Info Vilesilencer Directory Owners Forum and Free Directory List » Marketing Forums » Google

[YMC]

I admit that I had a bit of over-confidence that I would never receive a link removal request in the aftermath of Penguin. After all, I didn't allow overly spammy titles, edited most descriptions and did everything one is supposed to do to make a quality directory.

When I received a removal request yesterday, I was crushed. I saw it as the beginning of the end of my site. My site could survive traffic-wise without Google but if it was being identified as a bad neighborhood, well, let's just say, I was thinking about life without my favorite website.

After taking some time to ponder things, I emailed the requester back. In their email, they actually expressed concern about their site hurting mine, so I figured this was someone open to conversation. It turned out it was the overuse of a certain phrase in their backlink profile that Google had flagged. Upon reflection, and perhaps with a bit of time to calm down from the blow of receiving one of these notices from Google, they asked if I could simply change the title/link of their listing rather than remove it completely.

Reading their email was a slap to the forehead, duh stupid moment for me. I had completely forgotten about that aspect of Penguin.

So, long story short...if you are receiving link removal requests, you might want to take a quick look at the title of that listing. If it's something other than the site name or URL, you might try responding to their request with the offer to edit their listing instead.

[Dan]

This is brilliant advice.

People. Rather than link pruning you should be encouraging link adjusting.

Ignore SEOs wanting to "remove links", they have an agenda, and that agenda is to charge their clients money to remove links. What they are doing is cutting branches off the tree despite them being alive or dead, to save the tree. It is a ridiculous situation, because they are paranoid, they haven't identified the problem, and are simply waving a chainsaw at the problem.

A far better way to resolve the issue, particularly if people are receiving Google notices, is to understand that, those notices are there because of the anchor saturation.

Change the anchor, and you change the situation. Remember that anchors when done in a spammy or over-the-top way are "manipulation". An easy fix is to change anchors to brands or site names and to drop excessive or repetitive keywording in anchors... When I say excessive or repetitive, I dont just mean using the same keywords in the one anchor, I'm referring to the actual variation across the linking profile. If all your anchors in your linking profile are the same, then really, do you expect to not be penalised?

It's pretty simple when you think about it. It all comes back to moderation and balance, something we've been talking about now for a decade.

Link pruning is a scam. Don't engage in it.

Edit I've just received my first offer from a client to pay me to remove links from directories for them. I declined, based on the grounds that I do not believe in it. In their particular case, it isn't a possibility that the directories are the culprit and something else in their link building campaign must be causing the issue.

I won't take money and perpetuate something that is a lie. Link pruning in the way it is being conducted is completely wrong!

[Dan]

Some additional info: http://searchengineland.com/google-e...-ignore-128888

Google's managed to confuse themselves, along with the rest of us. Clear as mud yet?

[YMC]

I find it sad that my post here and on DP has led to only your two comments. I guess directory owners would rather discuss how to automate evaluating submissions or charging folks who are in panic mode because of this foolishness.

One of Google's blog posts on this nonsense had a paragraph that should worry all directory owners - particularly those who are charging to add or remove links right now...

In a few situations, we have heard about directories or blog networks that won't take links down. If a website tries to charge you to put links up and to take links down, feel free to let us know about that, either in your reconsideration request or by mentioning it on our webmaster forum or in a separate spam report. We have taken action on several such sites, because they often turn out to be doing link spamming themselves.

So, if I charge someone to add links to my site or charge them for my time when they have requested that I remove content from my site, Google is going to ASSUME that I am link spamming???!!!! I guess we're all supposed to be working for free for Google now? I've never charged for link removals but that should be MY decision, not Google's.

As was mentioned on the Google Blog post, what happens to those of us with contractual obligations to maintain links, listings, reviews, etc? If one party emails asking for their link to be removed, would that be tantamount to agreeing to release the other party of the original contract? This whole thing is just getting messier and messier and the brainiacs at Google continue to think everyone does everything to game their system rather than conduct normal business practices.

And, if Google decides to flag enough listings on my directory as part of a link spamming campaign, how long before my whole site gets penalized? How the heck am I supposed to know if a site obtained too many links with the same anchor text?

Whether they want to address it or not, I have little doubt that there are folks in highly competitive niches who are now aggressively engaging in negative SEO against competitors. From the comments I'm seeing, Google is ignoring those claims and simply expecting the victims to clean it up.

