested to figure out the way that these providers make 100% safe PBNs. The answer is, that none of their PBNs are safe, none of ours that we built are either.

Most of us have heard all the jazz about adding contact, privacy policy and about us pages, and adding a few articles that doesn't link out to your money site to each PBN. The thing is that, no matter what, if Google manually reviews your site, you are fucked no matter how many pages you have (unless you are putting thousands of dollars per PBN and built REAL sites, where you just happen to link out to a site called besttoastersintheworld.com. And this isn't something you should do for "best toaster" type keywords either way).

Luckily for us using PBNs towards relatively harmless sites is that there is only so much manpower at the Google Spam team, so for most of us, we will never be manually reviewed - thus never get our sites penalized. There are sites where people get scammed, illegal at content is being published and much much more that Google prioritize - having toaster site Z ranking instead of X is irrelevant - they all just list products. There's still a chance, but it is like 10-20K sites being penalized for unnatural links per month (source), that's not a lot considering 571 websites are being built every minute (according to this infographic, from 2013).

So, no, I am not scamming someone for $100K+, my PBNs are just as safe as any of the PBNs that top ranking sites use, even though they usually have a contact page or about me page added, but other than that, most top ranking sites build 1 article = 1 link to one of their money sites type of PBNs. There is a CALCULATED RISK in using PBNs, or building links at all, even guest posts are against Google ToS (though, there is only a slight risk of being penalized when using them wisely combined with other type of links).

Hide your PBNs, and your competitors won't be able to find, and they have nothing to report you for.

This is just my thoughts, let me know what you think, let's have a friendly discussion

 

[NotSoAverageJoe]

Will you feel bad if you sell the website for $100K and in the next following days, his site is penalized?

And to add to the discussion: Imo the safest kind of PBN is a hidden one. I see plenty of people doing PBNs but they're not hiding them from crawlers in any way. I guess we could call it...Public Blog Network.

 

[hekke]

Will you feel bad if you sell the website for $100K and in the next following days, his site is penalized?

When buying a site the buyer takes a calculated risk. The PBNs will be mentioned in the selling of the site, so the buyer will be well aware that the site is backed by X amounts of PBNs. There is always a risk of being penalized, for example, I know of someone who sold a site for $170K and the buyer forgot to put it back up within 4 days and it fell off it's top positions, and the buyer lost a shitload of money. It's a calculated risk in buying sites, if you are willing to take that risk, go ahead and buy a site.

If you want to reduce the risk, buy white hat sites that aren't backed by PBNs, built or bought links.

 

[Unreliable Witness]

Any buyer of a site should carry out "due dilligence" to see what he is buying.

There are some simple ways of assessing whether you want to buy a site with a particular link profile. If you're talking to the seller, you could ask for reports from webmaster tools (search console) as well as checking the sites that are shown in any link tracking software such as Majestic or ahrefs (which generally won't show PBN links if they have been hidden from these bots).

When you buy a site, you should be able to gather enough information to make a decision about the level of risk you are also buying, and whether it is worth it.

 

[Aluminium]

High-quality PBN's don't look like PBN's at all. They merely look like genuine blog posts, from genuine people - that's where a lot of people mess up by purchasing various levels of content.

You try a cheap dude out, then you decide to go with someone a little more seasoned; two blog posts written by the "same author", but with different grammar and tone throughout each passage.

It's the little things that give PBN's away.. and when you blatantly don't care about quality, it should come back and bite you right in the ass (at some point).

 

[nikchaing]

well said OP, but I was really hoping to see some type of math equation

 

[karupoiss]

High-quality PBN's don't look like PBN's at all. They merely look like genuine blog posts, from genuine people - that's where a lot of people mess up by purchasing various levels of content.

You try a cheap dude out, then you decide to go with someone a little more seasoned; two blog posts written by the "same author", but with different grammar and tone throughout each passage.

It's the little things that give PBN's away.. and when you blatantly don't care about quality, it should come back and bite you right in the ass (at some point).

Even if they look like genuine blog posts - google employee can see that your site is linked to from xyz "genuine looking blog posts" and I am sure as fck that you can't make them all look genuine enough. Also take into account the creation dates of the sites, previous content compared to content used now etc. The guys doing manual reviews see that shit day-in-day-out they CAN and WILL see this stuff through.

 

[Hawkster]

To be honest i wouldn't pay 100k for a site thats ranked using PBN. But i see your point

 

[Aluminium]

Even if they look like genuine blog posts - google employee can see that your site is linked to from xyz "genuine looking blog posts" and I am sure as fck that you can't make them all look genuine enough. Also take into account the creation dates of the sites, previous content compared to content used now etc. The guys doing manual reviews see that shit day-in-day-out they CAN and WILL see this stuff through.

I mean, there's always going to be a risk. You can make them look as genuine as you're willing to - it's just that some people don't even bother.

The fact that you can still get penalized doesn't mean you just shouldn't give a shit.. that's poor practice!

 

[Aluminium]

To be honest i wouldn't pay 100k for a site thats ranked using PBN. But i see your point

100k better be landing me an established website that has thousands of loyal customers lol

 

[mirrorer]

well said OP, but I was really hoping to see some type of math equation

+1
Where are the stats ?

It has been said many times here:

• public selling pbns with link reports: High risk
• public selling pbns without link reports: risk
• public selling pbns through words of mouth,shared between few people: medium risk
• private pbn links shared between your own sites: low risk
• private pbn links (blocking 3rd party crawlers) shared between your own sites: very low risk
• private pbn,1 pbn network per 1 money website,(blocking 3rd party crawlers): virtually no risk & best choice

 

[loedown]

Good info, but I wouldn't feel bad about selling the site for 100k.

 

[redrays]

+1
Where are the stats ?

