Google Bowling
This is an update to the widely-read post, “Google Breaks Its Own Golden Rule” which you may want to read first to get up to speed.
I’ve tested this myself with new sites… when I built them using only unique, quality content and linked to them in ways recommended by some Internet Marketing “gurus”… BAM.. the sites get dropped by Google. Sites that were built the same way without the links retained their rankings, so it’s not the Google Honeymoon effect in action, but a real negative effect from getting links Google considered “spammy”.
So much for the Google Golden Rule that links from external websites couldn’t hurt your rankings. Perhaps that was true in the past, but it’s not true now. When I wrote about my suspicions back in May I thought that Google would only penalise sites for bad links if they were new sites. I expected the penalty to be lifted as the site aged… perhaps gradually so as to avoid a new Internet Marketing craze such as “Buy Websites Over 18 Months Old To Avoid The New-Site Penalty”. You can almost see the “guru” emails promoting the new ebook, right? 
Well, in Dr Andy’s latest EzSEO Newsletter (which is excellent and you should subscribe to it) he released details of a test he performed on an old website which also lost ranking positions in Google when he built some “spammy” backlinks. In his test, the website was five years old, PageRank 2 with 80+ phrases in the top 100 at Google and within a month of building “spammy links”, all the rankings were lost. Dr Andy controlled the source of the spammy links and deleted them as a further test. Within three months 68 of the 80+ phrases are back in the top 100. For those who are interested, in the comments section of the blog post describing the test, Dr Andy says the “spammy links” were, “mass links on WordPress MU networks that I built. I had 25+ links to the site PER MU site”.
So, what conclusions can we draw?
Well, it now seems certain that the sudden appearance of spammy links can hurt sites, so Google has most definitely thrown out its “Golden Rule” in favour of tighter controls on backlink profiles to identify potential spam websites.
Furthermore, the profiles of sites at risk reaches well beyond the parameters I expected meaning many more, if not all, sites are susceptible. With both PageRank and aging, I would’ve expected Dr Andy’s site to be safe from any kind of link-profile penalty, but it wasn’t. So you can’t throw spammy links at aged sites with PageRank and expect them to be at best helpful or at worst ignored. It’s not clear if there are levels of PageRank or years of aging (or a combination of both) where sites do become immune to spammy links in their profiles.
It’s more important than ever to be a good guardian of the link-profile of any sites you own. It’s best to assume that building spammy links to any websites can actually wipe your site from Google’s search engine results… and if you don’t OWN the sites you put the links on, (which could be because you use services providing anonymous links), you won’t be able to remove them like Dr Andy did… so your site will almost certainly suffer a long period of ranking at the back of Google.
Hi Neil
– only joking…
YOu know its a strange one. I have another couple of sites built last October that had the same kinds of spammy links pointing at them, yet those sites still have pages ranked in the top 3 at Google. The only real difference was that there were fewer of the MU sites, and fewer posts on each one. I think what may have triggered the problem in my case was I had so many links from the same sites back to mine. Google can obviously tell they are a network owned by an individual, but then again, it does make it easy to target competitors. I think I need to do a little more testing. Who do I dislike
Keep up the good work
Andy
Thanks for the update, Andy.
You wouldn’t bomb a guy who links to you, right?
Neil.
What’s a WordPress MU site, Andy?
I’ve answered this elsewhere in the comments section.
Off we go then to build spammy links to the opposition. Where will that end, I wonder, once we all start doing it?
BB
Hi Bill,
That’s the problem in a nutshell… what is Google doing to protect against Google Bowling? It must be protecting established sites in some way or black hatters would have a field day and there would be uproar.
That’s why I was so surprised at Dr Andy’s result. However, his comment here suggests that he got a variety of results. I’d guess there’s a “penalty threshold” which is different for each site and is a combination of the existing trust (age, pagerank, content type, brand) on one hand set against the spammy links (number of links, link neighbourhood) on the other. If your site exceeds the threshold it gets a penalty with an escalating duration for how far over the threshold you went.
