How Google can stop PBNs

Hello Everybody,

First of all

Disclaimer:

I am not a person who is tries to create unnecessary fears, just a practical look at the situation. I am not afraid of seo updates, nor am I saying that SEO is dead or PBNs are dead. Its just my thoughts about how Google can kill PBNs in the future.

Now the real stuff:

I asked myself the question, what would I do to stop PBNs if I were Google?

Ans: Stop giving any weight to any outbound link on any website raised from the dead (i.e. expired & deindexed and created again) for specific period of time i.e. say six months.

This strategy will effectively stop PBNs without affecting any person who uses any expired domain to make a valuable site as the site itself will be able to rank but its outbound links will not count for some random period of time. So if the site is made purely for link building it will loose it purpose.

Short & Simple, thats it. Now ready to take the blows.

If it's that short and simple, Google would have done that years ago. Also, there's a pretty simple solution to that: hold on to those expired/deindexed sites for 6 months and they'll work like a charm again.

The most effective method would be what google did a few years ago. They found those networks, they placed articles - trackers in there and they banned everyone. That's why noone creates big networks nowadays. Small pbns are hard to hit.

Reeshua said:

If it's that short and simple, Google would have done that years ago. Also, there's a pretty simple solution to that: hold on to those expired/deindexed sites for 6 months and they'll work like a charm again.

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I am not Google and I don't have internal info on whether they can do it or not or if they can do, why they haven't done it. I am only saying its a possible way without causing much collateral damage if they have all the data to make it possible.

holding on to domains for 6 months will change the whole seo dynamics, costing etc. 6 months is a long time in internet world.

Reeshua said:

If it's that short and simple, Google would have done that years ago. Also, there's a pretty simple solution to that: hold on to those expired/deindexed sites for 6 months and they'll work like a charm again.

Click to expand...

that requires manual intervention and have collateral damage, this strategy has no collateral damage AFAIK, listening to more thoughts here. I have a PBN and I want this theory to be debunked like most of you.

hidedora said:

The most effective method would be what google did a few years ago. They found those networks, they placed articles - trackers in there and they banned everyone. That's why noone creates big networks nowadays. Small pbns are hard to hit.

Click to expand...

Are we talking about Public or Private blog networks?

tbh the confusion comes from people advertising their blog networks as private, while selling to anyone - honestly, this should be a bannable offence. They do work, of course, but they are not private, and they are definitely not manual-review safe...

If you own the network yourself, there is only one way for Google to fight it - doing exactly what OP described. Unless, of course you make newbie mistakes when buying the domains and setting up the sites.

Until they remove backlinks as a ranking factor altogether, I can't see any other way for Google to fight against PBN-s. OP-s solution is not a dealbreaker if you want to build sites for the long term (and this is where you actually use PBN-s anyway).

Edit: Actually, if I put my paranoid brain into action I can maybe imagine how Google can snatch a deal with payment processors and see if you've paid for multiple domains with the same credit card. Or maybe they can get a couple of 1$ hosting providers to share this info. I don't think these are worth considering at this point, just some paranoid brainstorming...

I would think that some of the worlds smartest thinkers employed over at Google have come up with far better ways than this, OP

Stop giving them ideas, whatever quality they might be.

ranga said:

Hello Everybody,

First of all

Disclaimer:

I am not a person who is tries to create unnecessary fears, just a practical look at the situation. I am not afraid of seo updates, nor am I saying that SEO is dead or PBNs are dead. Its just my thoughts about how Google can kill PBNs in the future.

Now the real stuff:

I asked myself the question, what would I do to stop PBNs if I were Google?

Ans: Stop giving any weight to any outbound link on any website raised from the dead (i.e. expired & deindexed and created again) for specific period of time i.e. say six months.

This strategy will effectively stop PBNs without affecting any person who uses any expired domain to make a valuable site as the site itself will be able to rank but its outbound links will not count for some random period of time. So if the site is made purely for link building it will loose it purpose.

Short & Simple, thats it. Now ready to take the blows.

Click to expand...

That would be a bit of a desperate tactic from Google, wouldn't it? Not really getting rid of the problem just brushing it under the covers for 6 months. I know Google already have something in their algorithm that delays the time it takes for your links to take effect cos they mentioned it in their patent.

In my OPINION:

PBN's will never be completely useless, their effectiveness might be reduced but at the end of the day to reduce them to zero - G will have to destroy SEO, basically.

PBN's are essentially a network of websites. You get natural PBN's, this site links to this site, this site links to that site as well as this site etc etc etc... It happens in the real world and it's only a matter of how "natural" you can build you PBN.

Saying PBN's will be destroyed by G, is like saying all BHW members will get hit by G, the owner of the forum might give away the IP's of all the users to G but then again, there are members who only use the "whitehat" section and they do things "naturally" but they still belong to BHW.

tony_d said:

I would think that some of the worlds smartest thinkers employed over at Google have come up with far better ways than this, OP

Click to expand...

