[miked]

http://searchengineland.com/google-talks-penguin-update-recover-negative-seo-120463

[RealEcon]

"What that means is that if some of your site is deemed Penguin-like, all of it may suffer. Again, recovery means cleaning up the spam. If you’ve cleaned and still don’t recover, ultimately, you might need to start all over with a fresh site, Cutts said."

Translation:
The demand for aged domains at Godaddy auctions is going up soon.

"After Negative SEO Campaign, A Link Warning
Of course, new messages do go out, which leads to the case of Dan Thies. His site was targeted by some trying to show that negative SEO works. He received an unnatural link warning after this happened. He also lost some rankings. Is this the proof that negative SEO really works?"

Still laughing over this one.

"I asked Cutts about the case, but he declined to comment on Thies’s particular situation. He did say that typically a link warning is a precursor to a ranking drop. If the site fixes the problem and does a reconsideration request quickly enough, that might prevent a drop."

Why decline on commenting on Dan's case? Total FAIL

"I’d also stress again that from what I’ve seen, negative SEO isn’t really what most hit by Penguin should probably be concerned about. It seems far more likely they were hit by spam they were somehow actively involved in, rather than something a competitor did."

But above this he is saying that sites cant be hurt by people spamming them.

If you can hurt your own site, you can easily hurt others. Double Speak FAIL

Edited by RealEcon, 10 May 2012 - 12:00.

[brandonbaker]

Yeah, the hypocrisy in that article is blatantly obvious.

If you tell us to clean up our spam, what that implies is that the spammy links are conferring a negative effect on our rankings.

Spammy links conferring a negative effect = Negative SEO

Fail indeed.

[colourofspring]

If Matt Cutts REALLY thought the biggest changes Google have made to their algo was a success, he'd be publishing it loud and proud on the Google Blog. As it is, it's come out in some off-the-cuff "interview" with Danny Sullivan who only got a couple of quotes off Matt Cutts. And then they mention that the viagra results have been cleaned up? Not when I search....

....and still the SERPS are full of ***** on so many keywords - STILL hacked sites, login pages, script error pages, irrelevant results.

Edited by colourofspring, 10 May 2012 - 13:47.

[liquidone]

I would take note of this quote "Cutts also explained that Penguin was designed to be quite precise, to act against pages when there was an extremely high-confidence of spam being involved. The downside is that some spam might get through, but the upside is that you have fewer false positives."

So take time to make highly quality, natural looking spam and you will be alright. lol..

[colourofspring]

The last round of updates have largely targeted off-page links. This does not reflect ON-page spam. I get tired of the equivocal use of the word spam here. A site with great content but dodgy links is "webspam" suddenly as if to imply the content is also spam. At the end of the day, people want quality sites / businesses ranking - off-page factors shouldn't penalise sites because it just ends up penalising many sites that searchers want to see in the top 10s.

[Flar]

A site with great content but dodgy links is "webspam" suddenly as if to imply the content is also spam. At the end of the day, people want quality sites / businesses ranking - off-page factors shouldn't penalise sites because it just ends up penalising many sites that searchers want to see in the top 10s.

I agree. Google should not penalize for off-site as long anyone is manipulating the results, some use automation, some buy links, even the big companies, "everyone" is manipulating. Ranking without spamming or buying links is impossible these days. The quality of the site is what really matters, but backlinks are no longer a relevant unity measure for quality. Who can "review" a website? penalize a website, the quality of the website? only the visitor, and the visitor is not interested what backlinks a website has as long is a good site.

[finemoves]

Lately I have been looking for real day jobs, as my seo biz is down quite a bit

One job that I talked to a recruiter about this week was a seo project mgr job for bank of america at 100k

Just in staff the project had enough salaries to go over 1m

So its not only us little guys trying to manipulate google

Btw I decided not to apply, and move back into more mainstream it, although doing seo for a fortune 50 company would of been neat to do

[100k]

This recent update has made me want to move into other areas of IM and not depend on Google's traffic any more.

Every time I have started to make some cash via natural ranking Google has come by like 1-5 weeks later and done an update that has forced me to start over again.

Can't be doing this over and over again and expect different results THAT is insanity!

I will learn PPC and start promoting stuff on Facebook and build lists and do email promo. Maybe also some PPV.

I might still do a little bit of SEO but it wont be my main focus any more!

Edited by 100k, 10 May 2012 - 17:49.

[Fat Dave]

Is Cutts freaking serious? If anyone wants a laugh read the link in OP.

[Fat Dave]

I just don't get it. Watching those videos in the OP makes me so angry. Did Matt Cutts not see what happened to Dan Thies? In the niche I am in there is nobody left. NOBODY. This only shows in competitive niches everyone was doing it because that's what it took to rank. Now spam affiliate sites dominate the top 10. Does this help improve the search quality? NO! Maybe, those people with the will and money for SEO had a vested interest in quality. I don't know maybe to convert that traffic into customers?

[miked]

Yeah, the hypocrisy in that article is blatantly obvious.

If you tell us to clean up our spam, what that implies is that the spammy links are conferring a negative effect on our rankings.

Spammy links conferring a negative effect = Negative SEO

Fail indeed.

Makes you want to go bowling, and maybe that's the point.

[kirahster]

Matt Cutts is such a nerd! I want to get a straw and blow spitballs at him.

[Tangy]

I just don't get it. Watching those videos in the OP makes me so angry. Did Matt Cutts not see what happened to Dan Thies?

What do you expect the guy is going to do... come out and say "Oh hey yeah, negative SEO is totally possible. Oops our bad, have at it everyone!"

The Penguin update is working as intended alright... it's basically made real SEOs look like they know what they're doing and exposed everyone else as a clown that thought they could go on ranking forever using cheap, ***** links sold by providers.

[Richar Green]

searchengineland.com is just a medium for cutts to gloat his ***** day in day out...
Indeed, an epic fail.

[colourofspring]

What do you expect the guy is going to do... come out and say "Oh hey yeah, negative SEO is totally possible. Oops our bad, have at it everyone!"

The Penguin update is working as intended alright... it's basically made real SEOs look like they know what they're doing and exposed everyone else as a clown that thought they could go on ranking forever using cheap, ***** links sold by providers.

So you say negative SEO now exists in a much more potent form (I read that from your sarcasm), yet the Penguin update is good?

[colourofspring]

Also, if Matt Cutts thinks the Penguin update is good (albeit said in just a snatched quote, and not officially said on his Twitter account or Google Blog), then why are the results still dancing around like mad?

[Richar Green]

Also, if Matt Cutts thinks the Penguin update is good (albeit said in just a snatched quote, and not officially said on his Twitter account or Google Blog), then why are the results still dancing around like mad?

Because he has no clue about what he speaks, he is a puppet, speaks what he's masters ask him to...

[RealEcon]

So whats the logical flow of SEO going forward, if Google doesnt back down from these updates and deindexings that leave ranking penalties?

People are seriously going to battle it out in the serps.

Google Adwords will be the only winner. And when things get bad enough big brother .gov is going to step in and regulate. They already whetted their appetite with taking down MegaUpload. When enough people start to cry that their livelihoods are being destroyed by "pay for hire" NSEO thugs, we will get to see government folly on a level never before imagined in the form of them trying to regulate backlinks/SEO.

All brought to you by the greed of Google.

[Mike C]

this is worth a read - http://wpmu.org/wordpress-penguin-google-matt-cutts/