thanks man.
so should i just continue to build various type backlinks to my site?
Do you think this is recoverable ....or is it walk away time?
thanks in advance
R.I.P Private Blog Networks
- Thread starter Robby54
- Start date
thanks man.
so should i just continue to build various type backlinks to my site?
Do you think this is recoverable ....or is it walk away time?
thanks in advance
harry911
Regular Member
- Apr 26, 2011
- 289
- 267
thanks man.
so should i just continue to build various type backlinks to my site?
Do you think this is recoverable ....or is it walk away time?
thanks in advance
Yes, keep building good quality links like web 2.0 and high pr links. Avoid doing spammy comment links and forum profile links directly to your money site.
scb335
BANNED
- Mar 5, 2008
- 272
- 444
I usually stay out of these type of discussions because there tends to be more guessing and speculating than actual facts that creep into them, but I think what some people might be noticing and (possibly) mis-characterizing as the targeting of PBN's is that Big G has openly stated recently they are adjusting their algos to place more importance on "social" sharing.
That is (or maybe has already) going to affect the value of links of all types, including from PBN's.
Think about it, if G is looking for patterns of social engagement, and finds a cluster of blogs--which are supposed to be social by their very nature--which aren't each associated with individual, active social accounts on any networks, then it's easy to segregate them into a "lower value" grouping since they don't appear to be "natural".
A natural or legitimate blog, is going to get comments, and it's going to have at least one or more social accounts associated with it that are moderately active.
So, it may be that G isn't necessarily targeting PBN's, so much as they are tweaking algos in such a way that unless every blog in a PBN has a natural profile that includes regular commenting and associated social account(s), the links from those blogs will just carry less weight.
This is all just my own speculation based on what G is and has been saying for a while now. I could be completely wrong.
But if I'm right, or on the right track with this, then that's actually an opportunity because it would mean that you could get more value out of setting up a smaller PBN of your own if you just put the care and efforts in to ensure each blog has a very natural appearing profile.
Anyway, just my $0.02 input on the subject. It would be interesting to see some testing done on it to see though.
That is (or maybe has already) going to affect the value of links of all types, including from PBN's.
Think about it, if G is looking for patterns of social engagement, and finds a cluster of blogs--which are supposed to be social by their very nature--which aren't each associated with individual, active social accounts on any networks, then it's easy to segregate them into a "lower value" grouping since they don't appear to be "natural".
A natural or legitimate blog, is going to get comments, and it's going to have at least one or more social accounts associated with it that are moderately active.
So, it may be that G isn't necessarily targeting PBN's, so much as they are tweaking algos in such a way that unless every blog in a PBN has a natural profile that includes regular commenting and associated social account(s), the links from those blogs will just carry less weight.
This is all just my own speculation based on what G is and has been saying for a while now. I could be completely wrong.
But if I'm right, or on the right track with this, then that's actually an opportunity because it would mean that you could get more value out of setting up a smaller PBN of your own if you just put the care and efforts in to ensure each blog has a very natural appearing profile.
Anyway, just my $0.02 input on the subject. It would be interesting to see some testing done on it to see though.
virtual.indiano
Regular Member
- Apr 24, 2011
- 445
- 470
@ OP
It is spelled as psychic and not physic
No wonder Google slapped you with your spelling mistakes. It gave you one year to improve your spellings but you were busy in PN
With Malice to None
It is spelled as psychic and not physic
No wonder Google slapped you with your spelling mistakes. It gave you one year to improve your spellings but you were busy in PN
With Malice to None
Robby54
Power Member
- Nov 6, 2008
- 509
- 136
You know what it really its my fault. The title is misleading, I should of said private networks are dying instead of are dead. Go back 6 months or so and there was not that many blog network getting de-indexed at the rate they are now. I mean they have always been getting de-indexed but I notice more and more people are seeing the same results as I am. So if you are using an alternative PN and not the main ones people have been listing you should not be affected yet. But once your network gain popularity it becomes a target. It would make absolutely no scene for google to let these network flourish without doing something about it. I purchased some blog post for a PN that I know for a fact people are not using and this morning im already at number 3 for one of my testing domains. So like I said in my OP, google will never devalue blogs since the majority of the internet are made up of blogs and web 2.0 sites, but what they can do is de-index an entire network of private blogs since they know these blogs serve on purpose and one purpose only, to inflate rankings.
Robby54
Power Member
- Nov 6, 2008
- 509
- 136
thanks man.
so should i just continue to build various type backlinks to my site?
Do you think this is recoverable ....or is it walk away time?
thanks in advance
If you want your ranking to jump quickly back up, fine a PN that is not being abused and you will be fine but remember that this is just a band-aid and not a permanent solution. Buy different links besides the PN. For example, BigBuddy's service on BHW would be ideal since he uses a variety of links including .edu links and this will benefit you in the long run.
