[rsdunton]

Blah Blah Blah, on 22 February 2012 - 12:33, said:

I think BMR sucks because John is an ass, maybe it does work but there are many other blog networks our there to use. Glad I have those options and find it funny his network is getting de-indexed. Not funny for those using it but that it's him scrambling to fix it.

Just checked a quick 100 links from 6 months ago and only 4 have been de-indexed, so 4% deindexing rate!  Also quite a few of my actual posts have pr ranging from 1-3 Am I missing something?

Although I can't agree or disagree about the John bit since I've never had to deal with him

Edited by rsdunton, 22 February 2012 - 13:48.

[trakker]

When a post is no longer indexed, it may be technically accurate to say de-indexed, but I believe that can lead to much confusion and misinformation.

The fact that a single post is no longer indexed does not mean the entire domain it is on has been de-indexed - far from it.

My concern is, if someone says "20% of my posts are de-indexed", people who don't pay close attention (Travman)  may take that to mean 20% of the DOMAINS are de-indexed and running around spouting bad info.  Next thing you know, everyone is talking about how the network is getting killed.  

If you throw out stats on indexing, please be specific if it is URLs NO LONGER INDEXED, or the entire DOMAIN DEINDEXED.

Edited by trakker, 24 February 2012 - 16:27.

[scanlin]

I, too, noticed a large drop in rankings for sites with BMR links pointing to them about 10 days ago. It's the most meaningful and noticeable drop in the 18 months I've been working with these sites. Something changed overnight. I believe that the BMR network specifically, or perhaps postings/links that have BMR-like characteristics (150-170 words, 1 link, etc), have been devalued by Google as of a couple weeks ago.

[AdamWB]

Make sure you guys are looking at the overall quality of your site rather than the backlinks pointing to them. I think this is heavily overlooked when analyzing why a site dropped rankings.

There are so many on-page algorithm changes going on this year that your ranking drop can be attributed to a number of things - all of which point to your site rather than sites pointing to yours.

[maretus]

I have been using BMR and HPBL networks for over a year now and my sites rankings have remained fairly consistent the entire time. There have been a few drops here and a few increases there, but nothing major. I would second AdamWB's comments to take a look at the quality of your site and possibly its age and other backlinks.

I do think that the reason my sites have held is that they are of the upmost quality and they are aged, with aged backlinks. And along with the many BMR and HPBL network links, they also have a good deal of other links, both editorial and self-created. I think its very dangerous for Google to start de-indexing sites that are LINKED to by blog networks as it opens up a whole new industry: Anti-SEO.

[mikemunter]

Hey guys, just took the time to read this entire thread and would like to bring it back to trying to figure out what happened.

As far as the idea of BMR posts getting de-indexed, unless a lot of posts got de-indexed all at the same time, it does not make sense that we would see such hugh ranking drops.  Does anyone have proof that all our posts got de-indexed at the same time?  Otherwise, why would my client fall from #1 (for "fitness coach") to the 30's.  All the links for this keyword were built on BMR and the hit occurred mid-Feb.

For what it's worth, I checked 20 links created last July, 2011 and 7 of the 20 (35%) are de-indexed.  Checked another 19 from Oct-Dec and 6 (32%) are de-indexed.

Regarding On-Page, I've got my pages pretty dialed in - I use SEO Pressor to make sure.  So, I'm not sure about this.

I will say that the only common theme I notice from the keywords I got hit on is that it seems like the # of BMR posts per keyword is in direct proportion to the severity of the hit.  Also, the keywords I've been working on the longest have been the ones most severely hit.

I'd be interested in sharing exact details with anyone who's interested in digging deeper on this - just PM me.

Thanks,
Mike

[trakker]

mikemunter, on 24 February 2012 - 16:50, said:

For what it's worth, I checked 20 links created last July, 2011 and 7 of the 20 (35%) are de-indexed.  Checked another 19 from Oct-Dec and 6 (32%) are de-indexed.

Thanks,
Mike

@Mike - So 30% or so of your posts are no longer shown in the index.  

Can you check those domains and see if the domains are de-indexed, or is it just the posts that are not indexed?

[mikemunter]

Hey Trakker - Wish i could, but when i click on the binocular and can't find the post, that means I can't find the URL either. Unless you know of another way to see it, in which case I'd be happy to check.

