New google spam link update

[wonderpunter]

So im expecting this to shake things up pretty big.. Specifically targeting guest posts and sponsored links the next two weeks will see a roll out of the new update https://developers.google.com/search...nk-spam-update

[universal4]

This may lead to some interesting discussions.

How does everyone feel about this?

Are any of you going to start switching you nofollow affiliate links to sponsored?

Those that buy or sell links often, what changes do you plan on making?

Rick
Universal4

[chaumi]

Just focusing on 'sponsored' for guest post links, may be wrong but guess (if they're not explicitly told by using the tag) Google will be struggling to identify which of these are problems (ie, bought/against guidelines) as long as they are in good enough quality content.

The obvious target here (and one which they should be able to nail with the algorithm) is the spam/low quality posts/articles with fairly obvious paid links (we've all seen and know them, right).

What's not known is how aggressive this is going to be. What the cut off point on 'quality' might be. And what might be done...eg drop that article from index completely, disavow/ignore the links, punish the linked-to property with deindex, send them a manual warning to explain etc etc

Possibly a combination of all those and more, depending on the detail.


But take this point 'When we detect sites engaging in either publishing or acquiring links with excessive sponsored and guest posting without proper link tags, algorithmic and manual actions may be applied, similar to affiliate links.'

This may well be the first nail in the coffin for those sites running intensive/semi-intensive link campaigns.....eg over a course of a few days/weeks a site gets a bundle of links from newly published pages (whatever quality level), it's going to flag that up and all involved might get spanked.

Interesting times ahead.

[PaulEchere]

Quite a topic for speculation, I would say. The key thing here is "excessive sponsored and guest posting" which wasn't (and probably can't be) precisely defined. Having that in mind I don't think people who occasionally buy a link or two and place it along side some content that they produced themselves will be affected, otherwise this will turn into a witch hunt kind of thing.

"Are any of you going to start switching you nofollow affiliate links to sponsored?" - Yeah, why not. One of the key things that article states, is that this is the recommended way of placing affiliate links, so if this makes Google happy - sure.

One thing, that may be surely nuked for good are those dead blogs and news portals with spammed comment sections, although I suppose they might have been nuked a long while ago anyway.

[newcustomeroffer]

SERPs Wars Episode V: The Penguin Strikes Back

This algorithm update, which will rollout across the next two weeks, is even more effective at identifying and nullifying link spam more broadly, across multiple languages. Sites taking part in link spam will see changes in Search as those links are re-assessed by our algorithms.

'Nullifying' would suggest that the algorithm will simply pass zero juice from certain links it decides are bad, however affected webmasters identifying which are said links will be nigh on impossible given there are many, many shades of grey.

[PROFRBcom]

What wonderful news this is!

My biggest direct competitors buy links all over the internet, in some of the seediest and most obvious spammed sites/articles I have ever seen. And yet they have been rewarded, or at least, not penalized, because I still have to compete with their garbage.

How wonderful it will be if this algo change catches even 20% of their spam and said links stopped being counted... so that I can then watch the resulting plummeting of their sub-par quality articles and reviews!

I am ordering a large box of popcorn...

[Jambo]

oh that's really good news and it will hopefully punish some sites with 6 hundred millions spam links.

[Mattbar]

What wonderful news this is!

My biggest direct competitors buy links all over the internet, in some of the seediest and most obvious spammed sites/articles I have ever seen. And yet they have been rewarded, or at least, not penalized, because I still have to compete with their garbage.

How wonderful it will be if this algo change catches even 20% of their spam and said links stopped being counted... so that I can then watch the resulting plummeting of their sub-par quality articles and reviews!

I am ordering a large box of popcorn...

Agreed. Having been playing the long game with many of my sites for years and not buying links, or at least very sparingly looking for relevance and higher quality, it is nice to see it might finally pay off. Have expected something like this for a long time.

Part of me thinks it might just be google trying to scare people though and maybe nothing would actually come from the update.

[gil.langelaan]

I feel a bit nervous.. but that's happen to me before each update.
We don't buy any spam backlinks but still promote the website while guest posting. Hope everything would be fine for us


I still think that's a great update. And I think it will hurt only websites with spammy backlinks profile. Will see.

[chaumi]

I'd be fairly nervous here if I was on one of those obvious paid link pages like that space weather one. That's just blatant, and totally obvious. They mildly disguised it with deepish content about space weather at the top...then it spills into link after link about casinos. Talk about telling Google what you're doing! There really could be no valid argument if that - and some on it - got hurt.

[ddm]

We don't buy any spam backlinks

^ really.
you want us to pull your pants down right here?
edit: just kidding, but i mean, sometimes it's better to say nothing.

[tufty]

I don't buy links and unlike others stating this I am telling the truth. I did buy links five plus years ago and I stopped, believing google's nonsense that it would be punished. It never was. Also I got sick of dealing with the mainly low-life scum selling the links and their sh1tty websites and devious ways they find to avoid passing juice.