But will this work???

antonjones said:

That would be a bit of a desperate tactic from Google, wouldn't it? Not really getting rid of the problem just brushing it under the covers for 6 months. I know Google already have something in their algorithm that delays the time it takes for your links to take effect cos they mentioned it in their patent.

Click to expand...

But that will be a death blow to seo as we know now without hurting any genuine website. 6 months is just a fictitious number, imagine if its random time between 3-6 months.

ghackseo said:

In my OPINION:

PBN's will never be completely useless, their effectiveness might be reduced but at the end of the day to reduce them to zero - G will have to destroy SEO, basically.

PBN's are essentially a network of websites. You get natural PBN's, this site links to this site, this site links to that site as well as this site etc etc etc... It happens in the real world and it's only a matter of how "natural" you can build you PBN.

Saying PBN's will be destroyed by G, is like saying all BHW members will get hit by G, the owner of the forum might give away the IP's of all the users to G but then again, there are members who only use the "whitehat" section and they do things "naturally" but they still belong to BHW.

Click to expand...

I have a simple questions, can this theory work??

To be honest I don't really think it's even worth it for Google to police PBNs. Maybe bust a few public networks every now and then to create fear, but beyond that I don't think it's even worth their resources.

All they need to do is manually monitor the bigger niches and let the SERPs be and continue to rake in profits.

It's not like if a black hat site or a white hat site is on page 1 really matters as long as the information helps the searcher I don't see why Google would care really.

Gyuman82 said:

To be honest I don't really think it's even worth it for Google to police PBNs. Maybe bust a few public networks every now and then to create fear, but beyond that I don't think it's even worth their resources.

All they need to do is manually monitor the bigger niches and let the SERPs be and continue to rake in profits.

It's not like if a black hat site or a white hat site is on page 1 really matters as long as the information helps the searcher I don't see why Google would care really.

Click to expand...

I don't know or speculate what is or not worth Google's time & effort. I think Google will do anything in its power to stop link manipulation.

The question here is not about its intention, but can this work in affecting PBN strategy which has been holy grail of SEO with all Gurus saying that Google cannot hit it in any way?

ranga said:

I don't know or speculate what is or not worth Google's time & effort. I think Google will do anything in its power to stop link manipulation.

The question here is not about its intention, but can this work in affecting PBN strategy which has been holy grail of SEO with all Gurus saying that Google cannot hit it in any way?

Click to expand...

Nothing is forever, and you'd be a fool to think PBNs or heck even Google will be around forever.

Ride the money train as long as you can and have a back up plan in case shit hits the fan.

Now every new thread should be about PBN. It will help to keep PBN strong. *sarcasm*

Gyuman82 said:

Nothing is forever, and you'd be a fool to think PBNs or heck even Google will be around forever.

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Never thought that PBN is infallible.

Gyuman82 said:

Ride the money train as long as you can and have a back up plan in case shit hits the fan.

Click to expand...

So you are diplomatically saying that this theory might work.

ranga said:

that requires manual intervention and have collateral damage, this strategy has no collateral damage AFAIK, listening to more thoughts here. I have a PBN and I want this theory to be debunked like most of you.

Click to expand...

I think that the easiest way for all networks to be spotted is when the competitors of your client(s) track down those links and then report them to Google. Google really doesn't need to do anything right now. The competition does all the work for them - aka wwwdotgoogledotcom/webmasters/tools/spamreport.

ranga said:

Never thought that PBN is infallible.



So you are diplomatically saying that this theory might work.

Click to expand...

Don't worry about Google stopping PBNs, it'll happen soon I'm sure.

There are so many morons making threads about them outlining the exact blueprint of how things are done step-by-step, I'm sure they'll figure it out.

Heck there are even people making threads suggesting ideas how to stop them too, and some of them even have polls attached!

The death of <insert the process of the day> will probably happen at some point but I think that for Google to consider any dropped domain NG, for whatever period of time one determines, as to having authority is not taking into account a lot of variables that are make sense.

One small real life example:

About 20 months ago I was looking at buying into a business on the west coast of Florida. The business had a decent web site and some very strong links... in fact a lot of very strong golden backlinks. I decide that the biz does not really fit what me so I pass on it and move on.

Not all that long ago, I decide to check the site and see what is happening with them. Site is down and I get the "Server not found Firefox can't find the server at www.site.com" message.

I then hop into my InternetBS account to see if it is available and it is so I buy it and recreate the site with some minor changes.

Now, I have the domain, a site that is pretty close to what it was in the past and it is laden with backlinks from some real strong sites.

Google is going to say, "BTB, since that site was down for 8 months I am giving it no authority." or is Google going to say, "BTB, nice to see that you {got the business up and running again|remembered to renew your domain|started your business up again|some other random reason}."

I would think the latter myself as that makes the most sense to me in a real world situation.