55 Tricky Footprints That Are Killing Your PBN

Hey guys,


Since last year I've been focusing mainly on PBN SEO and I've managed to see a ton of shit both good and bad.

I started out buying expired domains and built up almost 200 sites toward the end of last year.

That's when Google started their rampage against PBNs. I lost 60 over the span of a few days.

PBNs were probably the best thing to happen to my SEO game but when I lost 60 domains I was really depressed. That was about $5,000+ wiped out in one go.

I knew it was my fault and I had nobody to blame.

So I spoke to a few large scale PBN owners that had sites de-indexed and then I got to work, reverse engineering the common footprints across all the de-indexed sites.

Close to 3,000 of em.

I found 55 possible footprints. All I had to do after that was test 'em.

It's been over 5 months since then and I haven't lost a single domain on the sites that I covered these footprints. Yeah, they're that effective.

I couldn't copy paste my entire blog post here because it's uniquely formatted and over 4,000 words but I've listed 'em all out:




1. Duplicate SOA Records

2. Crawlers & Spiders Blocked on All Sites

3. Too Much Unrelated Content

4. Too Many CDN Hosts

5. No CDN Hosts

6. Poor Site Categorization

7. No Whois Privacy

8. Only Whois Privacy

9. Duplicate Nameservers

10. Duplicate WhoIs Domain Emails

11. Same Registration & Renewal Dates

12. No Hosting Diversity

13. Too Many Cheap Hosts

14. No TLD Variation

15. Only One Registrar

16. Don?t Use SEO Hosting!

17. Poor IP Diversity

18. Same Server Locations

19. Too Much Downtime

20. Only Using WordPress

21. Not Re-Creating Some Sites

22. Not Enough Theme Diversity

23. No Custom Logos

24. Duplicate Plugins on Entire Network

25. No Authenticity or Originality

26. No Linked Social Profiles

27. Same Name for Every Author

28. Not Deleting Sample Pages & Posts

29. Mystery "Admin" Authors

30. No Legal Pages

31. No Contact Page

32. No Communication Address

33. Majority Content Linking to Money Site

34. All Links Using Exact Match Anchors

35. No OBLs (Outbound Links) to Authority Sites

36. No Internal Linking

37. Don?t Interlink Your Network Sites!

38. Same Number of Links or Posts on Homepage

39. Same Number of Links in Each Post

40. Same Linking Mechanisms Each Time (i.e. contextual)

41. Not Enough Rich Media or Too Much Rich Media

42. Spun or Garbage Content

43. Duplicate Content

44. Duplicate Images

45. Duplicate Video

46. No Traffic or Interactions on Your PBN

47. Broken Posts or Code

48. Same Posting Dates & Times For All Posts

49. Identical Advertising Code

50. Identical Analytics Code

51. Identical Custom Application Code

52. PBN Management Software

53. Using Chrome & G Products for Your PBN Data

54. Limited Word Count Range

55. All Sites Displaying Full Posts on Homepage





I've been keeping this list private for a long time but it's time to give back and stop being a leecher.

After all, it's places like BHW where I learned to make real money.

Did I miss any footprints? Reply and let me know.

I go into detail on each footprint on the blog post so you can check it out if you'd like.


Mods: Please let me know if this isn't the right section or if there are any problems with the thread.

Get list ! Nice work

Good wrap up buddy

Losing 30% of your PBN is terrible, glad to hear that this has helped you improve your strategies. Thanks for the list!

A lot of this is speculation, but most are definitely potential footprints Google might act upon . Great post mate.

My PBNs are small enough so I can let a few of those slip. Good list overall, thanks for sharing.

Thanks you soo much for sharing
i have a little doubt with these:

1. Duplicate SOA Records (where can i change SOA records?)

2. Crawlers & Spiders Blocked on All Sites (you mean Google spiders or Link software crawlers?)

3. Too Many CDN Hosts (you mean content delivery network?)

watsonovedades said:

Thanks you soo much for sharing
i have a little doubt with these:

1. Duplicate SOA Records (where can i change SOA records?)

2. Crawlers & Spiders Blocked on All Sites (you mean Google spiders or Link software crawlers?)

3. Too Many CDN Hosts (you mean content delivery network?)

Click to expand...