Sacrilege
Regular Member
- Sep 16, 2008
- 234
- 158
While i agree with a handful of the things you said, this is where you're misinformed and liable to get some people here in trouble. There wasn't an investigation here, thousands of sites were hit with this penalty and they weren't all checked manually. This is clearly an algorithmic issue. The Google algorithm now detects link networks. Private, public or otherwise, it's really simple:
Even assuming a low-frequency, very small network of just 2 blogs that post just once daily. What are the chances that, even on the entire internet, there will be 2 blogs that post once a day and link out to exactly the same domains? i.e. both link to a.com, b.com, c.com and d.com? Even if spread out and scaled up, still what are the chances of 5 separate blogs linking to the same 5 domains across different niches in the same month? pretty much zero. how about 10 blogs linking to the same domains 50% of the time and all interlaced i.e. blog 1 links to a.com and c.com blog 2 links to c.com and d.com, blog 3 links to a.com, b.com and d.com and so on and so forth with the sites continuing to link to the same domains across multiple niches month in and month out?
Let's face it, this is sloppy and while a little complicated, it clearly was not a hard problem for google to solve. When you step back and look at the linking activity that takes place on a blog network, it really is blatantly unnatural. Picking up on the anomaly of sites all linking to the same domains month after month is pretty easy to do when you have Google's resources and that's exactly what happened. Flame me if you want, but blog networks as we know them are dead. That's not to say that someone won't find a wrinkle to come back with a better service in the future, but right now if you start a blog network, paid, private, public, or otherwise, the algo will catch you eventually and everyone you link to will get the slap.
Robby54
Power Member
- Nov 6, 2008
- 509
- 136
You are defiantly on the right track. The reason why I said these blogs are dying is when I check back at the 25 domain I used strictly to test PN on I notice that a lot of their page rank either went to n/a, 0, or the blogs were completely de-indexed from google. Mind you these are all different networks. I know google has been doing this but this all happened within the last 4-5 days so they might be doing a combination of both, targeting specific networks and de-valuing blogs without any comments,search engine traffic, has a high PR, etc.. this would make it much easier for them to hit 2 birds with one stone.
Robby54
Power Member
- Nov 6, 2008
- 509
- 136
BlueTurtle
BANNED
- Nov 30, 2011
- 699
- 1,333
It's hilarious that you think Google actually signs up to blog networks to find out their pages.
Google is not a person. Google is an ALGORITHM.
They don't have armies of people signing up for SEO services so they can find out more about them. They're a mega company. They don't concern themselves with individual blog networks.
They have algorithms to identify greedy networks and patterns. The fact a few people are finding their rankings drop from only having blog networks could be for any number of reasons. You can't conclude Google has some team signing up to BMR then writing articles and buying links. That just shows a complete lack of understanding about how big companies work and think. They couldn't care less about some shitty little blog network. They're focused on the big picture.
It's more likely the following:
1) They've tweaked the algorithm so link diversity is even more important. Perhaps specifically taking in scenarios where links are almost all blogs.
2) They've improved the greedy network identification algorithm. To be honest it's not that difficult. I could update their algorithm to identify "blog network" standard type links. The blog network sites are generally very obvious and full of patterns.
It's hard to look at all blogs on the Internet and out of that lot identify blog networks, but it's not so hard to look at someone's backlinks and answer the question:
Is it likely most of these are from blog networks and/or really low quality blogs?
The reason for this is that if they have 1000 backlinks, and 900 of those are blogs, they can look for patterns within those 900 blogs. Contrast that with trying to find patterns between all blogs on the Internet. This, among other reasons is why link diversity is so important. Not just wider link diversity, but link diversity among your blog networks, ie don't just use one blog network, use multiple.
There's a number things that make that last question very easy to answer and there's a number of things you can do to make it impossible for them to answer, but I'm not going to talk about them publicly, you'll have to figure that out for yourselves.
Suffice to say anyone who says "blog networks are dead" automatically gets put into the "doesn't have a fucking clue book" in my eyes.
Google is not a person. Google is an ALGORITHM.
They don't have armies of people signing up for SEO services so they can find out more about them. They're a mega company. They don't concern themselves with individual blog networks.
They have algorithms to identify greedy networks and patterns. The fact a few people are finding their rankings drop from only having blog networks could be for any number of reasons. You can't conclude Google has some team signing up to BMR then writing articles and buying links. That just shows a complete lack of understanding about how big companies work and think. They couldn't care less about some shitty little blog network. They're focused on the big picture.
It's more likely the following:
1) They've tweaked the algorithm so link diversity is even more important. Perhaps specifically taking in scenarios where links are almost all blogs.
