Is Google risking the rise of negative SEO?

[superclown2]

A number of us have noticed that when we get extra links to our sites they actually fall in the SERPs and this seems to be confirmed by experimentation - OK, results may be skewed by algo changes but it seems pretty coincidental that on so many occasions a site falls very soon after the new links appear. This may mean that competitor's sites could be pushed down the SERPs by unscrupulous operators buying spammy links which are pointed at them.

It could make for some interesting court cases. I wonder if judges are familiar with the intricacies of the panda algorithm <G>?

[Planet13]

Free directories, articles, 3 way links. Think of it as a 3 legged stool. If you sit on it it will not likely fall over.

Googles algo updates can be rough, but if you diversify your links, you should survive it fairly intact.

With all due respect, I am not sure if I would really call that being diversified. All three of those links are ones that google would determine that you have some amount of "control" over.

Links similar to those that google would assume you have an amount of control over would be forum profiles, straight reciprocals, blog comments, Press Releases, guest blogging, advertising, etc...

I think that to be truly diversified, you are going to need to get links from .edu and .gov sites that either quote you or cite you as a resource. If you do something crazy and end up in the news, that might work, too.

[Planet13]

@shazam

Negative seo is unfortunately much easier these days. The more g tries to tighten the screws on link builders and off site optimization, the more power they are giving the morally bankrupt among us.

Have you actually paid for a blast on a competitor to see if you could knock them out of the top of the SERPs?

Until I see it done, I am skeptical it could happen THAT EASILY. (I am sure it CAN happen, but I think it is going to have to be MORE SOPHISTICATED than that.)

I think a simple blast could possibly "quarantine" the value of natural links that are acquired after the blast (meaning you might be able to trip some filter that would discount the value of high Pare Rank links acquired).

But if google bowling / link blasting were that easy, then EVERY top spot in the SERP would be held by a blackhatter who had blasted all his competitors.

Every top site in the SERPS would be run by a 13-year-old Ukrainian kid.

[shazam]

Silly, but sounds like a nice world you live in. I wish my experience was so rosy.

Not at all, knocking sites down won't put the "13 year old Ukranian kid at the top of the serps. No reason to think it would. It's flawed logic.

Blast your own sites, and watch your serps. Then report your site to google, and watch your serps. These are just the obvious and relatively nice methods. There are much more devious and clever methods in action every single day. I've personally lost a half dozen sites to these clowns. Negative seo is alive and well and google keeps making it easier.

It's silly to think google gives a hoot about your business to protect against such antics. Look at how long proxy indexing hacks have been going on. Scrapers/cloners getting ranked higher for your stolen content. The list goes on and on. Google doesn't give a hoot.

No, I would never do anything to intentionally harm another, but unfortunately I've been competing in some nasty niches and know that when one of my sites pops in the top 5 I can be guaranteed to become a target. It used to be that after many many months these sites would come back, not any more. Incoming links without a doubt can hurt a site.

[netmeg]

It Makes sense though, the real businessman that builds a quality site and service is MUCH MORE likely to spend on adwords than the average scraper/script black hat kiddy. Penalize the good sites and they will be forced to spend more money on adwords, while putting these quality sites at the top of the serps will make g less money.

Actually, what's silly is to believe that Google would take such a short term view of their core competency, when every indication over a number of years is that they are perfectly willing to take short term losses to achieve long term gains.

[shazam]

I seriously doubt this is a short term view.

They've been slowly and surely forcing businesses to advertise with them. It has been done in a slow and calculated way to ensure that most people don't notice. While at the same time done in an obvious and nasty way with the algo updates.

Compare the serps from 2001 to what you see today, huge huge difference. It used to be that organic results were highlighted and given the majority of traffic. Now for many niches, the first legit organic result is down below the fold. A searcher has to scroll down to find the first non paid result! There is always the top 3 paid results, followed by a half dozen "places" and then "news" results with the first legit organic result down below all this noise. This is not an accident and surely not a short term thing.

They will continue tightening the screws to make organic serps an unworkable business model. I think for many niches (ones with plenty of adwords bidders) search relevancy has peaked. If you want to show up for a specific query you will need to pay. The organic results will be unstable and irrelevant to drive more traffic to adwords. This is no accident and no short term view. They have been slowly and surely heading down this road for years.

[netmeg]

Not what I see.

[SevenCubed]

I too see it unfolding as shazam is pointing out, very much so, especially on local search here in the last 6 months, a niche I monitor very closely.

[Planet13]

It's silly to think google gives a hoot about your business to protect against such antics.

No, they don't care about protecting your business. that's not their job.

They do care very much about protecting the integrity of their search engine results. That is their core competency. They are going to TRY to keep it as spam free as possible.

That is the reason more people use google than Yahoo for search, which has all sorts of whiz-bang doo-dads on their home page.

as for adwords taking over the top real estate, it is frustrating, but they can do it because they have built their reputation on quality search, so people still think google is synonymous with search.

If bing makes major inroads, then maybe google will change the layout of the search pages to more favor organic search.

As for google bowling, I assume that it still can happen, based solely on statements that tedster has witnessed it. But I would imagine it is very, very complicated.

