[heyman]

Not one of my clients has been hit by the unnatural links penalty despite using ALN, BMR, AR, HPBLs, etc. There are countless threads discussing being hit, but none discussing why some sites haven't been hit.

Google knows the kind of ***** storm they'd be starting if they penalized every site for "unnatural linking". It would open the door for anyone to spam any site and potentially destroy its rankings. So to prevent that from happening, they've come up with a set of metrics that will cancel out any penalty applied for unnatural linking.

I think they're looking at a combination of Social metrics, Link Age, and Site Age. Possibly even doing a manual review of the site in question which would explain why my clients haven't been hit. What are your thoughts?

Also, for those of you that claim your "quality" site was hit. Seriously take a step back and look at the situation without any bias. I spent a few hours the other day going through some of the links on the blog I had connected with ALN. The majority of the sites were embarrassingly awful and quite honestly didn't deserve to rank anyways.

[KNOCKOUT]

I haven't received the messages in wmt. I lost over 3k links since Feb. And I'm stable and rebuilding trust. I have noticed every relevant site I do receive a backlink from is positive movement. So, just massive link loss penalty here only.

[heyman]

I haven't received the messages in wmt. I lost over 3k links since Feb. And I'm stable and rebuilding trust. I have noticed every relevant site I do receive a backlink from is positive movement. So, just massive link loss penalty here only.

One of my clients lost a lot of HPBLs in early February (I'm assuming you're part of that group) and has since bounced back without using HPBLs. I wouldn't really call it a link loss penalty, just link loss.

[KNOCKOUT]

Yeah, February 5th for me. But, the link loss feels like a penalty, when all keyword across the board took a hit, not just the ALN targets.

[Blah Blah Blah]

I finally got hit this last week on a clients site that is ALL quality content and very high traffic. Thing is I didn't use ALN, BMR, AR, HPBLs.
Most of was from ELN. Just gotta move on and rank'em back up and hopefully so before I get reamed.

What really pisses me off is I was using VA that I told specifically NOT to use ELN.

Edited by Blah Blah Blah, 26 March 2012 - 17:32.

[sherwood]

I've had sites that use BMR ALN etc not get hit, I have also had sites that use them get hit.

I'd like to say the penalty might depend on low link diversity / high ratio of spammy links to genuine ones - but looking at my sites it seems the opposite is the case. Sometimes I think Google must throw in some kind of dice roll with each algo update just to keep people guessing.

Edited by sherwood, 26 March 2012 - 18:12.

[brandonbaker]

Also, for those of you that claim your "quality" site was hit. Seriously take a step back and look at the situation without any bias. I spent a few hours the other day going through some of the links on the blog I had connected with ALN. The majority of the sites were embarrassingly awful and quite honestly didn't deserve to rank anyways.

I did the same thing the other day; exact same conclusion.

[Mug]

I relied a bit too heavily on BMR - It was too easy.

I have 1 WMT letter from around 5 sites.

[massivemarketing]

I'm on the same boat. No love message from G, lost every permanent HPBL and links from just about every blog network. Left me with an unbalanced link profile of 1 anchor text which caused rankings to fall through the floor and I immediately started building branded/useless anchor text. A week later rankings shot up. So far so good.

All the sites we build for our clients are quality and are all custom jobs (we have a team of developers) and the sites that took a hit were the ones we started backlinking early last year (majority of link loss). We recently started building AdSense sites which are WP template jobs at a rate of 1 a day and as they are recently ALN'd they are ranking well. So in our case, the quality sites took a hit and the garbage are ranking.

[VBM]

Also, for those of you that claim your "quality" site was hit. Seriously take a step back and look at the situation without any bias. I spent a few hours the other day going through some of the links on the blog I had connected with ALN. The majority of the sites were embarrassingly awful and quite honestly didn't deserve to rank anyways.

I see spammy sites with spammy link profile on the first page (they didn't get penalized for unnatural links since spam comments built using ScrapeBox are more natural than blog network links),

[patman]

I manage over 100 sites in GWT and have yet to receive any kind of warning notice from Google. I'm hoping I flew under the radar since I didn't build TOO many links with the blog networks, although I would have if I had discovered the networks earlier because of how effective they are (or were). Phew.

[abock]

I manage over 100 sites in GWT and have yet to receive any kind of warning notice from Google. I'm hoping I flew under the radar since I didn't build TOO many links with the blog networks, although I would have if I had discovered the networks earlier because of how effective they are (or were). Phew.

I'd been in similar position until today, I got the 'unnatural links' message from google for just one site.

I think, what triggers this, might be after deindexing some of the backlinks, your site is left with unnatural anchors pointing to it.

I can't prove it though, but can be...

Edited by abock, 30 March 2012 - 05:34.

[mofoe]

Who HASN'T been hit by the unnatural link penalty despite using networks


The don't speak too soon thread

[AdamWB]

I'm getting the impression that if you used forced links in general, your days are numbered.

Meaning, just because your site has not been hit today - tomorrow may hold a different story.

If I had a quality site that made good money, and used forced links, I'd be building a mirror site immediately to replace the 'soon-to-be-hit' site.

Personally, I've got about 300 sites that use forced links, and roughly 1/10th of them have been hit. Seems every other day a new one is getting smacked.

Fortunately, I've got a lot invested in other sites that don't use forced links to rank - and none of them have been hit.

Starting to see a definite pattern.

[ChrisDH]

I'm getting the impression that if you used forced links in general, your days are numbered.

Its not just forced links though is it as that could mean a lot of things, its blog network links that are the killer.

Edited by ChrisDH, 30 March 2012 - 20:31.

[mrizos]

LOL...not me. Why would you guys ever pay for a public blog network??? Didn't you know you were going to get f*cked?

[boomer]

We were using networks sparingly as part of an overall Tier 2 approach. Thus far 0 sites hit by any loss of rankings.

Not sure why people are calling it a penalty. Sites weren't penalized - links were devalued. If you were propped up with a ton of public blog network links, then you lost your footing, that's all.

Think high PR single authority posts on Tier 1 and huge diversity on Tier 2.

[madis]

Guys help me to understand this tier 1 and tier 2

[mofoe]

LOL...not me. Why would you guys ever pay for a public blog network??? Didn't you know you were going to get f*cked?

Ahole troll alert. Nice first post, keep it up and I do not think you will be here long.

[ChrisDH]

Not sure why people are calling it a penalty. Sites weren't penalized - links were devalued. If you were propped up with a ton of public blog network links, then you lost your footing, that's all.

Because the whole receiving of a message stating that you that you have been penalized for inorganic links is a penalty not just a loss of rankings because your links have been de indexed..