Forum Moderators: martinibuster
you de-rank while the algo looks at link patterns over the next period [webmasterworld.com...]Has anyone witnessed anything the same or different ?
btw, that link doesn't work for me, probably because of global settings. So maybe a little more information please thanks. :)
I was made aware late last year that Google was working on a new algo to try to stop link spammers being able to boost sites to the top very fast, and this was as a result of some of the vulnerabilities they felt they had with being able to distinguish sites that had a real "buzz" effect from fast link acquisition and falsified link buzz. This was a real problem for them as they had made quite a lot of mods to the algo based on the effects of social networking and the effects of link building speed that is quite different from a year or so ago.It appears that has now gone live and it is algorithmic - it was also known there would be collateral damage but there are safeguards built in - hence it seems the minus 50 or so penalty.
It is not an absolute penalty otherwise you would be delisted - it is more a case that you de-rank while the algo looks at link patterns over the next period.
The logic is that spammers don't continue to build links to penalised sites and that natural link building (buzz link building or non-paid links) continue normally because of the quality of the site. What happens then is that the penalty is downgraded over time and the site eventually re-ranks, this can be days rather than months.
The point here is that if you have been affected you may have been getting links aggressively or tripped some other filter that previously was not there. If you then stop getting links when the penalty happens then you end up fitting the spammer profile as that is exactly what they would do.
So, SEOPTI, what I would say is that if you stop developing a site with a "minus" penalty then the site will die - if you keep developing it, then it should come back. In effect they are trying to detect whether it is a real site attracting real unsolicited backlinks - if it doesn't then it goes into the dustbin.
Like I said, this is info that I was given by someone who was involved with this months ago - not anything I thought of myself!
This is the context of my question , not only with regards to penalties , but also link building patterns for a site in general and their effect on SERP positions.
For example , what happens if you have a strong SERP position and you pause link building. Even if your competitors do little to none , will your rankings suffer for breaking that pattern.
.... and so on ?
[edited by: Whitey at 10:50 am (utc) on May 22, 2009]
...will your rankings suffer for breaking that pattern.
Probably not. Being in the top spot, particularly for high quality content, will almost guarantee that it will attract citations naturally. Beyond that, I think it takes a healthy mix of backlinks to hold on to the top spot.
Unfortunately, being at the top will also attract content theft which negatively affects ranking.
The link buzz thing has been around for awhile now. Basically it's boosting a site to the top because it's topical and has received a large amount of linking activity. Then it will fall and eventually get ranked like all the other sites. Which is where I think the healthy backlink mix comes in.
It takes a healthy mix of backlinks to hold top spot unless the search engine has grandfathered the link as an official source.
The buzz effect, which generates a lot of links quickly, is great but i'm positive that link retention, link age, link source and a lot of other factors play a role too.
I'm also not a big fan of getting a link from the same site with every article which is what happens when an aggregating service (read: social network) picks up your feed and reproduces your content. There's a fine line between showing a snippet and taking too much of the content, especially when it's offered to others in mixed feeds.
I'm rambling now but don't forget that pagerank doesn't affect traffic per say, some topics don't have any site with high pagerank but still generate considerable numbers of monthly searches.
You'd be better off reviewing internal link structure than planning to control what ultimately can't be controlled.