[Juvv]

Most sites recently have been hit with a drop I have found. I doubt its just BMR. Many other article networks have been hit too.

[scanlin]

Juvv, on 24 February 2012 - 22:34, said:

Most sites recently have been hit with a drop I have found. I doubt its just BMR. Many other article networks have been hit too.

That's possible (even likely, knowing the algo-focused brainiacs at Google) but as someone who is trying to find techniques to rank, I don't really care if BMR was targetted or if things like BMR (including BMR) were targetted; the fact is that BMR, IMO, is no longer effective as of mid-February.

maretus, on 24 February 2012 - 15:47, said:

I think its very dangerous for Google to start de-indexing sites that are LINKED to by blog networks as it opens up a whole new industry: Anti-SEO.

I don't think Google is de-indexing sites that are linked to by BMR. I think Google is devaluing the BMR sites because those sites fit a profile that Google has determined have little value-add. So those BMR sites may have had some decent PageRank pre-Feb but now Google has valued them at zero (or near zero) and so now they pass zero (or very little) PageRank to the sites they link to.

I have been using BMR for a year and here is what I noticed 2 weeks ago:

(1) Site is 6 years old. Added a sub-page 6 months ago and was BMR'ing it. No other link building was done for this page. Page was not spam-like (nor was the site). After 3 months the page ranked #10 for its keyword. After 5 months it ranked #5. After 6 months it ranked #3. Then, with no other changes to the site or page, it drops to #40 in mid-Feb. The only explaination, IMO, is that all those BMR links that were pointing to it lost their link juice. (And, yes, the anchor text backlink profile was natural looking, the page was not keyword stuffed, it loaded quickly, the content on the page was unique and interesting for humans, etc).

(2) A second (unrelated to (1)) domain is 10 years old but site is 2 years old. 200 pages of unique hand-crafted content that have been added at a rate of 1-3 pages per week for 2 years. BMR was one of several linking strategies to create deep links to all sub-pages. For many pages it was the only strategy. Rankings were increasing every week and i had over 100 phrases on page 1 organic results. Then, in mid-feb, overnight I lose 20 of the 100 page 1 rankings (still indexed but now at spots 20-40). The largest drop (and only significant drop) in the 2 years the site has been up. I looked up the pages that dropped and the only thing they had in common was lots of BMR backlinks. The site was fresh, many of the dropped pages were fresh (we tweak them a little every couple months), the backlink profiles were natural looking, the pages were not keyword stuffed. Basically, among all the variables, the only variable that could be an SEO red-flag are the BMR backlinks, IMO.

[mikemunter]

@Scanlin - What you say above pretty much matches exactly what I saw both on my site and a client site.  I also have several pages that were ranking page 1 and some of them #1 and the ONLY thing I had done to those pages was BMR links.

On or about Feb 15, all those pages/keywords fell to positions 20-60.

Also, I began to develop a sense in mid-Jan to mid-Feb that BMR links had lost a little effectiveness.  It just seemed like they were not as strong as before in moving sites up.

I had asked John at BMR what his explanation was and he told me he has many sites ranking well with just BMR links and he suspected I got hit by a "rolling Panda update".

[Juvv]

Id say that your main problem is you are trying to rank a site using one single type of link. Think about it for a second. Do you think having hundreds of just contextual back links, from one platform (wordpress) is natural? Diversity is the key, and is also the main reason people either lose mass ranking positions, or dont get any at all.

[peterk]

Plenty of people who have been hit had good link and anchor diversity

[travman]

seems half the people rave about BMR, the rest think it caused their sites to drop

Edited by travman, 26 February 2012 - 02:34.

[kschmandt]

Just had the same thing happen last night. 3 year old site regularly updated, good link diversity, including bmr, good posts great rankings all gone overnight. And get this, a friend in the same niche with a similar site and similar rankings had the same thing happened at the same time for the same keywords, literally the same hour. the only thing we have been able to find in common other than the keywords is we are both using either bmr or aln.

My thought is that its not an issue of the pr being lowered on bmr type sites but some sort of algo update that detects these kind of sites (not necessarily the network but the patterns present in these types of sites). If your backlink profile is contains a lot of these types of links its pretty easy to figure that you have been buying links.

I don't know just another thought.