In the webmaster forums, I saw one fellow who claimed to have 27,000 new links to his site that someone else obtained and are now flagged. The webmaster said people are refusing to remove the links. He was told that to "prove" he attempted to have them removed he would have to forward Google copies of certified mail receipts. That's a hell of a lot of time and money just to prove to Google that they didn't generate the links themselves. And, at the end of the day, sending out that much expensive snail mail still doesn't make the distinction of who generated the links in the first place. If someone is actively campaigning against this fellow, how long before they just get another 27,000 spammy links?

Webmasters have no control over who links to them. Google has gotten that right for years. What have they been smoking lately to make them forget this?

All of this crap to protect a flawed page rank scoring system? People were exchanging business cards and referrals long before there was such a thing called the Internet. People link all the time to sites they like or think their visitors will like and it has nothing to do with SEO. Not every damn link on the web is about Google, PR and SEO.

What's the big deal here? If Google doesn't like a particular link, why not just ignore it? Simple as that. No drama. No extortion. No chaos.

[drwebs]

EDIT: wrong section/topic I posted in sorry

[Dan]

Originally Posted by YMC

So, if I charge someone to add links to my site or charge them for my time when they have requested that I remove content from my site, Google is going to ASSUME that I am link spamming???!!!! I guess we're all supposed to be working for free for Google now? I've never charged for link removals but that should be MY decision, not Google's.

This is why the words they use when communicating are so very important. Because how it is then interpreted, is how the entire community reacts.

There is a hell of a lot of websites, who technically "charge to add links". Google does it themselves with adsense/adwords. They charge money, to add sponsored links. The majority of the web, charges money for advertising-style links.

I don't think that's what they meant, it has to be taken in context, and they are referring to the whole "link removal" situation which is based around receiving a warning from Google.

So what they are saying is, if you have received a penalty, and one of the websites you believe is spammy, won't remove your link, let us know. Then Google will decide what action to take. Personally I think that just turns the whole exercise into pointing the finger, and makes it schoolyard tactics.

Google are trying again, to get themselves out of the quicksand by immersing their hands to pull their feet out. Now all that's visible is their head and it continues to babble.

They need to roll back the update, and stop warning people. It's ridiculous the panic they have caused when the new message comng from them is basically read the warning but you can pretty much ignore it in terms of doing anything.

As Danny Sullivan stated in the article. That's not going to placate people. They are still going to panic, especially if they are temporarily penalised (whether that's a few days, few weeks or a few months).

When websites goes offline for 5 minutes, it creates panic. So being penalised in Google rankings even for 5 minutes, causes panic. Why create the panic in the first place?

Google shouldn't be interacting with us in this way. I think it's wrong. They should say nothing. Put out a press release that they are tackling webspam, and discounting certain types of links.

The second they try and get "us" involved, they create a massive panic, and blog posts calling the end of everything from forums to directories to blogs.

As was mentioned on the Google Blog post, what happens to those of us with contractual obligations to maintain links, listings, reviews, etc? If one party emails asking for their link to be removed, would that be tantamount to agreeing to release the other party of the original contract? This whole thing is just getting messier and messier and the brainiacs at Google continue to think everyone does everything to game their system rather than conduct normal business practices.

There's a very fine line here. In one instance, you could view a rejected request for removal and then turning around and demanding a fee as extortion. There are companies, in Barry Schwartz post, that are basically saying "pay us $25 and we will remove your link from all our directories". That's bordering on that extortionate level.

The thing is, what if someone never paid you for the link. What if you decided their website suits your content and you naturally linked to them. That's supposed to be what the web, and Google in particular encouages.

If the person then comes to you wanting their link removed. They are removing a natural link. Do you remove them or not? It's almost like you are damned if you do and you are damned if you don't. Is Google now saying they can decide your content for you?

Are they saying "You can link to this person but not to that person?"

Are they saying "If someone asks you to remove something from your website you must do it?"

What happens if the person contacting you is a competitor asking to remove their competitions links. What if they aren't able to give you the information you need to identify themselves as the owner of the website you are linking to?

What if you tell them to get stuffed because they won't identify themselves, and they threaten to report you to Google for not removing their link if you don't comply?

What then? It's a lot of what ifs based on the Google claim, because what they've said can be interpreted so broadly, or in a very strict sense. If it is that very strict sense it would be fine. The problem with Google is they throw out broad-based penalties that hit everyone but the target.

So it is hard to trust that they will do the right thing. Chances are they will BUT that it will come with an unacceptable amount of collateral damage.