2) They've improved the greedy network identification algorithm. To be honest it's not that difficult. I could update their algorithm to identify "blog network" standard type links. The blog network sites are generally very obvious and full of patterns.
It's hard to look at all blogs on the Internet and out of that lot identify blog networks, but it's not so hard to look at someone's backlinks and answer the question:
Is it likely most of these are from blog networks and/or really low quality blogs?
The reason for this is that if they have 1000 backlinks, and 900 of those are blogs, they can look for patterns within those 900 blogs. Contrast that with trying to find patterns between all blogs on the Internet. This, among other reasons is why link diversity is so important. Not just wider link diversity, but link diversity among your blog networks, ie don't just use one blog network, use multiple.
There's a number things that make that last question very easy to answer and there's a number of things you can do to make it impossible for them to answer, but I'm not going to talk about them publicly, you'll have to figure that out for yourselves.
Suffice to say anyone who says "blog networks are dead" automatically gets put into the "doesn't have a fucking clue book" in my eyes.
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You are totally wrong, I started a poll and around 60% had no drop in rankings after using the private blog networks, then the once who were affected are more vocal, and half of the people who were affected are total noobs. So only 10% of people had drops in rankings and 90% saw increase so that makes your whole post total nonsense.
Robby54
Power Member
- Nov 6, 2008
- 509
- 136
You are indeed correct, I did not even think of it in terms of how you pointed it out but im sure you are on to something. People fear change so they will try anything under the sun to prove their point but like the age old saying says "The Proof is in the Pudding" I have seen some of these PN blogs and alot of them have close comment sections, alot of the blog owners do 0 SEO for their blogs in their private network so basically they have a high PR blog with no optimization except for a few seo plugin and a theme. Google hates paid links PERIOD, so what do people think? that google will just sit back and let these networks continue to grow and flourish while they are clearly violation their TOS? I dont think so.. People thought blog comments would always carry the weight that they once did and that's when panda got introduced and alot of people was sitting with their fist in their mouths. I dont think people will adopt to the notion that PN are indeed dying but hey once they drop in ranking someone need to step in take their spots
Robby54
Power Member
- Nov 6, 2008
- 509
- 136
It's hilarious that you think Google actually signs up to blog networks to find out their pages.
Google is not a person. Google is an ALGORITHM.
They don't have armies of people signing up for SEO services so they can find out more about them. They're a mega company. They don't concern themselves with individual blog networks.
They have algorithms to identify greedy networks and patterns. The fact a few people are finding their rankings drop from only having blog networks could be for any number of reasons. You can't conclude Google has some team signing up to BMR then writing articles and buying links. That just shows a complete lack of understanding about how big companies work and think. They couldn't care less about some shitty little blog network. They're focused on the big picture.
It's more likely the following:
1) They've tweaked the algorithm so link diversity is even more important. Perhaps specifically taking in scenarios where links are almost all blogs.
2) They've improved the greedy network identification algorithm. To be honest it's not that difficult. I could update their algorithm to identify "blog network" standard type links. The blog network sites are generally very obvious and full of patterns.
It's hard to look at all blogs on the Internet and out of that lot identify blog networks, but it's not so hard to look at someone's backlinks and answer the question:
Is it likely most of these are from blog networks and/or really low quality blogs?
The reason for this is that if they have 1000 backlinks, and 900 of those are blogs, they can look for patterns within those 900 blogs. Contrast that with trying to find patterns between all blogs on the Internet. This, among other reasons is why link diversity is so important. Not just wider link diversity, but link diversity among your blog networks, ie don't just use one blog network, use multiple.
There's a number things that make that last question very easy to answer and there's a number of things you can do to make it impossible for them to answer, but I'm not going to talk about them publicly, you'll have to figure that out for yourselves.
Suffice to say anyone who says "blog networks are dead" automatically gets put into the "doesn't have a fucking clue book" in my eyes.
Lol, im not that dumb I know they are not going to sign up to every network (even though they could since they are a billion dollar company) but I was just pointing out how obvious it would be to have an entire network of blogs turn to shit overnight. People make it seem like this is unheard of for networks to get a large amount of blogs de-indexed.
Poppa Rotzee
Power Member
- Apr 10, 2011
- 511
- 163
I know we haven't been affected at all, in fact I get google alerts and our customers all over a sharing reports of how well they are doing...
http://www.blackhatclass.com/f39-case-studies-journals/201-case-study-effectiveness-highprsociety-can-hps-rank-me-2.html
And as far as Google not having armies, they do, for example that is almost exactly what leap force is...an army of manual reviewer that Google pays... We should know, we have people in the office who have spouses who work on it. We know exactly what they do, and what they look for =)
The key is to stay under the algorithm's radar.