[seowebgeek]

I have quite a few sites and I have seen more drops than uplifts. I have about 25 sites on one hosting account with BlueHost, so all have the same IP address.

Do you think that Google is noticing this, and a couple sites that it does not like it is taring them all with the same brush?

Also, what is now the best way to backlink? I have read that contextual backlinks are best however, lets say that you have an article and it is added to 100 article directories with a link this articles link juice is going to be negated because it is not orginal text - would you agree?

Or, can you still add the same article out to loads of places and get it to provide value as a link building process?

Thanks

[courier]

After getting hit by Panda I looked at the sites still doing well, wordpress style with a good domain name was hitting me up the face time after time.

I spent a few hours and made a site with feeds, and affiliate links, all the stuff that we are not to do. The feed generated 19,200 pages of junk and took 3 hours to complete. I bought links to it, link text was just the domain name, and within 6 hours it was indexed and positioned within the top 10 for quite good terms. Within one week of it going live it made it's first sale, and has sold regulary ever since.

If Google wants me to make this type of site, well I can oblige, although the site they hit by Panda was the site that everyone needs for information and reviews, this is the type of site no-one needs.

G needs to sort their house out, not us. They are the one that is creating this monster, by their penalities, just the same as they created the monster of Page Rank and links, now the have the monster called Panda, which will only add to the ammount of poor quality sites in Google.

Sure They will slap a Penality on this site, I would expect it, but already I have 14 others ready to go, two weeks work. A little diferent from my previous income, but it is Google who made it.

[seowebgeek]

courier - what do u mean by feeds. Are talking RSS fro other sites to yours?

[courier]

Feeds are supplied by 6 affiliate merchants, these are randomized to appear more unique. I suppose it is similiar to spinning an article.

This is not how I want to do websites, for the want of a better word the site is crap, but I have proved to myself it is a quick fix, and will get me some sort of income in the short term.

[seowebgeek]

What so no unique content, the products pulled from the merchants (I guess along with the products descriptions etc) and just loaded up.

These are all on seperate page/posts right?

I need a quick fix until I can get some of mine back up and ranking well again.

for you to have 19200 pages that must mean they are not niche specific?

Sorry for all the questions, just really keen to know what works.

What WP Plugin did you use to pull in all the feeds and add your affiliate links?

[MrFewkes]

Just go to any affiliate network and filter merchants by whether or not they have feeds. They are normally offered in XML or straight up comma delim files.

So say a merchant sells gardening stuff - tools and such - you can set up a gardening site in about 120 mins.

Even better - why not sign up with the google affiliate network and use feeds they produce - this way you can spam google with junk sites which probably wont get a penalty because the affiliate links point to googles own merchants.

[courier]

I had to buy the script for this to work, likely not allowed to post URL but there are plenty out there that do the same thing. If allowed I can tell you the name of the script, and you can look for it.

The site is a general niche not specific. Every product generates it's own page. It took a little work to get my head round the script, it works well now. I have it as a cron every night and prices and products are updated while I sleep.

I would not like to admit I own this site, as it is crap. I am surprised it has got 2 weeks and 2 days without being spat. No work has been done since the initial setup, although I may consider buying a few more links to it if it is still positioned month.

[courier]

What so no unique content,

The unique content is during the product eg, widgets, I am adding a longer tail keyword to this by replacing Widgets with for example: blue widgets every time widgets appear, in title and description. This reduces the number of searches, but well I am well positioned in the top 10 for many of these searches.

[Planet13]

...however, lets say that you have an article and it is added to 100 article directories with a link this articles link juice is going to be negated because it is not orginal text - would you agree?

Yes, I would agree.

If you have 100 copies of the same article on different sites, google is going to only want to index one or two copies of it at most. So it really isn't going to get much link juice at all from the other 99 copies.

[seowebgeek]

Planet13 - thanks that is my experience too. I used to always make sure that my article on my sites were indexed first. Then I added the articles to some directories but always have them pointing back to the article page on my sites. Then in the signature "ANCHOR" to money page.

I just do not think this has helped my ranking with Panda

I am also noticing spun content not doing too well? I suppose G is getting clever at identifying spun too - it's not actaully that hard is it if you think about it?

Courier little confused

"The unique content is during the product eg, widgets, I am adding a longer tail keyword to this by replacing Widgets with for example: blue widgets every time widgets appear, in title and description."

I think I may be over thinking this, I am familiar with creating feeds from pipes, and also

[Planet13]

@ seowebgeek

Well, Matt Cutts has publicly stated that google plans on devaluing the link juice from article marketing, and I personally would NOT put the same article on my site as I would put on an article directory. You are just competing with yourself.

Keep the articles on your site high quality, and for the articles you post in article directories, you should just copy and spin an ehow article (after all, that is what they do to my articles, but hey, thanks for the NOFOLLOW reference link, ehow. Why don't you just come to my house and kick my dog while you are at it, ok?).

[courier]

Sorry does not read well, simply every feed has a title and description along with other fields. Simply I am adding a longer tail keyword before the product name.