And, if Google decides to flag enough listings on my directory as part of a link spamming campaign, how long before my whole site gets penalized? How the heck am I supposed to know if a site obtained too many links with the same anchor text?

This is where the domino effect comes into play. If you get penalised because of this silly situation, then a site like Info Vilesilencer is bound to because, by our very nature, linking to directories who are enduring a salem witch hunt is going to mean we are linking to a range of penalised sites.

Then, what happens to everyone linking to us? We have 2 million+ in-bound links. Is this a 6 degrees of separation thing where everyone on the web, who is within 6 links of your website will get banned/penalised? Will there be any websites left to look at?

Google are creating panic. This is exactly the sort of panic they are seemingly wanting to douse, but they are dousing it with petrol.

Whether they want to address it or not, I have little doubt that there are folks in highly competitive niches who are now aggressively engaging in negative SEO against competitors. From the comments I'm seeing, Google is ignoring those claims and simply expecting the victims to clean it up.

AND... You can consider people who have spammed, by engaging in poor submission technique (the anchor saturation you spoke of) who have been penalised, to lash out and punish the places they obtained the links from. Including the submission services they used, any directories involved, any blogs involved, any forums with link anchors via signatures...

Again, it's a situation with a domino effect. If you get red flagged by 20 people and have 10,000 listings, is that a big enough number for Google to say, well... we've received a number of requests regarding that directory, we can't ignore that we must penalise them.

Are Google *really* going to investigate? If they could investigate wouldn't they just do that all the time and manually clean up their results instead of bothering with an algorithm that makes massive mistakes?

If they could human edit 10 billion pages wouldn't they just do that all the time?

In the webmaster forums, I saw one fellow who claimed to have 27,000 new links to his site that someone else obtained and are now flagged. The webmaster said people are refusing to remove the links. He was told that to "prove" he attempted to have them removed he would have to forward Google copies of certified mail receipts. That's a hell of a lot of time and money just to prove to Google that they didn't generate the links themselves. And, at the end of the day, sending out that much expensive snail mail still doesn't make the distinction of who generated the links in the first place. If someone is actively campaigning against this fellow, how long before they just get another 27,000 spammy links?

[one perspective]: If they even obtained one of those links themselves, does someone having proof of that mean the person is lying? How many does it take to prove they are lying?

[another perspective]: If they are being negatively SEO-d, how much proof does Google need? Are the places they have been negatively SEO-d at immediately penalised or does investigation take place?

[third perspective]: Are we expected to check WMT everyday and audit our links? Does Google realise that I would literally spend 24 hours a day every day for about 2 years just to audit the links I currently do have. The vast majority (like 98% of which) I never added myself, and have absolutely no control over, and have no intention of having any control over???

What about businesses who don't even use WMT? Who don't even know it exists? Who don't even know about Google penalties, and who now find themselves banned because someone decides to negatively SEO them to take them out of the game?

What then? How would they know how to get out of penalty if they don't even know what WMT is, or that Google can and does penalise individual websites based on who links to them?

Webmasters have no control over who links to them. Google has gotten that right for years. What have they been smoking lately to make them forget this?

They must have someone in control of this situation who doesn't understand linking. They really must. It's the only way it could happen.

The panic, and confusion and the range of ways this could go (based on my ponderings above) is the reason why you would avoid giving people the power in the first place. The second Google penalises for who links TO YOU, is the second that negative SEO suddenly has a big big market.

If people are offering services where a company can take out all its competition for a few hundred or thousand. Why wouldn't that company take advantage? Companies are, by their very nature, not above those tactics. They are in business to make money, and to beat their competition. Heck, they will probably use that very excuse if they are caught... It's not personal, it is just business

All of this crap to protect a flawed page rank scoring system? People were exchanging business cards and referrals long before there was such a thing called the Internet. People link all the time to sites they like or think their visitors will like and it has nothing to do with SEO. Not every damn link on the web is about Google, PR and SEO.

And linking, is the webs way of networking. If I meet you on a golf course and we exchange business cards, we are probably going to do business together.

Before all this nonsense (yes the pagerank nonsense) I would've linked to you from my website too. I've met you personally on the golf course, we've spoken business, our websites and industries are related and I want to link to you and refer business.

Nope. Can't do that. You're gaming pagerank... That's how ridiculous it all is.

Yes people ARE gaming pagerank, but its because its a stupid number that Google allowed people to try and obtain. Get rid of that number and so many problems go away. Pagerank is ridiculous. I get why it was important for Google initially. But it has served its dubious purpose, and it needs to go.

