May 29, 2012 at 3:13pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Last week, iAcquire found itself accused of purchasing links for clients. Google seemed convinced, banning iAcquire from its index. Now, iAcquire says that it will no longer purchase links for new clients and will phase out paid links for existing customers and campaigns. "In certain cases, we have allowed finanical compensation to develop links, not as our only tool but one of them," said Joe Griffin, cofounder and partner with iAcquire, when I spoke with him earlier today. "Effectively immediately, we've removed that tool from our toolset. We've issued a company-wide memo and told everyo [...]

iAcquire Banned From Google After Link Buying Allegations

May 24, 2012 at 9:03pm ET by Barry Schwartz

The search marketing agency, iAcquire, that was allegedly responsible for buying links for clients was just banned from Google's search results. iAcquire was cited as the agency behind Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation's link buy request emails. For more on that see our story named What Can We Learn From The Latest Brand To Be Called Out For Paid Links? A site command search for [site:www.iacquire.com] returns no results. Here is a screen shot: iAcquire's robots.txt file and source code has no signs of them manually requesting to be deindexed from Google. So this seems [...]

What Can We Learn From The Latest Brand To Be Called Out For Paid Links?

May 22, 2012 at 8:18pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Move over JC Penney. Another brand is getting attention over buying links, this time Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation. Today's news is less news and more a reminder of lessons that SEO companies, clients and publishers all need to keep in mind, to avoid trouble. Josh Davis drew attention to the DBCC situation in his post today, documenting how after receiving three link requests from the same person, he finally followed up, only to be pitched on placing a link from one of his articles to the DBCC site in return for $30 per month. What's Dun & Bradstreet -- the nearly 200 [...]

Did Google Drop 100+ Small Directories?

May 16, 2012 at 9:44am ET by Barry Schwartz

Yesterday I covered a WebmasterWorld thread where SEOs were complaining that Google has been removing tons of free web directories from their index. I conducted some random tests and did notice some of these free web directories not coming up in Google. Later in the day, Terry Van Horne began running larger tests on 500+ web directories and noticed as much as 16% or more are no longer showing up in Google. Based on his initial numbers, there are over a 100 web directories that are not indexed by Google. I do not know if these directories were ever listed in Google or removed recently d [...]

Google Sending Warnings About “Artificial” Or “Unnatural” Links

Apr 2, 2012 at 9:11am ET by Barry Schwartz

Have you recently gotten a warning from Google about having "artificial" or "unnatural" links pointing at your site? Google says this isn’t a fresh crackdown on link networks but rather a change from bad links being "silently distrusted" to being more vocal about this type of penalty. Warnings Issued Many people have reported getting messages from Google regarding link violations. If you scan the Google Webmaster Help forums, for instance, you will see many examples of these being posted. Here is how one reads: Dear site owner or webmaster of .... We've detected that some of your s [...]

Why A Diverse Link Profile Is More Critical Than Ever

Mar 27, 2012 at 11:37am ET by Julie Joyce

I really hate reading articles where people say "I told you so" or blast someone's techniques, but the recent crackdown and deindexing of blog networks is a great lesson in what can happen if you rely on any one method in link building. I know people who run these types of networks and I know people who use them, and I also really, really hate to see anything bad happen, regardless of what I think about the techniques used. For the record, I don't see networks as being any worse than a lot of other tactics, so I'm writing this to illustrate a point, not to judge in any way. We work with [...]

Google Eliminates Another Link Network, BuildMyRank.com – Just One Of Several?

Mar 26, 2012 at 9:16am ET by Barry Schwartz

The battle between Google and those trying to artificially manipulate its search results is an ongoing battle. Google on March 19th took down one of those blog/link networks named BuildMyRank.com. BuildMyRank.com confirmed Google has deindexed an "overwhelming majority" of their network as of March 19, 2012. The management of BuildMyRank.com has decided to immediately shut down their service and provide refunds to customers. BuildMyRank.com thought that Google would allow their network since they felt they provided "better quality service," which was a "bit different from other networks. [...]

Google Chrome’s Paid Link Penalty Now Lifted

Mar 16, 2012 at 9:37am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google has lifted the 60-day paid link penalty Google Chrome was given the first week of January. Now if you search for [chrome], [browser] or similar searches, the Google Chrome landing page will once again show up on the first page of the search results. Here is a picture showing the page ranking in position number for on Google: As you may remember, right after the New Years, Google was caught running a sponsored post campaign for Chrome. After a day or so, Google's Matt Cutts applied a link penalty to the Google Chrome landing page for 60 days. Now, about days later, Googl [...]

Intervention & Rehab Time: How To Break The Paid Link Habit

Jul 19, 2011 at 11:45am ET by Eric Enge

So you have finally made the decision to get off of the paid links crack and go straight. Do you go cold turkey? Do you take this in stages? There are great questions and the ones I will take on in today's post. There are two major reasons why you should make this switch, one of which is more obvious than the other: 1. The search engines are gunning for you. The paid link does not add value to their algorithm. Links are not useful as a ranking factor if they aren't freely given as true endorsements. They just aren't. So they want to discount them. The impact of this is that once yo [...]

Google’s Sending Webmaster Notifications About Bad Links Pointing At Their Sites

Jul 5, 2011 at 9:28am ET by Barry Schwartz

In January 2011, Google began sending out more webmaster tool spam notifications including notifications that your site has been penalized because of selling links. Now there are reports that Google is notifying webmasters that they have bad links pointing to their web site, as opposed to bad links on their web site pointing outwards. Here is a sample of the email notification from Google: Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.domain.com/, We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, look for [...]

