Okay, here are my thoughts on some flaws I found with the network/sites from the seller that got hit:
- I used 1 of the sites from the sellers network that got hit. To begin with, I wanted to see if I could find further sites using just the 1. I did. Found another 46 sites. In under an hour I think I uncovered the entire network (or most of it anyway). Not all 46 were deindexed though, some were indexed and fine.. so I guess a small % of the sellers network wasn't hit.
- The sites are pretty nicely designed, but all of them still have default WP footer text. Not really a huge issue SEO wise, but if you're going to spend time making the sites look nice then you might as well remove the footers with some alteration of the footer.php code. Only takes a few seconds-minutes.
- Some sites aren't clean. Wayback/archives show history of porn, sex products and chinese spam. For example, one of the domains: "single black women seeking big d*** men". This probably isn't the reason why the network got hit, but this is a sign of bad spam checking nevertheless.
- The majority of the 46 sites don't show full posts on the homepage. Again, this is probably not why the network got hit but it's worth pointing out anyway, since the seller claims the links go on the homepage for several weeks. This isn't the case. There's no excuse here really - all you need to do is go to content.php and replace "the_excerpt" with "the_content". Takes a few seconds to do and works on almost any theme. The customers who ordered this service missed out on a lot of potential juice because their links weren't available on the homepage (where most of the power of the domain is).
- Another issue was how the domain URL's were set up. For example, there were several domains originally indexed and set up as http://domain.com - yet all the power and metrics were on http://www.domain.com. Again, all the seller had to do was ask his team to log into WP, go to Settings > General and change the URL format. Takes a few seconds. It's a shame because some of the domains had wonderful metrics but the customers missed out on that juice due to this incorrect set up.
- Creating a footprint with the navigation menu. All of the sites in this network had more or less the exact same menu in the navigation. This is what I used to uncover most/all of the network. For example, if SITE1 had a nav menu with "Home" "Contact" "Terms" "Health" "Business" "Entertainment" "Tech" "Shopping", etc then you shouldn't be using the exact same menu in multiple sites. Now imagine the exact same nav menu in every single PBN site? Very easy footprint for anyone who is half decent at Google search strings. All someone would need to do is go into Google and enter the following:
"Home" "Contact" "Terms" "Health" "Business" "Entertainment" "Tech" "Shopping" "SNIPPET/KEYWORD"
Another way to uncover more sites in the same network would be to gather a list of all the keywords on one of the PBN sites. For example:
"clash of clans hack" "cheap holidays" "p90x review" "top 10 gaming laptops" "laptop repair new york"
Once you have this list, enter it into Google and you'll be left with all the PBN sites containing those specific terms.
To avoid this, spread out the keywords and OBL's on as many different domains as possible. If you only have 50 sites in your network, don't offer 50 posts as a package. Instead, maybe offer 25-30. This way you spread the risk and prevent someone from uncovering your entire network with a few clicks and searches.
Took me under an hour to find close to 50 sites. If I gave the task to my VA's, they probably would have been able to do it in less than 15-30mins.
Now that we've got the above flaws out of the way, here are some of the reasons why I personally think this network may have got deindexed:
- Linking patterns. OBL's are the same on every domain in pretty much the same order. Whilst this may not be an issue when you have hundreds of sites, it's certainly an issue when you only have around 50-100 sites. It makes uncovering your entire PBN super easy and quick and anyone with a bit of common sense will be able to tell all the sites are connected. So you can imagine how easy it is for Google to tell all the sites are connected. However, I don't think this was the reason why the network got hit.
- Hosting. I personally feel this is the reason why this network got hit. I checked all the sites/their IP's. The issue was I believe the seller was using a very popular SEO hosting (I could be wrong, but I double checked the IP's with the IP's I had in the past and they match up). I'm not going to give any names but this is a very widely used SEO hosting. Whilst this hosting company claims to be "safe", they're not - and I'm talking from experience. One of my personal networks (with around 50 sites) got hit last year using this same hosting. I thought I'd give them another chance so hosted another 40 sites with them. Want to know what happened? It got hit too. Whilst this particular hosting may be safe for the most part/smaller networks, I still think it's the #1 reason why the sellers network got hit. Let me go on..
Google possibly found a bunch of IP's, devalued them and as a result all spammy/unnatural sites hosted on those IP's were hit. Pretty plain and simple. The seller relied entirely on this company for the hosting. The network wouldn't have been hit if all the domains/majority of the domains were hosted with multiple companies. With Genesis PBN, all domains are hosted with various hosting services and companies, so in the event that our network gets hit due to the hosting, only a % of our sites will be actually hit.