What's the big deal here? If Google doesn't like a particular link, why not just ignore it? Simple as that. No drama. No extortion. No chaos.

That's what, practically everyone, agrees on. SEOs, directory owners, blog owners, business owners, all agree that if a link is considered dangerous/spammy/crap, by Google, then why doesn't Google discount it?

Because what you consider a spam link, and what I consider a spam link, could be 2 totally different things, so why give us both a voice? If 10 of us were given a list of 100 links and asked to find the 20 bad ones, and we all came back with a different list (with some overlap) would Google even bother to look at the ones we didn't agree on?

This current situation just creates an endless list of questions...

But one thing does remain certain...

DO NOT PANIC!

[Dan]

more info: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/p...l-truth/46936/

My takeaway from that is that directories will still be prevalent (the good ones), if they conduct good anchor technique.

People often ask what represents a good site title.

Brand Brand Region
Brand Keyword Region
Brand Brand Keyword Keyword
Site Name Keyword Keyword

Are just some examples. Where brand/site-name are interchangeable.

"Free Directory List" is a bad site title for Info Vilesilencer. It's generic. It leads one to think that we are the only list. The same as "Search Engine" would be a poor anchor/title for Google.

A better anchor is "Info Vilesilencer Directory List", "Info Vilesilencer Free Directory List", "Info Vilesilencer Free Web Directories" or even just the brand/site-name itself "Info Vilesilencer".

Post-Penguin, I found that I was lagging in the results for "Free Directory List". I haven't targeted or built links in over 5 years so this change bothered me (from the perspective of... if I haven't built any links why am I suddenly floundering on an update that targets link building). What I noticed was that I had two generic anchors on two directory forums in my signature... i.e. I had ~2000 IBLs from 2 sources with the same generic anchor "free directory list".

So what I did to change that situation is I kept the actual signature text the same, but I switched the anchor from the "free directory list" part of the text to "Info Vilesilencer", effectively swapping "keyword keyword keyword" for "brand brand". I probably could've done "brand brand keyword keyword keyword" for the anchors, but I really don't care about the anchor on those forums, it's about traffic/clicks not SE manipulation.

I feel like if I write an informative post, people are going to visit my website. I don't consider forum links to be useful at all for SE purposes.

So I was absolutely happy to do it. Did it change anything? Absolutely. Within a couple of weeks the term was no longer lagging on the second page, and was back on the 1st page somewhere in the middle.

I'm not interested in making the term #1, it used to be, but like I said I don't bother targeting terms. The site naturally attracts so many links it's pointless for me to build them. I'd rather concentrate on the content and helping people as that is why the site exists. It's not here to rank brilliantly in the search engines and then offer nothing at the end of the day (like so many sites seem to do that focus on SERPs manipulation).

If we are talking about region-based websites then if you are a plumber in Sydney called Fixaloo.

"Fixaloo Plumbers Sydney", "Fixaloo Plumbing Sydney Australia", "Fixaloo Plumbing and Drainage in Sydney" etc are going to be the better end of the title stick

I believe that's what SEJ is trying to get at here. That many links obtained in people's profile's just go for the "money" without qualifying it.

I would suggest to anyone who has a mix of generic titles, brand titles and brand-hycrid titles, to fix the generic ones.

For directory owners, this means simply adjust your generic titles to include the site-name and or brand. If this makes the titles lengthier, then dump a keyword or 2 from the title to ensure it stays within guidelines/standards.

This is a far more pro-active way of complying with Google's current post-penguin panic. You would basically be taking any problems they had with your site and getting rid of them, it also makes your content a lot cleaner and more uniform.

It's a very similar thing to descriptions. It isn't good to have descriptions that have a range of perspectives. They should all be from the same perspective.

Info Vilesilencer uses 1 site title type. The name of the site via it's URL.

Info Vilesilencer uses 1 description perspective. 3rd party non-promotional.

By doing this we create uniform content. I believe others should do the same. You can still engage in the Brand-Hybrid style (it's a good one) that SEJ suggests, but if you do it once, do it all the time.

[YMC]

A lot to talk about but for now, I'll just mention one thing...the anchor text and brands. The company that I was involved with was promoting one of their brand lines. The link went to an entire section of their site, not just a page. The keyword phrase was 3 words long. It had one word that was different from their company name. A non-related example would be a company named Cedar Dog Houses selling a line of Cedar Play Houses.