What The Link Value Economy Hath Wrought

May 31, 2011 at 3:14pm ET by Julie Joyce

It's often said that paid links have created a false economy. As someone who has admittedly purchased links and contributed to that, I would definitely have to agree. I've caught loads of heck for buying links and there have been recent high-profile slaps for sites caught buying links, but what isn't often discussed is the role of the greedy webmaster in all of this. If webmasters didn't ask for money, we wouldn't buy links. If no one offered money though, webmasters wouldn't ask for it. It's the chicken or the egg, all over again. The recent Harvard porn links outing is just one of many [...]

90 Days Later, J.C. Penney Regains Its Google Rankings

May 23, 2011 at 4:18pm ET by Matt McGee

J.C. Penney appears to be back in Google's good graces after a 90-day penalty that removed the retailer from appearing prominently in Google's search results for both short- and long-tail phrases. The company has regained first- and second-page rankings on a number of terms that were mentioned in a New York Times exposé of Penney's search rankings and the tactics used to get them -- tactics that violated Google's guidelines. Two recent reports offer visual evidence of J.C. Penney's return to Google's good graces: First, SEO Clarity says it's been tracking more than 2,000 JCP- [...]

New York Times Continues Paid Link Outing Stories, Looks At Online Flowers Industry

May 9, 2011 at 3:06pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a story called Trying to Game Google on "Mother’s Day Flowers". Yet more big companies got outed for buying links, but this time, Google didn't say the links had helped. The story covers how top web sites that rank for search terms related to online flowers sales also appear to have purchased links. The names large brands such as Teleflora, FTD, 1800Flowers.com and ProFlowers as doing this. The reporter sent a list of 6,000 links (apparently paid links, though this isn't clear) that these companies acquired over a month's time to Google. G [...]

Another Company Outed for Paid Links: Sequoia-Backed Milanoo

Apr 29, 2011 at 7:55pm ET by Vanessa Fox

A story on TechCrunch today notes that a Sequoia-backed shopping site called Milanoo appears to be spamming Google with hoards of paid links that are helping them rank for things like [cheap dresses] and [evening gown]. They got news of the situation by way of a site called Digital Due Diligence that checked Milanoo's backlink profile and determined that "we couldn’t find a single inbound link that points to the page that isn’t spam or paid for". Sound familiar? This feels like deja vu except with the name J.C. Penney replaced with Milanoo. Both TechCrunch and Digital Due Diligence do [...]

Functionalism As A Link Building Approach

Apr 12, 2011 at 1:09pm ET by Julie Joyce

Functionalism is a concept that first intrigued me when I studied Anthropology in college, as I really responded to the idea that people do certain things for certain individual reasons that matter only to them, reasons that may seem crazy to outsiders, but that truly do make up a necessary part of someone's culture. It's one of those "not sure why I do this, but it works for me" kind of things. For example, I work from home a lot. I have peace and quiet and I get more done here than at the office. It's functional for me. It may irritate my staff, but hey, it works for me. Online market [...]

After Google Warning, Forbes Comes Oh So Close To Cleaning Up Its Paid Links

Feb 16, 2011 at 6:10pm ET by Matt McGee

What do you do if Google warns you about a violation of its paid links policy and you can't find any such links on your web site? If you're a small webmaster you might go to Google's Webmaster Help forums and ask for help. But if you're part of the website team at a major international publication, you might keep things in-house and deal with the problem quietly. Unless you're part of the Forbes.com website team, that is. As Barry Schwartz first posted on Search Engine Roundtable, Forbes.com's Denis Pinsky went to Google's Webmaster Help forum to share the letter that Google sent aft [...]

New York Times Exposes J.C. Penney Link Scheme That Causes Plummeting Rankings in Google

Feb 12, 2011 at 6:29pm ET by Vanessa Fox

Today, the New York Times published an article about a search engine optimization investigation of J.C. Penney. Perplexed by how well jcpenney.com did in unpaid (organic) search results for practically everything the retailer sold, they asked someone familiar with the world of search engine optimization (SEO) to look into it a bit more. The investigation found that thousands of seemingly unrelated web sites (many that seemed to contain only links) were linking to the J.C. Penney web site. And most of those links had really descriptive anchor text. It was almost like someone had arranged for [...]

Taking A Closer Look At Link Changes

Dec 21, 2010 at 9:47am ET by Julie Joyce

When you're trying to build as natural a backlink profile as possible, you need to carefully think about all the things that could make it look strange. If your typical link growth each month over the past 12 months has been 5 links, getting 100 will seem odd. Suddenly focusing on an incredibly bizarre long-tailed keyword in your anchor text may signal that you're using the links to up your rankings. We keep hearing about all the latest and greatest new way to build links, things we "must" do, but we don't always step back and consider what a natural link profile actually looks like as we t [...]

This Link Profile Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us

Aug 3, 2010 at 12:49pm ET by Julie Joyce

Look around for link building advice and one of the most common pieces is to re-engineer the backlink profile of your competitors. The reasoning behind this is that if they're ranking well (meaning above you, of course), they must be doing what Google likes, so why not copy it and see yourself shoot up in the rankings too? The problem behind this is that, once you seemingly equalize your link profiles, something else will be better somewhere. You'll see better titles, better site structure, more easily crawled code, and better content, so then what will you do? The simple fact is that a [...]

71 Technical Factors For Backlink Analysis (From 30 Link Building Experts) – Part 2

Mar 9, 2010 at 6:39pm ET by Garrett French

Welcome to part 2 of our 3-part group interview series on backlink profile analysis. Part 1 covered backlink analysis for link building campaign design. Part 2 covers the more technical aspects of analysis, and what elements that link building experts look at to gauge the overall strength of a backlink profile. 14 URL factors in backlink profile analysis The URLs of linking pages can tell you a great deal about a given site's backlink profile. The URLs themselves can shed some light too when evaluating the quality of a given link prospect. Some of the link builders interviewed didn't p [...]

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