It has been said many times here:

• public selling pbns with link reports: High risk
• public selling pbns without link reports: risk
• public selling pbns through words of mouth,shared between few people: medium risk
• private pbn links shared between your own sites: low risk
• private pbn links (blocking 3rd party crawlers) shared between your own sites: very low risk
• private pbn,1 pbn network per 1 money website,(blocking 3rd party crawlers): virtually no risk & best choice

Ah, the truth. So rare to read on bhw.

As for stats, I would be interested in an estimate of how much it costs to build and maintain a decent network. The calculated risk is whether you can make this back before the network falls apart.

 

[nodyguy]

If I can create a simple PBN, which simple means for me just a wordpress site without filler articles or whatever and rank for keywords that make me $$$$ a month, I will keep doing it.
Blocking crawlers is the only thing I do and it is enough for me.

So yeah, maybe someday google will manual review my PBN (I highly doubt it, there are TONS of pbns like mine) and I will lose my sites but hey, I will make fortune until then that will let me to rebuild another SIMPLE PBN that will make me fortune again in matter of days, so who fucking cares?

People care so much about Google manual actions like they have millions of workers that just check for PBNs, well NO! They are focusing on making the algo better rather than hunting some small people PBNs.
Don't overkill everything, just do it - you will learn so much in the process and will gain so much experience so just redoing it will be so easy.

PS: I have "Simple" PBN live for more than a year now.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Fear2403]

have any crawler blocker code actually work?i try all code on bhw but my pbn still show on ahref ...

 

[MonkeyJohn]

If I can create a simple PBN, which simple means for me just a wordpress site without filler articles or whatever and rank for keywords that make me $$$$ a month, I will keep doing it.
Blocking crawlers is the only thing I do and it is enough for me.

So yeah, maybe someday google will manual review my PBN (I highly doubt it, there are TONS of pbns like mine) and I will lose my sites but hey, I will make fortune until then that will let me to rebuild another SIMPLE PBN that will make me fortune again in matter of days, so who fucking cares?

People care so much about Google manual actions like they have millions of workers that just check for PBNs, well NO! They are focusing on making the algo better rather than hunting some small people PBNs.
Don't overkill everything, just do it - you will learn so much in the process and will gain so much experience so just redoing it will be so easy.

PS: I have "Simple" PBN live for more than a year now.

Just my 2 cents.

@nodyguy great comment can I ask, are you linking to multiple money sites from one PBN "network"...or do you split into different networks for each group of money sites?

 

[redrays]

If I can create a simple PBN, which simple means for me just a wordpress site without filler articles or whatever and rank for keywords that make me $$$$ a month, I will keep doing it.
Blocking crawlers is the only thing I do and it is enough for me.

So yeah, maybe someday google will manual review my PBN (I highly doubt it, there are TONS of pbns like mine) and I will lose my sites but hey, I will make fortune until then that will let me to rebuild another SIMPLE PBN that will make me fortune again in matter of days, so who fucking cares?

People care so much about Google manual actions like they have millions of workers that just check for PBNs, well NO! They are focusing on making the algo better rather than hunting some small people PBNs.
Don't overkill everything, just do it - you will learn so much in the process and will gain so much experience so just redoing it will be so easy.

PS: I have "Simple" PBN live for more than a year now.

Just my 2 cents.

Yep, and this is what I don't understand about those who obsess over the footprints and such. If you invest $2500 into a 'simple' pbn and make 10x, 20x, 100x that, who gives a damn if it and all your money sites end up deindexed?

 

[nodyguy]

@nodyguy great comment can I ask, are you linking to multiple money sites from one PBN "network"...or do you split into different networks for each group of money sites?

Well I'am linking to few at the moment from the same network but I guess I will stop it once I feel its enough.

Yep, and this is what I don't understand about those who obsess over the footprints and such. If you invest $2500 into a 'simple' pbn and make 10x, 20x, 100x that, who gives a damn if it and all your money sites end up deindexed?

Well I don't know how you make your PBN but $2,500 is alot for single PBN (up to 50 sites or w/e)
Just get some strong crawler for a month and hunt as much domains you can which will cost you like 100$, then hosting shouldn't be more than 100$ a month.
So here you got 50 domains PBN for a year for about 1300$ and don't underestimate 50 domains! PrivateBN is much much much stronger than PublicBN with high OBL.
Use your PBN smartly and 1 month of earning will pay it back

 

[1morenoob]

Love this post, always say the same.

Really gets to me when people talk about it as if you have the choice of having 1 high quality pbn site or 1 bad quality pbn site when in reality I can fully outsource shtity looking pbns for $50-60. High quality content and better hosting? Pfft 150$+?
Give me 3 shtity looking pbns over 1 good quality one any day.

Also fail to see how any sort of fairly big pbn is going to pass manual review unless you add lots of random links to other websites (massively dilluting the power) aswell as having good quality content. I doubt people doing manual reviews are complete planks, if pbns are even only 20% of my sites decent links then its still going to be blatantly obvious that 100 sites haven't decided to add only 1 outbound link to my website.

 

[redrays]

Well I don't know how you make your PBN but $2,500 is alot for single PBN (up to 50 sites or w/e)
Just get some strong crawler for a month and hunt as much domains you can which will cost you like 100$, then hosting shouldn't be more than 100$ a month.
So here you got 50 domains PBN for a year for about 1300$ and don't underestimate 50 domains! PrivateBN is much much much stronger than PublicBN with high OBL.
Use your PBN smartly and 1 month of earning will pay it back

I just threw it out there as a conversation starter, thinking something like $50 per fully outsourced domain x 50 domains Agree with you on the rest.

Also fail to see how any sort of fairly big pbn is going to pass manual review

No use beating around the bush, it won't