aleksl - 5:34 pm on Jun 8, 2012 (gmt 0)

netmeg: I get the impression that if Google does this, it's not because they WANT to, but because people have been asking them to. tedster: Exactly - this forum has seen many such requests with no dissenting voices. That is, no dissent until Google did exactly what webmasters were requesting.

well, I am going to point an example below , tell me what's YOUR recourse:

What seriously needs to happen is a sequence of HIGH PROFILE examples of Negative SEO to hit the blogosphere - one after another.

Someone already must just point the obvious, might as well be me.

Let's say someone went out and bought a $100 worth of the spammiest links there are - FFA, links from forum comments with all the filthy and spammy KWs you can think of. And point these to your "my site is the whitest of them all" site. I will ommit details for the sake of not feeding the obvious people. But your site or parts of your site will be immediately pandalized. Despite of what MattCutts are saying it is as easy as apple pie. This can even be your well-meaning "I know how to promote your site in Google" friend.

So what do you do, how do you clean this up? Since what it seems like there's very few obvious POSITIVE algo weights, and lots of mostly NEGATIVE?

making a site has long turned from fun to walking a mine field.

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I'm a firm believer that sitewide links pointing at your site can hurt you

Yes they do. it isn't difficult for Google to identify and count it as one link. But they don't. They'd rather punish you, a bunch of green would-be spammers, and a whole lot of unsuspecting mom-and-pop sites who are never going to read webmaster guidelines OR this forum.