To further prove my point, I took some of the IP's of the domains (that were deindexed) and did a reverse IP check:
IP1 = 18 domains hosted on the same web server - all 18 PBN sites.
IP2 = 9 domains hosted on the same web server - all 9 PBN sites.
IP3 = 8 domains hosted on the same web server - 6 were PBN sites.
IP4 = 23 domains hosted on the same web server - 17 were PBN sites - 2 of these were adult PBN sites.
IP5 = 16 domains hosted on the same web server - 10 were PBN sites.
IP6 = 10 domains hosted on the same web server - 8 were PBN sites.
IP7 = 18 domains hosted on the same web server - 14 were PBN sites.
I stopped after this but I'm certain the remainder of the IP's followed the same pattern.
The host may be offering "unique IPs" but the neighbourhood of these IP's are unnatural, risky and just asking for deindexation sooner or later. The common factor here is the IP and the bad neighbourhood. If Google decides to deindex a domain on a specific IP (either because it's spammy, is a PBN, has thin content, is adult, etc), all domains on that IP are going to get hit/reviewed.
To further prove my point, I picked 3 more IP's and did a reverse IP check:
IP8 = 9 domains hosted on the same web server - 6 were PBN sites.
IP9 = 12 domains hosted on the same web server - 9 were PBN sites.
IP10 = 18 domains hosted on the same web server - 13 were PBN sites.
I then took the domains in each of the above 3 IP's and did an index check.
IP8 = out of 9 domains, 5 of the PBN sites are deindexed, the remaining PBN site seems to have passed the review.
IP9 = out of 12 domains, the 9 PBN sites are deindexed.
IP10 = out of 18 domains, 11 of the PBN sites are deindexed, the remaining 2 PBN sites seem to have passed the review.
What I believe happened was:
- An IP address gets flagged / picked out by the algorithm. The fact that you're using a SEO hosting increases the chances of the IP addresses being found and picked. In fact, I remember back in Aug/Sept 2016, a friends friend managed to find ALL the IP's from this very exact SEO hosting company. If he could find the full list himself using a few tricks up his sleeve, imagine Google. It's not hard.
- The IP is then marked as a potential home for many other spammy domains / PBN sites.
- The IP is flagged by the algorithm for quite possibly a manual review.
- A manual reviewer will then analyze and inspect each domain on the IP.
- Spammy, unnatural sites / PBN sites are deindexed.
- Rinse and repeat with another flagged IP.
The fact that you're using SEO hosting makes it an easy target for Google. This is why you see so many people telling you to avoid using SEO hosts. Unless you have a tiny network which you don't mind losing, avoid SEO hosts.
Or if you really,
really want to use SEO hosting, then at least make sure you're using several hosts and not just a single one. This reduces your risks and should your network get hit, it will only get hit partially because you've hosted your sites with various hosts.
If you really want to play it safe, use premium hosting and pay the extra $ for various hosting accounts. Imaging hosting all your domains with 10 different, premium hosting accounts? Sure, it's a lot more hassle and headache
BUT your risk has now reduced 10x. It's not the easiest of options but it's by far the safest. Again, nothing wrong with using a SEO host but SEO hosts tend to have extremely bad IP neighbourhoods. If you're adamant in using a SEO host, then at least make sure you use a couple various hosts instead of just one.
The key message we can learn here is to
spread your risks and
take care of your network.
Spread your risks: use various hosting companies so that your domains aren't all in a single basket. If you do get hit due to hosting problems, you'll only get hit partially because you've covered yourself by hosting with various hosts.
Take care of your network: just because your network is indexed now, doesn't mean it'll remain indexed forever. Take care of your network. Run index checks daily / weekly, keep an eye out for any bad sites in your IP neighbourhood, look out for viruses/malware on your sites, etc. If you spend the time looking after your network, you shouldn't face any problems. I say this with first hand experience. Back when I started with PBN's a few years ago, I would get lazy and just let the network sit in the background for months. This always usually led to a full deindexation of the network. Nowdays, my team spends a good hour or two daily running health checks on the network. This is one of the reasons why the network is still 100% indexed, as of today.
Now with all this being said, it's virtually impossible to keep your PBN 100% safe. The game we play is risky and Google seem to be going after PBN's with more force now more than ever. If your network does get hit, you need to understand this is part of the game we play. To PBN link buyers: if you purchased PBN links and the sellers network got hit, please try to understand from the sellers perspective. We're trying to game Google - it's not easy - it's not supposed to be easy - so when networks get deindexed or shit hits the fan, please understand that this is the game we're playing when we go up against Google's algorithm with stuff like PBN's. It's not always going to be a smooth road - so be prepared to face those hurdles as they come at you
*please excuse any typos or spelling mistakes*