Neil.
I do have my own theories on what might trigger the “threshold”, but sorry, I am keeping them to myself for now. I want to do more testing, and even then I may keep the results to myself. I dont want to give ammunition to the enemy.
Andy
I guess it never end does it. I’m shocked to hear and see this, it could open a lot of doors for guys closing in on a top ranking site. So much for a new person trying to figure out what to do to get good rankings for a keyword.
I guess if we can’t write 2000 word articles that are properly themed with a perfect image and youtube video imbedded – we are out of luck.
Well, I have sites with 2000 word articles that are properly themed with perfect images and youtube video embedded – still got sandboxed.
This has bugged me for quite a while now. I had a site that I built in January that has unique, top quality content (I wrote most of them myself) that got sandboxed with less than 10 links built. It stayed down for 6 months and finally came back and on 2nd page for a month now. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Another site built around the same time, same unique high quality content. Again, with less than 10 links from article directories it got sandboxed. It would go down one month then come back for one month (on page 1), then go down again for one month (almost exact 30 days). But it went down in June and hasn’t come back since. I know most people would say “just keep adding content and links” and that’s what I am doing – it certainly has not worked.
I also have a few new sites that I did not build any links to them. They are doing OK (on page 2 or 3) but I can’t improve them because I know as soon as I start building backlinks, they will go straight to the sandbox.
I was actually the person who asked Dr. Williams on his blog what type of “spammy links” he used. I wish someone could shed some light on this. It seems to me that ANY link building is now BAD. There is no such thing as “quality” backlinks anymore.
Hi Leo,
>It seems to me that ANY link building is now BAD.<
For new sites, it certainly seems so… if those links have optimised anchor text such as ones from article directories. I think it's best to build social buzz links and blog comment (nofollowed) links a long time before anchor-text rich links. That's what I did for my 3dtv website and it never saw the sandbox.
Neil.
“Google Breaks Its Own Golden Rule?”
This is the “bait car” of SEO and so many so called SEO gurus fall for it every time.
Remember this… if Google tells you one thing but their terms of use policies tells you another… which one wins… The honest person is not going to steal the car even if the keys are left in it.
So stop trying to game Google results… Google values backlinks that are built naturally and as Google’s technology has gotten faster and smarter over the years, they are now having to deal with the car thieves, so to speak.
So many online marketers like to blame Google instead of looking in the mirror. Just because you got away with staling the car in the past, doesn’t make it right.
I think the line between white hat and black hat has become blurred. White hat is now whatever we can justify as it has worked for me, maybe I make some money by telling others to do it as well
jUST MY 2 CENTS
“Google values backlinks that are built naturally”.
Do you mean “Google values backlinks that are acquired naturally”?
Surely, “built naturally” is an oxymoron.
Google would not consider “built” links to be “natural”.
I suspect that this has to do with all the links coming from one network without a corresponding rise in links from other similar authority sites around the internet.
A site with 500 external links spread over 400 sites (just random numbers) goes to 2500 external links spread over 401 sites (if you count the MU as a single site which I don’t know if Google does or not). All the new links come from a single site or network. That is obviously fishy.
I think we need to focus on building real links as Google and the other SE will continually learn how to weed out SEO inspired links and reward those who have links that benefit their customers (i.e. the searchers).
Good point, Bill, thanks.
I have a few plugins on my blog that go out and get some generic back links (as a swap) and my rankings have not been slapped. I have perhaps 900 posts and each post develops around 3 backlinks. I did, howoever work to get some great quality 1 way links in (around 50) but, i think the generic links help out quite a bit.
I believe that as long as you get the links over time, and not 300 in 24 hours, then they will help with reaching higher in the search engines. If Google sees that several 100 backlinks have been added within a 24 hour period, they’ll badge you as spam and demote your site.
I agree that a “spike” of spammy links can be a problem for sites with low authority.