I do have some concerns with this latest announcement. Firstly let's hope they just "nullify" the value of the spammy links and leave it at that.

Secondly, I hope the target site for the links does not get punished, or those people celebrating in this thread, are wide open to negative seo damage from their competitors like never before. It would be like going back in time - and they do talk about punishing 'acquiring links'. The thing is, you know google just fecks things up.

If this update works as google has stated then my sites will rise. I won't hold my breath.

[PROFRBcom]

Secondly, I hope the target site for the links does not get punished, or those people celebrating in this thread, are wide open to negative seo damage from their competitors like never before. It would be like going back in time - and they do talk about punishing 'acquiring links'. The thing is, you know google just fecks things up.

If this update works as google has stated then my sites will rise. I won't hold my breath.

I mean I hope these sites are "punished" by losing the link juice from the obviously spammy links. Thus, defacto being demoted in the SERPS.

Also, I am not holding my breath either...

[tufty]

I mean I hope these sites are "punished" by losing the link juice from the obviously spammy links. Thus, defacto being demoted in the SERPS.

Yes exactly. If they actively go after the sites acquiring links in any other way it could be deja vu regarding negative seo and a can of worms.

[baldidiot]

Yes exactly. If they actively go after the sites acquiring links in any other way it could be deja vu regarding negative seo and a can of worms.

I would like to think they learnt their lesson with this after the Penguin debacle and their constant claims that negative seo wasn't possible (which led to Matt Cutts' blog getting attacked with a load of ****** links and redirects, if I remember correctly).

Recently all their talk has been about ignoring links that they don't trust, or penalising the sites that they're on rather than what they link to, so let's hope that actually is the case.

Although what they say and what they do are often different things...

[mediapartner]

Personally i dont really look at those google updates. besides some minor ranking changes i have never seen a real impact on my rankings due to any update or whatsoever.

I also think that this whole guest post thing wont change much, at least not on the short term. Because lets be honest here...99% of all links to websites are paid links or link exchanges... Sure some will add links to valuable info sources, but 99% of all webmasters in the world wont add links on their sites without getting anything in return...

And basically all seo companies work with link buying, guest post links and so on..Meaning that if this change would cause bad rankings to those sites 99% of all sites in the world will be affected..

Also if “sponsored” is added and it wont be good for ranking, simply nobody will buy these guest post anymore... that might sound great, but millions of sites, services and companies earn their money this way... so either this whole google idea will fail or those affected will find a new workaround...thats just how the world works..

[MJM]

Interesting to see all the optimism here that Google is going to do the right thing here, let's just say I'm not holding my breath.

The real question is what is the objective in Mountain View - are they looking to issue penalties on a broad scale, similar to what Penguin did? Or, are they just going to devalue most of them and penalize some blatant repetitive practices. I wouldn't get your hopes up that half the affiliate sites out there are just going to get nuked. Most of the strong competitors who engage in blatant link purchasing also have a pretty healthy link portfolio of legitimate inks - at least the major brands I compete with do.

I'm not really speculating either way - nothing would surprise me including large amounts of innocent casualties. It will be an interesting two weeks!

[MichaelCorfman]

TAre any of you going to start switching you nofollow affiliate links to sponsored?

No change here on that front. We've always completely buried affiliate links so Google would never see them (nofollow links to pages on our site excluded by robots.txt that redirect to the affiliate site).

Also, I did post a poll a couple years ago that is relevant to this discussion - it was back in September 2019 that Google first announced the rel="sponsored" option. Here is a link to that thread:

Do you plan to make changes to your sites to reflect the evolution of nofollow?

In terms of other aspects of the update, we do not engage in any link buying, so I expect changes like those discussed will likely be neutral to positive from a selfish perspective.

Plus, from a personal perspective, anything that reduces the frequency of junk in top search results is good.

Michael

[ddm]

No change here on that front. We've always completely buried affiliate links so Google would never see them (nofollow links to pages on our site excluded by robots.txt that redirect to the affiliate site).

+1 this ^

labeling content as sponsored betrays a relationship, which goog has *no business* in being able to map out.

[Daniel Wagner]

No change here on that front. We've always completely buried affiliate links so Google would never see them (nofollow links to pages on our site excluded by robots.txt that redirect to the affiliate site).

Also, I did post a poll a couple years ago that is relevant to this discussion - it was back in September 2019 that Google first announced the rel="sponsored" option. Here is a link to that thread:


In terms of other aspects of the update, we do not engage in any link buying, so I expect changes like those discussed will likely be neutral to positive from a selfish perspective.

Plus, from a personal perspective, anything that reduces the frequency of junk in top search results is good.

Michael

I just changed all the links on my sites to be sponsored, even I already hide them by cloaking + robots.txt - to be on the safe side. Maybe I'm too paranoid.