Robby54
Power Member
- Nov 6, 2008
- 509
- 136
How would they know if their private networks were not effected? Meaning google hasn't penalized them yet. Before 4-5 days ago all the blogs I had using PN were fine and I seen people making threads about them being slaped blah blah blah and paid not attention until my test blogs were effected. Now my 25 test blogs that were using strictly private network all dropped down to the position they were before the blog post happened. When panda first came in, alot of people were effected and alot more wasn't until later in the algorithm. The internet is quite a big place and so you can expect everyone to have the same result instantly.
Plus I bet the people you were polling were still building link from various sources so they wouldn't even know themselves if their PN links got devalued (unless they got ahold of the domains the PN were using to build links) since the new links they were probably building kept their rankings stable and therefore did not notice any movement.
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Sacrilege
Regular Member
- Sep 16, 2008
- 234
- 158
Yes and i'm sure if you started a poll you'd find out that 90% of the people on this forum are making 1mil+ from IM this year amirite? Also i'm sure none of those votes came from the dozens of people who own blog networks and sell them here.
....so far.
So what's your angle here? You don't agree that this was an algo change? How do you explain undoubtedly thousands of sites all suddenly getting the slap notice in webmaster tools? the common thread between every one of these sites being that they all used link networks. Does google have an army of grunts scouring the internet, going to every domain to check our backlinks? are they sending spies to place orders and find the blogs in link networks?
When i thought about it,it became really clear that this wouldn't be hard for them to solve with the algo. they don't just catalog inbound links, they catalog outbound links too. so by turning the problem on it's head it's easy to detect that there is a network of 150 blogs and today 98 of them linked to domain a. and tomorrow, 93 of them will link to domain b. and the next day 89 of them will link to domain c. and so on and so forth until it becomes statistically impossible for this activity to happen naturally.
So why are there people who haven't been slapped? it just hasn't gotten to them yet. Maybe it's niche by niche, or maybe this thing was just rolled out and it's only slapping the blatantly over-the-top stuff for now. this allows them to test it and look for false positives before they turn the settings up. this explains your poll. if you think this was anything other than an algo update, you're pretty dense.
Well I also build other types of links but I know that these links on itself won't move much, I only add them for diversity so all the improvements is the result of a combo and not the other links stabilizing anything.
You shouldn't use strictly private blog networks btw, maybe thats why you dropped, I don't know, I do am curious how many different PN's you used. I tend to use at least 5 different ones from high to low quality.
Robby54
Power Member
- Nov 6, 2008
- 509
- 136
You guys were smart. You closed your doors so I know you wont be effected like other networks who take as many customers as possible not knowing they are signing their own death wish :rippedhan (luckily I signed up before you made this decision
)Networks who think like you should not have anything to worry about becuase obviously you guys are thinking outside of the box and usually people with sense like this will always be able to prevail over opposition
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I think most people that dropped are total noobs that have no clue. People who thought to have find the gold and only focused on these networks and nothing else. In the past you also get penalized for having only 1 type of links, so in my eye's nothing changed really. Ofcourse we both know it's total nonsense to think Google works niche by niche. How complicated would that be
Look, I know there are also non noobs that are hit but they probably used private blog networks for a long time already, and over time these blogsites do get deindexed ofcourse, so if they didn't do much effort to maintain the rank afterwards, as in replace the articles on regular base, then it's no wonder that they dropped. Thats why I recommend my clients to keep up with a small maintenance package.
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RAYRAY7
Regular Member
- Nov 17, 2007
- 403
- 299
So Just For The Wise:
We constantly educate Google about what we're doing. Blog networks cannot be eliminated, but there some crucial facts to look out for:
1 - Networks that accept any spun crap content, will not last. You might call it copyscape unique, but if is crap and unreadable you blog days would be numbered
2 - If they have members submit blogs to the networks - stay away, as the reliability of the network cannot be guaranteed longterm.
3 - If you use blog networks to rank for a juicy keyword, expect your competition to report your site detailing your tactics. Google now have enough people (some say a huge complex in INDIA) to follow up on complaints.
Having links in a blog network would not penalize any well structured site with unique readable content.
We constantly educate Google about what we're doing. Blog networks cannot be eliminated, but there some crucial facts to look out for:
1 - Networks that accept any spun crap content, will not last. You might call it copyscape unique, but if is crap and unreadable you blog days would be numbered
2 - If they have members submit blogs to the networks - stay away, as the reliability of the network cannot be guaranteed longterm.
3 - If you use blog networks to rank for a juicy keyword, expect your competition to report your site detailing your tactics. Google now have enough people (some say a huge complex in INDIA) to follow up on complaints.
Having links in a blog network would not penalize any well structured site with unique readable content.