In what is shaping up to be one of the most active months in history for Google’s SEO team they have just announced late Tuesday evening that they took action against thousands of link selling sites. These sites which build up networks of well ranked sites and sell links to people have become quite popular for SEO purposes, even though they are technically against the SEO guidelines put out by Google. Google is clearly making an effort to de-incentivize the use of these types of networks in their ongoing effort to improve the overall results they are producing for their users.
About a year ago they de-indexed thousands of sites being used by the “Build My Rank (BMR)” service which caused the rankings of both these sites and those whose links were put on the sites to drop dramatically. According to Matt Cutts, Google’s chief anti-spam man, they have gone after similar sites which offer the same types of services last night. Rather than a single company which manages them all, however, they went after many different networks of varying size.
They did not announce which specific networks, but one thing is for sure, people are seeing the effect. Listening to webmasters and so-called seo experts making posts on Internet Marketing forums everywhere this was quite a significant move on Google’s part.
This comes less than a week after what many believe to be a fairly minor change to their algorithm, and just before the announced Penguin 2.0 (or 4.0 by my count) is scheduled to take effect in the upcoming weeks. This upcoming change is expected to be more impactful than previous versions of the Panda or Penguin updates of the past so webmasters everywhere are getting ready for some major adjustments.
As always, however, those who practice true ‘white hat’ strategies on their sites should have little, if anything, to worry about. People playing with the ‘black or gray hat’ strategies will need to watch out. Even if you are not hit this time, it appears Google is making a big push to improve their rankings.
Personally I’ve never used these link building networks for this very reason. It is far too easy for Google to catch on and ruin your rankings. What about you? Did you see any changes in your rankings after last night? Did you move up or down? I’d love to hear about your experience and what you’re expecting with the big upcoming Penguin update!
