Google Penalties for Linkbuilding?

[vitamediagroup]

A few years ago it used to be super common to see huge penalties from Google when you overdid the linkbuilding - like one day site is doing great, next day site is literally non-existent in search engines. But as far as I can tell, this doesn't seem to happen a lot anymore? Sure, that doesn't mean you can just use whatever, but am I correct in noticing that the penalties for link building seem to be considerably lighter than they used to be?

[Michael Martinez]

They are trying to ignore the links their algorithms determine to violate their guidelines. Your linkbuilding would have to be egregious to merit a manual action (penalty) these days, although they still give them out.

[vitamediagroup]

They are trying to ignore the links their algorithms determine to violate their guidelines.

Hey, sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by this? So double checking: you mean instead of giving out penalties, these days they more just ignore the links and simply don't give the ranking boost?

[Michael Martinez]

Hey, sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by this? So double checking: you mean instead of giving out penalties, these days they more just ignore the links and simply don't give the ranking boost?

According to their annual transparency reports, Google receives millions of spam reports every year.

The link spam problem became so big they developed the Penguin algorithm (version 1.0 in 2012) to identify and downgrade sites that rely on egregious link spam.

When they announced Penguin 2.0 (in 2013) they said that Penguin 1.0 only looked at home pages (they were targeting all the blog networks that sold "home page backlinks").

They said that Penguin 2.0 looked at the entire site, not just the home page.

Penguin 3.0 did some other things.

Up to that point the Penguin algorithm was manually adjusted. They studied their spam reports, identified fairly reliable patterns used by sites that were selling or buying links, and modified the signals in their algorithm so that it downgraded more sites.

Google never said exactly what Penguins 1-3 were doing but it was probably an adjustment to the PageRank scores. Googlers said you could possibly overcome these downgrades by earning more good links than you had bad links, so it acts like a negative PageRank valuation.

Well, that didn't fly very well with thousands of business owners who didn't know what they were getting into when they bought links from fly-by-night link specialists.

So eventually Google launched Penguin 4.0, which learns about linking patterns on its own and simply ignores them rather than punishing sites that rely on them.

So if you build links aggressively using all the old school methods today you're probably not going to see much movement. The algorithms may miss some of those links but there is no way to know.

Some people will never stop buying links but that's neither here nor there. You asked if link penalties are lighter than they used to be. That's essentially the case.

[golfbettingsystem]

According to their annual transparency reports, Google receives millions of spam reports every year.

The link spam problem became so big they developed the Penguin algorithm (version 1.0 in 2012) to identify and downgrade sites that rely on egregious link spam.

When they announced Penguin 2.0 (in 2013) they said that Penguin 1.0 only looked at home pages (they were targeting all the blog networks that sold "home page backlinks").

They said that Penguin 2.0 looked at the entire site, not just the home page.

Penguin 3.0 did some other things.

Up to that point the Penguin algorithm was manually adjusted. They studied their spam reports, identified fairly reliable patterns used by sites that were selling or buying links, and modified the signals in their algorithm so that it downgraded more sites.

Google never said exactly what Penguins 1-3 were doing but it was probably an adjustment to the PageRank scores. Googlers said you could possibly overcome these downgrades by earning more good links than you had bad links, so it acts like a negative PageRank valuation.

Well, that didn't fly very well with thousands of business owners who didn't know what they were getting into when they bought links from fly-by-night link specialists.

So eventually Google launched Penguin 4.0, which learns about linking patterns on its own and simply ignores them rather than punishing sites that rely on them.

So if you build links aggressively using all the old school methods today you're probably not going to see much movement. The algorithms may miss some of those links but there is no way to know.

Some people will never stop buying links but that's neither here nor there. You asked if link penalties are lighter than they used to be. That's essentially the case.

Some very interesting points here, does suggest that it’s still very much trial and error and you could easily drop backwards for no obvious or visible reason if the AI learning decides that a key element of your link profile is no longer going to carry any weight.

[casinoportal]

I think you would have to be extremely unlucky to get a manual penalty from Google for link building these days, they don't need to issue them. Penguin 4.0 does a pretty good job of identifying patterns, if a link or links trigger the filter then they will be discounted. I think your site although more often pages of it can be demoted if you trigger the filter, I have seen that happen.

New sites really need to be careful with how quick they build links, and be very careful with the anchor text and ratio of the words used. If you have a well-established aged site with a strong link profile, then you could probably take a few more risks. It's very hard for new affiliates in this industry now, your just not going to rank for big keywords unless you buy links. If you look at the link profiles for some of the established sites ranking well, they all have a huge amount of paid links and must be spending $00,000 per month to maintain and increase those rankings.

[Artemandreevich]

I think you would have to be extremely unlucky to get a manual penalty from Google for link building these days, they don't need to issue them. Penguin 4.0 does a pretty good job of identifying patterns, if a link or links trigger the filter then they will be discounted. I think your site although more often pages of it can be demoted if you trigger the filter, I have seen that happen.

New sites really need to be careful with how quick they build links, and be very careful with the anchor text and ratio of the words used. If you have a well-established aged site with a strong link profile, then you could probably take a few more risks. It's very hard for new affiliates in this industry now, your just not going to rank for big keywords unless you buy links. If you look at the link profiles for some of the established sites ranking well, they all have a huge amount of paid links and must be spending $00,000 per month to maintain and increase those rankings.

I completely agree! It is difficult to promote a website now without quality links.