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Google Squashes Backlinks.com, Another Link Network Outed By Google’s Matt Cutts

Barry Schwartz on December 16, 2013 at 9:15 am

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, announced on Twitter that Google has gone after another link network, this one is named Backlinks.com.

Like with Anglo Rank, the link network Google outed the week prior, Matt Cutts took a line from their marketing material and then said “Au contraire!” This is the way Matt Cutts tells the SEO industry that Google is actively going after link networks and to stop participating in them.

Here is Matt’s tweet about Backlinks.com:

“Our installation code/software used to publish the sold links is not detectable by the search engine bots.” Au contraire!
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) December 13, 2013

Here is the tweet the week before on Anglo Rank:

“There are absolutely NO footprints linking the websites together” Oh, Anglo Rank.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) December 6, 2013

Will there be a tweet late on Friday this week about another link network?

Anglo Rank Rebuilding?

I reported at Search Engine Roundtable that the owner of Anglo Rank, the link network Google penalized the week before, has decided to rebuild the network and start again. I said that this is how black hats operate, they build sites that they expect will get penalized and then do it all over again after the penalty. Is it recommended? No, you can’t build a long term business around this cat and mouse game. But some like to live life on the edge.

Over the past year or so, Google has been going after link networks at greater speeds. Here are some of the reports we have on those stories over a year or so:

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.