Hey Watson,

1. You can change your SOA in Cpanel. Just go to "Update Contact Information"

2. I was referring to link crawlers like Majestic/Ahrefs. You're not supposed to be blocking Google in any case.

3. Yeah, because Cloudflare seems to be really popular with PBNs (and other sites too ofcourse).

Not only are these HUGE problems, but 95% of PBN link sellers ignore these entirely.

watsonovedades said:

Thanks you soo much for sharing
i have a little doubt with these:

1. Duplicate SOA Records (where can i change SOA records?)

2. Crawlers & Spiders Blocked on All Sites (you mean Google spiders or Link software crawlers?)

3. Too Many CDN Hosts (you mean content delivery network?)

Click to expand...

UltraLink said:

Hey Watson,

1. You can change your SOA in Cpanel. Just go to "Update Contact Information"

2. I was referring to link crawlers like Majestic/Ahrefs. You're not supposed to be blocking Google in any case.

3. Yeah, because Cloudflare seems to be really popular with PBNs (and other sites too ofcourse).

Click to expand...

Good list, thanks for making it public.

thanks for share

question:

2. Crawlers & Spiders Blocked on All Sites

In the post you refer to robots.txt then. Of course thats a big footprint as it is public. But most people block via htaccess anyway because the bots have to abide htaccess. On top htaccess is not public. Do you still consider this a footprint?

wedreamseo said:

As a matter of fact they are no problerms at all, I have networks where I don't take care of SOA records, where I block spiders on every single site though I never use CDN hosts, none of these have ever been deindexed so it's all a a bunch of guesses from people who leave tons of other footprints or run no significant sized networks.

Click to expand...

Yeah a lot are speculative but it doesn't hurt to apply a few changes that only take a couple of minutes per domain.

The point is to have a list that you can quickly run through

Nice first post on your blog mate, keep it up.

Aty said:

Nice first post on your blog mate, keep it up.

Click to expand...

Thanks bro, I'm working on a new post that's even better now

Great post bro.

Nice 1st post!! I am a little confused about SOA. If we use domain privacy how can anyone find out the email we use? I tried looking up in google for the email I use in the contact info on my hosting account and nothing came up. What email do you use? A different one for each hosting account?

UltraLink said:

1. Duplicate SOA Records
2. Crawlers & Spiders Blocked on All Sites
3. Too Much Unrelated Content
4. Too Many CDN Hosts
5. No CDN Hosts
6. Poor Site Categorization
7. No Whois Privacy
8. Only Whois Privacy
9. Duplicate Nameservers
10. Duplicate WhoIs Domain Emails

11. Same Registration & Renewal Dates
12. No Hosting Diversity
13. Too Many Cheap Hosts
14. No TLD Variation
15. Only One Registrar
16. Don?t Use SEO Hosting!
17. Poor IP Diversity
18. Same Server Locations
19. Too Much Downtime
20. Only Using WordPress

21. Not Re-Creating Some Sites
22. Not Enough Theme Diversity
23. No Custom Logos
24. Duplicate Plugins on Entire Network
25. No Authenticity or Originality
26. No Linked Social Profiles
27. Same Name for Every Author
28. Not Deleting Sample Pages & Posts
29. Mystery "Admin" Authors
30. No Legal Pages

31. No Contact Page
32. No Communication Address
33. Majority Content Linking to Money Site
34. All Links Using Exact Match Anchors
35. No OBLs (Outbound Links) to Authority Sites
36. No Internal Linking
37. Don?t Interlink Your Network Sites!
38. Same Number of Links or Posts on Homepage
39. Same Number of Links in Each Post
40. Same Linking Mechanisms Each Time (i.e. contextual)

41. Not Enough Rich Media or Too Much Rich Media
42. Spun or Garbage Content
43. Duplicate Content
44. Duplicate Images
45. Duplicate Video
46. No Traffic or Interactions on Your PBN
47. Broken Posts or Code
48. Same Posting Dates & Times For All Posts
49. Identical Advertising Code
50. Identical Analytics Code

51. Identical Custom Application Code
52. PBN Management Software
53. Using Chrome & G Products for Your PBN Data
54. Limited Word Count Range
55. All Sites Displaying Full Posts on Homepage

Click to expand...

OP, I like your list. Here's what I'd add:

I'd say "Diversity of Word Count". Long posts, short posts, posts with only an image and a phrase, a video and a quote, and so on.

Not all posts with OBLs.

A real site needs a random/chaos aspect. If everything is done under a cookie cutter approach, then you can't complain later.

great list, but at the end of the day, it's all pretty obvious. diversity and randomization is priority. patterns = bad.

Thank you for sharing your research with us, it's greatly appreciated a couple things in that list made me rethink a few of my campaigns.

Nice Contribution OP, Thanks for the Footprints List.
It will help the Noob.