Hi Neil,
I set up a new site set up in July, have been slowly adding content, a few directory submissions and a few backlinks. After having a quick look through Dr. Andy’s report on building affiliate websites and your info on the Bowling update and I am even more convinced of the need for quality, on page content, that provides useful information for the site visitor. Then, as you have pointed out before, a good internal linking structure that puts your visitor no more than 3 clicks from where they want to be.
This site is still a work in progress but now has 10 external backlinks and its Alexa ranking has improved from 4.3M to under 2M in 6 weeks. I think I will go even slower in the site development to ensure I keep the relevancy high as the site ages.
I am in it for the long haul with this project so if it takes time but the site gets to where I want to be I am not concerned. To many people want instant riches online and get disillusioned before they achieve any results.
Thanks again for the information you provided over the years, having been a subscriber for years, I always look forward to your emails.
Chris
Sounds like a good strategy, Chris. Thanks for your kind words.
Neil.
I am really confused by all this. Please help me out! How do you control who links to your site? I have been working diligently on my site, it is a PR 2, and has been around for several years. I use Google Analytics and Webmaster to monitor, and now and then I check my Awstats through my hosting company.
On Awstats, I see hits coming from numerous sites, but when I check those sites to see how they are linking to me, there is no link, so why am I getting hits from them? 300-500 a month?
I set up a Facebook fan page recently, and shortly after that started getting several thousand spammy comments on my site every day, (no idea if it is related, just a coincidence?) which I delete, are those considered spammy links, even though I delete them?? ( I have since installed a new spam blocker, and now only get a couple XXX rated spam comments a day, all to the same page, “Flower Wallpapers”.
I guess my question boils down to are spammy comments the same as spammy links?
Hi Carol,
> How do you control who links to your site?
You can’t, which is the whole problem. In the past, Google would count “good” links into your site and disregard “spammy” links because they could not be sure if the webmaster created them or not. Now it seems that they’re willing to penalise webmasters for spammy links, which opens a whole can of worms if a competitor directs spam links to your website.
You can use something like MajesticSEO to see who links to you. You can get detailed link reports for free, for sites you own and verify. For sites you don’t own, you have to pay for detailed reports.
Spammy comments are a different subject as they fall under on-site content. You’re responsible for it.
Neil.
Hi Carol
>On Awstats, I see hits coming from numerous sites, but when I check those sites to see how they are linking to me, there is no link, so why am I getting hits from them? 300-500 a month?
It’s a blackhat technique known as Referral Faking. Here’s an explanation from a site that sells software to do it…
“What exactly is Referral Faking you ask? Essentially the Referral Faker loads up the text file containing URLs and one by one processes the URLs sending fake visitor hits with your pre-defined URL (usually your own website or product), leaving a footprint of this URL in its traffic stats and the web. This is a quick, efficient and effective way of getting your site or product known all over the internet. This means that when a webmaster, or a user (in the case of publicly published statistics) sees your URL in their traffic tracking logs they will often click on the link to see what and how your website is linking to theirs. In turn this leads to traffic for your product or website. ”
Hope that clears it up.
Richard
Thanks Richard. Some people will go to any lengths for traffic.
Neil.
Hi, real dumb question coming up…
What are WordPress MU networks? Are they sites on the same C class hosing, link wheels or all owned by the same person?
Thanks
Wendy
Wordpress’ Multi-User script… usually used by people who want to *run* a service like WordPress.com on their own server/domain. People sign up at your site and blog using your service under their own usernames. See… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress
I had an interesting observation. I want to rank for a highly competitive keywords in data recovery niche.
I selected 10 similar keywords from google insights and publish 10 articles in various well sites like zimbio, ezinearticles etc. I pushed those articles to top 10 with simple SEO. My target page is also appeared within top 10 .
I’m great fan of you and Dr. Andy.
Rita from tipsoncoffee.com
Hi Rita,
Thanks for your kind words.
You managed to rank for 10 different highly competitive keywords, or were the “similar” keywords much less competitive?
Neil.
Thank you so much for this info. A lesson learned. One that will save many. I think it is also a bold move by Google. Goes to show. They do not joke around when it comes to quality.
