Question about renting high-authority PBN links

Without saying names... I'm renting some PBN links from someone on here who, by all means, seems extremely reputable and who people have said does extremely good work. They advertised all home-page links on high authority sites, so I wanted to try it out just on one site to see what kind of difference it would make....

I rented the PBN links for $100 a month... after 3 months still did not get a report from them ... now finally I got a report but it doesn't tell me what any of the sites or links are of the pages linking to me ... so I have no way of verifying if the links exist or if their metrics are real.... is this normal?

I understand wanting to keep your PBN as secretive as possible, but how are people buying the links able to tell if literally any work has been done or links created, if the metrics are true, if it is homepage link, if I ever lose the link but am still getting charged, etc?

The name / URL of the site is replaced by a random number, here is what I received:

Site TF DA Ahrefs DR Referring Domains Age (Years)
5 17 33 43 173 6
14 21 34 44 271 8
15 15 28 44 120 11
16 20 36 43 304 7
17 19 35 48 333 13
18 15 39 47 222 9
19 25 45 49 626 6
25 24 30 45 165 13
37 20 31 45 557 14
40 25 39 46 363 15
Average 20.1 35 45.4 313.1 10.5

At this point I've paid like $300 and next payment is coming out in 4 days... I'm thinking I will just cancel and cut my losses. I'm just extremely surprised because this person seems held in very high regard on this site... I've been trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, because of the fact that they have a very good reputation on here, but for all I know me and lots of other people could be getting ripped off.

Lucasmang said:

Site TF DA Ahrefs DR Referring Domains Age (Years)
5 17 33 43 173 6
14 21 34 44 271 8
15 15 28 44 120 11
16 20 36 43 304 7
17 19 35 48 333 13
18 15 39 47 222 9
19 25 45 49 626 6
25 24 30 45 165 13
37 20 31 45 557 14
40 25 39 46 363 15
Average 20.1 35 45.4 313.1 10.5

Click to expand...

So the main question when you subscribe to such product is to see if you have rankings improvement or not. As this is a top of the shelf private (as in private) PBN, then he cannot reveal the sites. Once you reveal the sites it is not private anymore, it is public (also starts with a P).

Does the seller have many satisfied buyers or not, this is the question you have to ask yourself. Also a PBN seller cannot get 100% satisfied buyers, there is always something that could lead to no rankings improvement.

But stats look good. So it looks like you are paying about $10/month per link, which is reasonable. So check exactly if you had or not any rankings improvement in the past 3 months before you make a decision, you can also give him the benefit of the doubt a little longer.

your suppose to study your own stats .

has there been any indexing improvements?

Not defending the seller but the problem with seo is there are so many factors to ranking. Just because you point a few high quality pbn links to your site it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get an improvement.

It depends on your on page, your anchors, the rest of your backlink profile and so on.

Having said that, results speak more than anything so if you’re not seeing any movement then maybe you should cancel.

You know what's the problem with buyers nowadays? They are lazy to even read the basic information in the sales thread.

Thus...

Did you bother to read the FAQ in the sales thread? I am sure there is a FAQ and that it also states, that the URLs won't be provided in the report. Do you even know what you are buying before you bought it? Have you contacted the seller about your concerns and asked him why was not the report provided earlier? What is the TAT stated in the sales thread?

After 3 months I imagine most of the links should of landed in your GWT.

Not getting a report until 3 months later is pretty sketchy imo.

Have you installed Google Webmasters Tool? It will show you all links pointed to your site.

I am surprised you're just sitting there for 3 months without looking into this.

It can take months before Google passes link juice, even if the pages with links to your sites are indexed. There are also all the other factors to consider in ranking highly. 10 PBN links isn't much, even if they are strong domains.

The domains should be in WMT by now. Since these are high metric domains, it should be easy to work out which numbers relate to which domains.

The questions everyone will be asking are how competitive are your keywords, and have you seen any ranking improvements (probably in the last month)?

EDIT: The seller has stated in the sales thread that a buyer should wait 2 months before expecting results, and perhaps more.

This whole area sounds pretty sketchy to me. The algorithms are so volatile, it'll be hard for you to even determine if these mystery PBNs are doing any work at all. i would avoid like the plague

Usually you should really see some movements, but this also depends on how hard your keywords are.
Did you see no movement at all or are you just not satisfied as the jumps are not as huge as expected?

For everyone asking why it took so long for me to do anything after not getting a report in 3 months, they were drip fed over the first month or so and I didn't want to be impatient, then my dad passed away so I had family stuff and other priorities.

I have been tracking all my rankings and many of the keywords I was targeting with the PBN to test the results have actually DROPPED and NOT improved; but to be fair they are fairly competitive keywords.

I would not know what links they are in Google Webmaster tools because the website is actually doing quite well and has lots of links, with tons of new natural links appearing constantly. It would be nearly impossible to just pick out 10 links in the bunch and know that they are the PBN for sure.

They don't say anything on the buying page about never being told what your links are, because of privacy or any other reasons. Not telling people what links you built seems weird to me - they are advertised as contextual links, from spam free domains, with high-metrics, run like actual money sites, they say the sites have beautiful designs and give all of these statements RE the sites which you can never actually confirm without knowing what they are.

