Google Penalizes Italian & Spanish Link Networks

As promised, Google has taken manual action to penalize link networks in Italy and Spain.

It was just four days ago that Google warned webmasters in those two countries about its rules on paid links and willingness to take action against websites that violate those rules.

The penalties were announced separately on Friday by Google employees outside the U.S., and later retweeted by Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team.

First up was Giacomo Gnecchi, a member of Google’s search quality team based in Dublin, who tweeted the news (in Italian) about the Italian link network penalty:

Abbiamo intrapreso un’azione di rilievo su siti/blog con link a pagamento che passano PR e relativi buyer Italiani https://t.co/A10M4FwO16

— Giacomo Gnecchi (@giacomognecchi) March 14, 2014

The Babelfish.com translation of that seems to me to be a little stronger than what Google Translate offers. Here’s what Babelfish says:

We have undertaken significant action on websites/blogs with paid links that pass PR and its Italian buyers.

Next up was Javier Perez, another Dublin-based Googler, who tweeted in Spanish about the penalty that hit a Spanish link network:

Hoy hemos tomado acción n blogs n castellano qu contienen enlaces d pago pasando PR y en los respectivos compradores- https://t.co/XZxKagJMip

— Javier Perez (@JavierTweeting) March 14, 2014

Neither Google nor Babelfish gives a great word-for-word translation, but here’s what Babelfish says:

Today we have taken action n blogs n castellano qu contain links d payment through PR and respective buyers.

Late Friday, Cutts offered his own translation of the overall message of both tweets:

(Translation: we’ve taken action on Spanish and Italian link networks that violate our quality guidelines.)

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) March 14, 2014

These are just the latest two in a series of actions that Google has been taking worldwide against sites that it says are violating its guidelines about paid links. You can see more of those from our archives in the Related Entries links below.

It may not be another link network getting penalized next. At our SMX West conference on Thursday, Cutts warned that a “well known guest blog network” will be penalized next week.