This is very unfortunate. I wonder if the Google team took into consideration the amount of black-hatters that would take advantage of this and start taking out their competition. Would would think these guys are smarter than that?
Neil you’ve done it again… given me something else to worry about…. Plus I went and joined Dr Andy’s list and then read his post above! Lets hope he doesn’t keep it secret too long!
Good for Google.
A genuine site, with no rubbish and so called white hat tricks, just a genuine site, that should rank first, and thanks to Google it does.
As only new to this online business, I don’t understand the meaning or comments
Maybe someday. I use Google a lot to find information only.
I have two domains http://www.easywhisper.com and relentlessmotivator.com
No web site built for them as yet. Don’t know where to begin.
Any good Samiratians???
Laurence
Neil:
Noobie Q: To build links or not to build links that is the question Naturally, I would like to avoid sand boxing and/or stay in Google purgatory on a short term stay basis so could someone explain: a) easy/exucutable site internal link structure, b) best practice natural linking and c) whether all this hoopla about setting up web 2.0 link networks is worth the trouble for new sites?
Seems to me that GG (Godfather Google) has way too much power over web creators content destiny. I see no reason to use Google Analytics and suggest we should find ways to keep GG’s prying eyes at bay.
Perhaps I’m being quixotic but I am going to start googling how to outwit GG.
Thanks for Dr. Andy’s info.
I think that outwitting Google is a game you’re not likely to win… long term, anyway.
The message from my blog post is that we must now build quality links slowly and sensibly and also realise that spammy links can kill our Google rankings. There’s no need for paranoia though.
Neil.
Hi,
Neil, you wrote:
>> I think it’s best to build social buzz links and blog comment (nofollowed) links a long time before anchor-text rich links. That’s what I did for my 3dtv website and it never saw the sandbox. <<
My question is: How long is a long time? 3 months?
Regarding quality content. I've read somewhere that Google likes to see at least 40% unique content on pages/posts. Any lower and you can get penalized fast. Any thoughts?
- Fredrik
Fredrick,
It depends on other factors… is the site all-original, quality content? How much content does it have? Does it have a diverse link profile? Does it have some “reference standard” links? On the other hand, how many anchor-text rich links will you build, and how quickly? Will you avoid a “Dr Andy spike”?
I’d say if you throw anchor-text rich links into the backlink profile after 6 months, at a low level, you’d be fine. The acceptable threshold will be site-specific, though.
As for your unique content question, if it’s a money site of mine, it’d be 100% unique, quality content.
Neil.
I guess this commentary just muddies the waters again for me. Is linkbuilding using SEO Link Robot, recommended by Dr.Andy, and his newsletter recommended by Neil going to create the negative results that Neil is talking about? Or following Shane’s Backlink Battle Plan 2.0, also recommended by Dr.Andy. Sounds credible but will the links stick? Or is this just another worthless exercise according to this discussion initiated by Neil.
Most of my sites, about 300 are not authority sites, not WP sites, about a year old or less. On one hand I want to get each of my sites to get to at least $1 day with adsense, so I’m adding a few articles, some unique, some re-written PLR. But this is leading nowhere in terms of results. So I’m looking at software, but that seems to be in question with this article too. I also read that Article Marketing Robot is bringing results, even though article marketing in general is in question. Finally, what about SYNND? Will a program like that be worth it? I understand relevancy, correct keywords, all that come into play, but if google is going to do as it pleases, where do we go from here?
Jake, Google has done “as it pleases” for many years. Until there’s a serious competitor, it will continue to do so.
Building automated links can only now be done as “background noise” in a very diverse link profile. Imagine you had a genuine, high quality site… where would the links to that site organically come from? Not from article directories and blog farms with perfect anchor text, right? You’d get social buzz, maybe press releases, blog comments recommending you, perhaps a few guest blog posts, etc, all with different anchor text, but related to your site’s topic. That’s what we need to concentrate on.
Neil.