I agree that rankings are more meaningful than anything else... but I haven't seen rank increases and I literally can't confirm if the links were made at all... and without knowing what they are how do I know they continue existing? I'm paying monthly but they could remove the links (if they existed at all) and then their customers would still continue paying monthly. They could not make any links and still take credit for any positive results, since I assume like me, other people continue on with their white-hat SEO and link building in the meantime.

For all I know these numbers are just made up and no links were built. The links could have also been built and they could be completely spammy, non-contextual and non-homepage links, or any of the other things they advertise. How do people know they aren't just taking everyones money and giving shit / no links....? It just seems kind of sketchy to me.

I suppose I'll be cancelling them since I haven't seen an improvement and because I have no idea if anything has even been done.
I really just wanted to know if that seemed normal to you guys.

There of course was a big Google update in March / April too if I'm not wrong... so I don't want to cancel too quickly... but there is literally no way of knowing if what I'm paying for exists or will continue to exist. The seller seems to have impeccable reviews but they are not responding to me. I also don't know how people gave these impeccable reviews with no proof of work done... or even if they saw results that the links they are buying are anything like what is being advertised.

Lucasmang said:

There of course was a big Google update in March / April too if I'm not wrong... so I don't want to cancel too quickly... but there is literally no way of knowing if what I'm paying for exists or will continue to exist. The seller seems to have impeccable reviews but they are not responding to me. I also don't know how people gave these impeccable reviews with no proof of work done... or even if they saw results that the links they are buying are anything like what is being advertised.

Click to expand...

I'm dropping you a PM about this.

Hey everyone!

Someone just sent me out this thread and I figured I could respond to everyone publicly about what the issue is and what happened. So, here we go!

Lucasmang said:

Without saying names... I'm renting some PBN links from someone on here who, by all means, seems extremely reputable and who people have said does extremely good work. They advertised all home-page links on high authority sites, so I wanted to try it out just on one site to see what kind of difference it would make....

I rented the PBN links for $100 a month... after 3 months still did not get a report from them ... now finally I got a report but it doesn't tell me what any of the sites or links are of the pages linking to me ... so I have no way of verifying if the links exist or if their metrics are real.... is this normal?

I understand wanting to keep your PBN as secretive as possible, but how are people buying the links able to tell if literally any work has been done or links created, if the metrics are true, if it is homepage link, if I ever lose the link but am still getting charged, etc?

The name / URL of the site is replaced by a random number, here is what I received:

Site TF DA Ahrefs DR Referring Domains Age (Years)
5 17 33 43 173 6
14 21 34 44 271 8
15 15 28 44 120 11
16 20 36 43 304 7
17 19 35 48 333 13
18 15 39 47 222 9
19 25 45 49 626 6
25 24 30 45 165 13
37 20 31 45 557 14
40 25 39 46 363 15
Average 20.1 35 45.4 313.1 10.5

At this point I've paid like $300 and next payment is coming out in 4 days... I'm thinking I will just cancel and cut my losses. I'm just extremely surprised because this person seems held in very high regard on this site... I've been trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, because of the fact that they have a very good reputation on here, but for all I know me and lots of other people could be getting ripped off.

Click to expand...

Lucas, when you first added on Skype to talk about your project and your keywords, I told you these were no slouch and it would take more than what I have to offer to see some real improvement. Without ratting out your keywords, they are in the "loans" type of difficulty. My sales thread does state that I will not reveal the blogs/domains I own, especially not in a report where it would be easy to link these blogs together and get everyone who is on it a nasty penalty.

Other than the report I sent you, there's not much I am willing to share. It would simply be too easy for my competition or anyone with bad intention to rat it out and get everyone penalized. It's a protection for me (the XX XXX$ I invested) and you (your site/project). As far as if the domains are real and really strong, you can ask @Nargil as he's seen most of them (he sold me some and we bid against each other on a couple others).

Last time we spoke, I offered you a free month because it took me a while to respond on Skype (you know the reasons why) and you declined my offer. Here's another one, if you think you're getting ripped off, let me refund you the 3 months you've paid, and I will remove the links and we will both move on to other things. I'm not here to rip off anyone and my reputation/business is worth WAY more than $300 to me.

safeSEOboost said:

So the main question when you subscribe to such product is to see if you have rankings improvement or not. As this is a top of the shelf private (as in private) PBN, then he cannot reveal the sites. Once you reveal the sites it is not private anymore, it is public (also starts with a P).

Does the seller have many satisfied buyers or not, this is the question you have to ask yourself. Also a PBN seller cannot get 100% satisfied buyers, there is always something that could lead to no rankings improvement.

But stats look good. So it looks like you are paying about $10/month per link, which is reasonable. So check exactly if you had or not any rankings improvement in the past 3 months before you make a decision, you can also give him the benefit of the doubt a little longer.

Click to expand...

