I have been hit by a Google unnatural link warning on Webmaster Tools yesterday. My most recent SEO work done are SAPE links and another diversified link building service.
Interestingly, Google did not threaten to deindex my site but just said that the link juice from those detected unnatural links will be discounted.
Now I am wondering where to start cleaning up from - because I do not know where the source of the unnatural links are. The latest link service I only signed up few days ago, so can't be it.
One possibility is SAPE especially due to the recent rumours about G cleaning up SAPE, but I've got other websites on SAPE and they aren't affected.
The other possibility is, other link building services I used - but I used them long ago and shouldn't I have gotten unnatural link warnings long ago?
This episode led me to think about how Google breaks link networks.
Based on my rudimentary knowledge of algorithms... in order for Google to detect sites on a link network, there must be something in common amongst all the sites to link them together - a unique signature or pattern which identifies the site as a member of the link network. Some factors could be: common IP addresses, domain whois info, common site content, poorly spun content, anchor text diversity, etc.
Which leads to the question - if Google wants to target SAPE - what would be SAPE's unique identifiers? Google surely doesn't want to roll out an update to target SAPE which would hit lots of other sites with false positives - that would make them look stupid.
Based on my basic knowledge of SAPE, sites offering SAPE links are often not owned by the same people/organisations - they are mostly individual bonafide websites/blogs which are featuring SAPE links to earn some money. There is no single common way to feature SAPE links - some are in footer, some in sidebar, some inline with content, etc. Lots of other websites not participating in paid backlinks feature outbound hyperlinks in the same format as well, so how would Google specifically target SAPE?
If it's something as simple as detecting footer links, small fonts, invisible links, etc... I guess it wouldn't be part of Google's efforts at breaking a specific link network but it's just general anti-webspam algorithms which probably already exist for a long time.
Food for thought and discussion...
Interestingly, Google did not threaten to deindex my site but just said that the link juice from those detected unnatural links will be discounted.
Now I am wondering where to start cleaning up from - because I do not know where the source of the unnatural links are. The latest link service I only signed up few days ago, so can't be it.
One possibility is SAPE especially due to the recent rumours about G cleaning up SAPE, but I've got other websites on SAPE and they aren't affected.
The other possibility is, other link building services I used - but I used them long ago and shouldn't I have gotten unnatural link warnings long ago?
This episode led me to think about how Google breaks link networks.
Based on my rudimentary knowledge of algorithms... in order for Google to detect sites on a link network, there must be something in common amongst all the sites to link them together - a unique signature or pattern which identifies the site as a member of the link network. Some factors could be: common IP addresses, domain whois info, common site content, poorly spun content, anchor text diversity, etc.
Which leads to the question - if Google wants to target SAPE - what would be SAPE's unique identifiers? Google surely doesn't want to roll out an update to target SAPE which would hit lots of other sites with false positives - that would make them look stupid.
Based on my basic knowledge of SAPE, sites offering SAPE links are often not owned by the same people/organisations - they are mostly individual bonafide websites/blogs which are featuring SAPE links to earn some money. There is no single common way to feature SAPE links - some are in footer, some in sidebar, some inline with content, etc. Lots of other websites not participating in paid backlinks feature outbound hyperlinks in the same format as well, so how would Google specifically target SAPE?
If it's something as simple as detecting footer links, small fonts, invisible links, etc... I guess it wouldn't be part of Google's efforts at breaking a specific link network but it's just general anti-webspam algorithms which probably already exist for a long time.
Food for thought and discussion...