Jake
I think the answer to a lot of this is link diversity. SEO Link Robot will give you that, but as with any tool, it can be used to build spammy links.
Shane’s Backlink Battleplan is also about link diversity, and is the best guide to building backlinks I have seen.
Is there an element of black hat to link building? Absolutely. As Neil pointed out, Google want links to be naturally acquired. Problem is, if you wait for others simply to link to you, you’ll wait a long time.
Google have pretty much caused the problem by using backlinks as a measure of “authority”, yet as soon as webmasters find out that links are the most important factor, everyone is naturally going to go out and build links.
My advise as I stated in my newsletter:
3 Qs.
Quality In, Quality On, Quality Out.
Quality In – In other words, get inbound links to your site on quality pages (ie good content with a link in the article rather than a resource box).
Quality On – make the content on your site the best it can be. If you get high bounce rates, top rankings wont last long anyway so your backlinking efforts are in vain anyway.
Quality Out – link out to quality sites with DOFOLLOW. You are part of a web of information. If you are an authority in your niche, then it’s natural to link to other authority sites in that niche.
Finally link diversity – get links from a wide range of sources and wide range of ip addresses.
Sometimes it’s very difficult to say what is and what isn’t with Google. They do go crazy sometimes, seriously. I have had sites that did nothing – no backlinks, no new content, but they got slapped after a while. And they still come back again, after a while, without doing anything to them. So, it does get difficult to say it’s because of certain links built or not. As Andy has rightly pointed out, some of his sites which also got the spammy links didn’t get affected.
So, indeed, Google is unpredictable, nowadays. Perhaps they are unpredictable for an intentional reason – so that IMers can’t predict it enough to game it. And to stay this unpredictable, lots of sites have to suffer, unfairly. I think it’s a price Google is willing to pay. We IMers who lose sites from rankings which had done nothing have to also be willing to pay the price.
Solution? Keep building sites, adding unique content and getting backlinks. Some will do badly, others won’t! Perhaps it’s now a numbers game. Hasn’t it always,
Hi John,
While I approve of your sentiment, I think Google have deliberately made it harder and harder to rank well with multiple sites. It’s generally accepted that Panda was aimed directly at low-quality content. Many webmasters are removing “thin” content pages (or using noindex on them) in the hopes of removing their Panda penalty. I think Dr Andy said that content that will rank best (all other factors being equal) will be original, unique, well-written, on-topic and contain everything the top ten results have and then something extra. That’s a massively high bar to reach for any webmaster, let alone doing it across multiple sites.
So, yes, having multiple sites would “protect” you from Google’s whims, but how can you create stellar content for multiple sites? I guess you could outsource it… but that’d only make sense for lucrative niches.
Neil.
John
The big difference between the one that got hit and the ones that didn’t was the scale of backlinks. The ones that didn’t probably had around 10 backlinks from each MU, and only 30 – 60 MU sites. The one that got hit had around 200 MU sites, with 20-25 backlinks from each MU.
Would someone be kind enough to give a definition of the term MU Site for me
Thank you in advance
As far as I know, it was WordPress’ Multi-User script… usually used by people who want to *run* a service like WordPress.com where people sign up at your site and blog using your service under their own username. I never used it, personally. See… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress
Thanks Neil
An example of using MU:
Suppose you are a gold fish fantatic. You setup MU on your server so that other people (as sad as yourself) can setup their own blogs in honour of the gold fish.
What’s in it for the webmaster who sets it up? Well they end up with a lot of content that they ultimately control (and can monetize).
p.s. hope I didn’t offend any gold fish lovers.
There seems to be some confusion between an ‘aged domain’ and an ‘aged site’. I have seven domain names, all three years old, that have never been used.
If I build sites for them, I’m guessing that they would be regarded by Google as new sites, and accordingly would not be given preferential rankings.
What say you, Neil?
Regards,
Anthony Harris
You’re right. An old domain lacking a website and content is useless in my opinion.