[mofoe]

kschmandt, on 26 February 2012 - 09:54, said:

Just had the same thing happen last night. 3 year old site regularly updated, good link diversity, including bmr, good posts great rankings all gone overnight. And get this, a friend in the same niche with a similar site and similar rankings had the same thing happened at the same time for the same keywords, literally the same hour. the only thing we have been able to find in common other than the keywords is we are both using either bmr or aln.

My thought is that its not an issue of the pr being lowered on bmr type sites but some sort of algo update that detects these kind of sites (not necessarily the network but the patterns present in these types of sites). If your backlink profile is contains a lot of these types of links its pretty easy to figure that you have been buying links.

I don't know just another thought.

what were the other types of links? Also you mention you shared serps...on the same page of google? Did you not diversify anchor? I really think a lot of this is people getting the same anchor over and over again.

Edited by mofoe, 26 February 2012 - 10:34.

[MarkAse]

Juvv, on 25 February 2012 - 13:39, said:

Id say that your main problem is you are trying to rank a site using one single type of link. Think about it for a second. Do you think having hundreds of just contextual back links, from one platform (wordpress) is natural? Diversity is the key, and is also the main reason people either lose mass ranking positions, or dont get any at all.

Nope sorry.....over 25k indexed links according to Majestic SEO.  Spread between 4 main landing pages and 100+ internal pages.  Link types run the gamit from profiles to blog comments etc etc.  We've done it all and gotten plenty of links that we didn't create ourselves.

[kschmandt]

Oh no...I did it right, I've been through this before. lots of anchor diversity, lots of link type diversity. I even have my own personal high pr network with really good links pointing to these pages. BMR was just part of my overall seo strategy.

When I say shared rankings I am referring to a friend who has a totally different site. We were competing with each other and both had the same thing happen at the same time.

The only common denominator we could find that made any sense (especially once I found this thread) were blog networks. So my "best guess" is that google has built in some sort of algo that can detect that these blog network links are paid links. Whether they are punishing the recipient or just not counting these links I don't know.

What I do know is that there is no other reason I should have been slapped, panda, human or otherwise. Ive been really careful on this one to not make mistakes that I have made in the past, lol.

[Joe Hughes]

In my view this is Panda algo update that started on the 3rd/4th of Feb which Google went public about and another tweak around the 17th/18th.  It's certainly nothing to do with network links as my sites have many of these types of links and I had 1 site affected. The issues will be related to on page Panda factors. This does NOT mean your site is low quality just that the algo believes it is. I think the alst couple of updates have hit a lot of legitimate quality stes.

The theories that are doing the rounds are almost identical to previous threads when there have been Panda updates. There seems to be no common thread because there isn't one (not if you're looking at links) because it as an on page "penalty".

[mikemunter]

Joe Hughes, on 26 February 2012 - 12:30, said:

In my view this is Panda algo update that started on the 3rd/4th of Feb which Google went public about and another tweak around the 17th/18th.  It's certainly nothing to do with network links as my sites have many of these types of links and I had 1 site affected. The issues will be related to on page Panda factors. This does NOT mean your site is low quality just that the algo believes it is. I think the alst couple of updates have hit a lot of legitimate quality stes.

The theories that are doing the rounds are almost identical to previous threads when there have been Panda updates. There seems to be no common thread because there isn't one (not if you're looking at links) because it as an on page "penalty".

Joe - I have a hard time believing it is an "on-page" penalty because EVERY keyword I was building links for prior to Feb 15 was ranking very well on the first page of Google.  Just by the odds, at least a COUPLE of my pages should have not been hit, if by luck alone.  Could on page be improved?  Sure, but I can't just sit back and say it must be on-page alone.  The #1 site outranking me now for my main keyword is garbage - the guy's site is stuffed with keywords at the top and bottom of the page and every single page on his site follows a template with only minor changes.

My anchor text was diversified and I had many different pages ranking on 2 different sites.  They all have dropped overnight.

An area where I personally may have failed is only having about 5-10% of anchors being things like "site name", "URL", or "click here" type anchors.  Obviously, in the "natural" linking world, I'd had a much higher % of links like these.

Can anyone else comment on this anchor text link diversity?  Can anyone comment on sites they have that have not lost rankings vs. those that did and any differences you notice for your linking strategy?