A flaw in this keyword vs anchor text issue is when the company name includes a keyword phrase. Using another fictitious example...

The name of Mary's business is "Wedding Photography of Seattle". The name of her business includes two keyword phrases. How is an algorithm going to differentiate between a business actually named with what happens to be their keywords and some spammer targeting those keywords? If Mary has been in business for 30 years (pre-dating the web), one could obviously determine her company name choice had zero, zip, nada to do with Google and SEO. However, if Mary has been in business for only 5 years, do we automatically assume her name choice was done purely to 'game' Google?

Is it truly link spamming if your business name/product name is what folks search for?

I keep hoping that as more folks keep asking the obvious questions that Google will have to put the concept of backlinks damaging a site back into the Genie's Bottle and permanently bury it.

[Dan]

The algorithm won't be able to determine that, and that is where the generic branding is going to get people penalised.

Google has said less than 20,000 domains are affected, it's funny that there is mass hysteria across the web then, if only 20,000 sites are affected by their link penalising fiasco.

Your point is well made Michele, and I suspect this is where "hand editing" by Google comes into play. You would probably have to show them that you don't deserve to be penalised.

The thing about Mary's site is:
1. What if she isn't even on Google WMT. She won't know she is being penalised for Penguin.
2. What if she has no idea what Penguin is (probably true of 99.9% of people)
3. What if she doesn't regularly check to see if her page ranks well in Google.
.
.
.

the list of questions really could be endless.

I don't believe that building links should be something that Google concentrates on nailing so, I can't answer your question about "is it truly link spamming", because I don't believe in what Google is doing at all. I think it is ridiculous. It's the dumbest idea to come out of Google's webspam team.

The fact that it is run by Matt Cutts, who would surely know better, dumbfounds me. He must've had a brain fart on his treadmill or something... He would've known this is the wrong thing to do. A 5 second chat to Danny Sullivan prior to releasing it would've given him all the answers he needs.

It woulda gone something like this...

Matt: Danny, mate! Bout to release a new webspam update, we are calling it Penguin, it's mega cool (black and white like panda's !!!!). What we are gonna do is target people building links, whaddya think?

Danny: I think you've lost the plot and it will be the worst idea your company has ever released. It'll cause widespread panic across the web from SEOs all the way down to mom-and-pop websites. You are basically going to destroy the web in one fell swoop.

Matt: Cool, I did think of it whilst I was out of breath on the treadmill, I'll rethink the entire idea now.

Heh, and that would've been the end of that.

It's the webspam teams fault, and that team is headed by Matt Cutts. Fire your questions at him. Get him to answer them. Write a blog about how he responds and what he gives away, and what he doesn't. This is the nature of the web, dissecting every little thing to the nth degree!!!

Then when he rolls it back after all the complaints we can have a good laugh about all the people who took down thousands of good links because Google said they should but changed their mind

[YMC]

I'm not sure I believe the 20,000 sites number anyway. Considering how many blog, forum and other posts I've seen from people who have received these notices, it seems impossible that so few people are involved.

Crafty Tips has just under 1,000 listings. As far as I know, only one of my folks has been targeted. Taking Netcraft's estimate that there are in the neighborhood of 366,848,493 sites (as of December 2011) and using my numbers of 0.001% sites being notified of a problem by Google...that would indicate perhaps more like 366,848 sites have been targeted.

And, considering that so few of my site owners are probably using Webmaster Tools, much less heard of them, even 366K would seem quite low.

I'd love to know where this mysterious 20,000 sites list originated from. Were they sites reported by their competitors somehow? I know of at least one craft site who submitted to every directory they could find with the same keyword phrase and it was not the firm who was targeted in this case.

I'd be curious to know if they sent similar notices to the major manufacturers...how many links does Google have to the Nike site for "running shoes" or to any car company for "hybrid" or to Whirlpool for "dishwasher"? Can you just see those companies contacting Joe Schmuck blog owner asking them not to link to their product pages. Yeah, sure, right, that's gonna happen.

What I have found very disappointing and worrisome about this conversation both here and on DP is the lack of interest by my fellow directory owners. They seem more concerned about charging the victims of this fiasco rather than figuring out how to protect themselves in the bigger scheme of things. Sure, they can make a few bucks today off of the poor sods who either through their own mistake or a shady SEO/submission service got caught in this. But, are they actually considering how all of this will impact their own sites? From where I sit, the answer is sadly a resounding NO.