What you’re looking for, to benefit from aging, is an existing website with on-topic content. It’s thought that Google can tell that a website has “changed hands” from the domain ownership records, so it’s not guaranteed that they don’t reset the trust of a site when the ownership of an active website changes. Personally, I’ve rarely bought other websites, although I can see that getting a good, aged website could have significant benefits.
Neil.
Neil
My thoughts on this is as follows, if Google are capable of detecting a mass promotion of links back to a site using articles and link building campaigns then trying to do a launch for visibility is useless to get traction.
If you want to have visibility then as stated all links built and articles published should be over a period of time. Has anyone tested what the optimum link building tempo and article marketing distro rate is?
Also my thoughts are that people that offer .edu and gov link building services will soon get the destination site sandboxed as the historical link juice and good standing that these sites have will get reduced because of it.
So what does that leave you with? Either finding the time to do this as a day to day process which makes it slow especially if you are starting out or outsource it which can cost money which you don’t have.
I think we are all (again) discussing something that is and will always be beyond our control and knowledge. Judging by only observing rankings behaviour in one isolated case is a waste of time.
So far I have built nearly 100 sites in 10-12 niches, produced thousands of original content pages, hundreds of thousands of spun content, held various backlinking campaigns with 99% of QUALITY IM tools available nowadays in the market, etc…
I am now into 5 years of continuously doing all of the above so I may say that at least I have some experience….
And you know what? I don’t know NOTHING about how the system works behind. I really don’t want to know about “how the system works” because the moment when the system is “discovered” is the moment when there is no system anymore.
Besides, I recently got a newsletter from Linklicious where they described exactly the opposite experience with backlinking, so there really is nothing for me to waste time on analyzing if the glass is half-full or half-empty.
I take care of my readers, visitors, customers,… by providing quality content, opinions and ideas. I read and apply core Google webmasters guidelines…. and I adapt backlinking depending on the level of competition, but with no agressive noticing of search engine spiders about the backlinks. In fact, if I realize that there are already strong sites in the niche I am targeting, and that heavy content and backlinks amount is to be done, I rather move away from such challenge. Come on people, if you are late to the party, then let be it! Don’t think you can be better from the sites that Google is keeping for years on page #1. They are there for reason, either visible or not to you! Find your place under the Google’s sun and you WILL be rewarded with higher (or high!) rankings, and NO MATTER what you do with your backlinking – be it a good or bad one
In general, all on-site and off-site should be done if the long term relationship with both, search engines and people, is your primary objective. And there is nothing secret in it. Just don’t rush into keyword slots that are filled long long time ago…
Brad
I think you hit the nail on the head here… this is what Google rewards sites for… “I take care of my readers, visitors, customers,… by providing quality content, opinions and ideas.”
Neil.
Okay, the quality in ,on and out makes sense. I’ll concentrate on that before going to sleep. Ever thought about writing horror stories Neill?
But seriously, isn’t it a bit uncertain to state this after testing on only a couple of (new) sites? Why not test it on a competitors site then and really see if it works. Because if it does, Google will certainly do something about it. Hey, it might even change SEO dramatically and you’ll be the rock star!
Unfortunately, I don’t have time for testing stuff like this, I’d rather concentrate on constructing
Cheers,
Andy
I followed a black hat forum thread where a guy claimed to take down a competitor. I can’t verify what he did, naturally, but judging from the responses to the forum thread, many other black hatters agreed it was possible, although they mainly thought it would be a temporary penalty. That’s what I would’ve expected too.
Neil.
I have a foolish question: can a single blog post or a single page of a site be penalized by Google?
One of my posts high ranked in Google has recently disappeared from Google’s search engine results. Is it a penalty?
Hi Albert,
It used to be that penalties were site-wide and easy to spot. It does seem that Google can now implement page-specific and keyword-specific penalties. Although, why they would penalise a page and not throw out the whole website is a bit of a mystery to me. It could be that they’re not actually penalties, per se, but possibly the result of losing ranking for certain pages because the links *into* them were devalued.
Neil.