I totally agree with that and is the main reason why I rent these links and not just spam my network. There's a reasons why I have never been penalized or de-indexed. I don't want to point out what is happening with other sellers but most of the "one-time fees" PBNs get de-indexed within 6 months.

davids355 said:

Not defending the seller but the problem with seo is there are so many factors to ranking. Just because you point a few high quality pbn links to your site it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get an improvement.

It depends on your on page, your anchors, the rest of your backlink profile and so on.

Having said that, results speak more than anything so if you’re not seeing any movement then maybe you should cancel.

Click to expand...

See my post above.

Nargil said:

You know what's the problem with buyers nowadays? They are lazy to even read the basic information in the sales thread.

Thus...

Did you bother to read the FAQ in the sales thread? I am sure there is a FAQ and that it also states, that the URLs won't be provided in the report. Do you even know what you are buying before you bought it? Have you contacted the seller about your concerns and asked him why was not the report provided earlier? What is the TAT stated in the sales thread?

Click to expand...

It does state in the F.A.Q that I will not reveal the domains his links are placed on. Please see my first respond for more details.

Soucha said:

After 3 months I imagine most of the links should of landed in your GWT.

Not getting a report until 3 months later is pretty sketchy imo.

Click to expand...

I know for a fact that not all links appear in GWT but 90% does and he should be able to track them from there.

Unreliable Witness said:

It can take months before Google passes link juice, even if the pages with links to your sites are indexed. There are also all the other factors to consider in ranking highly. 10 PBN links isn't much, even if they are strong domains.

The domains should be in WMT by now. Since these are high metric domains, it should be easy to work out which numbers relate to which domains.

The questions everyone will be asking are how competitive are your keywords, and have you seen any ranking improvements (probably in the last month)?

EDIT: The seller has stated in the sales thread that a buyer should wait 2 months before expecting results, and perhaps more.

Click to expand...

As you said, it can take a longgg time before you see any type of results and sometimes you don't even see any results at all because of different factors (age, over-optimization, impossible to rank keywords, under-optimization, manual penalty, algorithm penalty etc...

Kuz32 said:

This whole area sounds pretty sketchy to me. The algorithms are so volatile, it'll be hard for you to even determine if these mystery PBNs are doing any work at all. i would avoid like the plague

Click to expand...

It worked for a lot of clients, and some clients it didnt' work at all. There's a lot of factors to look at.

MisterF said:

I'm dropping you a PM about this.

Click to expand...

If a MOD ever needed proof of link placement or anything, PM me.

LuckyCharm007 said:

I know for a fact that not all links appear in GWT but 90% does and he should be able to track them from there.

Click to expand...

Of course you're right, but I did say 'most' for that very reason.
I've read a lot of people even estimate it lower, at 70%, but who knows for sure I guess.

My apologies I did not want to identify you publicly, but I guess that is the case now and I appreciate you keeping the niche and other details private.
It is indeed a competitive niche and I knew that going in.

Considering how competitive the niche is we were actually doing quite well and consistently rising for these very competitive terms (not that we are doing terrible now but the drop in rank has been significant) and I thought this might give us the tiny edge we needed. Having researched competitors backlinks I know they all use PBN's.

I thought that, at worst, we would see no ranking increase from this PBN - but literally a month after purchasing the PBN links our rankings dropped significantly across the board - even for less competitive geo-targeted keywords we had consistently been ranking for 5 months at the top of page 1 for. This has led to a drop in monthly traffic in the thousands, which it has not bounced back and shows no signs of recovering from, which has led to a significant drop in sales.

Some terms we literally went from consistently on page 2 for 5 months to nowhere in the top 10 pages, without any other changes to on or off-site content other than purchasing this PBN. I normally would have been doing some off-site optimization but we have been putting that budget toward a site redesign (not live and not something that would affect our rankings) - so I literally have not changed anything on or off-site since purchasing the PBN.

(People may be wondering what is taking so long RE the site redesign since we purchased the PBN months ago - we switched to a completely new in-store POS, which the new website is going to be connected to, and we had to bring everything over to that)

I did not want to jump the gun and assume it was the PBN links and hoped that it would recover, but no such luck. To try and confirm if it was or wasn't the PBN links causing it I of course wanted to see if the work had been done, are they spammy, are they everything they are advertised, were they indexed at all... but of course when I read the report there was no way to identify any of the links or confirm anything.

Having waited 3 weeks to get a response the last time (you explained after that you had personal issues - my dad having just died I completely understand this) and with just 3 days until another automatic withdrawl is made, after waiting 24 hours for a response I decided to check here to see if all of this is normal.

The last thing I wanted to do was suggest you are intentionally ripping people off, but having very little experience purchasing services on BHW I am still extremely suspicious of everything.
I definitely did not mean for you to be identified publicly or to hurt your reputation in any way.

I've gone ahead and cancelled the withdrawals at this point. My intention with this post was not to look for a refund (as I had rejected your previous offer for one - before having received the report and realizing there was no way for me to verify the quality of work or that any work had been done at all) but if you are offering again I will not turn it down.

I will also happily delete this thread - I was looking for a way earlier, long before your response, but could not find the option.