Google’s Matt Cutts has responded to a Google Groups discussion on the Google -60 penalty, which sometimes can set a site back in Google 60 placements due to bad linking, saying that such questionable tactics like paid links in various templates can indeed negatively influence a site’s rankings, especially when those links are identified and Google takes away that juice, which could be seen as a penalty.
Note : Matt did not single out the -60 penalty, but the discussion is centered around various Google penalties associated with bad linking.
ShyBoy, have you been collecting backlinks in any unusual ways? It looks like you may have, and I would pay special attention to that. For example, if you had been attempting to get PageRank via paid links on various templates, then when that PageRank stops flowing (e.g. if Google improves its detection in various ways), the fact that you have less PageRank can also mean that a site won’t rank as well.
If that applies to you, my advice would be to pay special attention to that issue, in addition to the other good advice you’ve already gotten.
For this specific example the site being penalized bought a sponsorship link on a blog template which is being used for various styles of porno spam blogs.
Sometimes sponsoring a template which is relevant to your industry or only used by bloggers you trust makes sense, but when you sponsor a link on a template and then throw it out there for anyone to use, and that anyone is spamming sites, blogs, Google and whoever else they can with porn content and a template attributed back to you … that is not good and seriously, you may even deserve a penalty.
One question is, are all minus X penalties associated with bad linking? Barry at Search Engine Roundtable has a poll (with a funny yet fitting wallpaper) on this running. Please take the time to lend your opinion.
If you’ve been hit with such a penalty (or have had your value taken away from such links), look at the linking you’ve done which is irrelevant, spam related or obviously counter productive to building the authority of your website, delete these links, then redeem yourself to Google with a reconsideration request.
Comments
11 responses so far ↓
Barry Schwartz on Feb 25, 2008 at 9:05 am
Thanks for linking to the poll, hope it get’s some traction.
DazzlinDonna on Feb 25, 2008 at 9:19 am
IMO, matt is saying:
he didn’t get hit by a penalty, he only got affected by the loss of pr flow from sites that got their pr taken away (residual affect).
*if* a -60 penalty exists, then this guy probably doesn’t have it, so any theories that his purchase of theme links caused it, are probably wrong, and i believe that’s what matt is pointing out.
so…it might be best to NOT tell people that purchasing theme links will penalize them, but rather they may lose whatever benefit they got from them, when the sites those links are on lose their own PR.
(note: if purchasing theme links could hurt you, we could all just purchase them for our competitors, now couldn’t we?)
berto_s on Feb 25, 2008 at 9:23 am
On Google specifically, how many people need to report paid links before a site takes a penalty?
Loren Baker, Editor on Feb 25, 2008 at 9:24 am
Good point Donna, I think I’ll reword some of that post :)
Loren Baker, Editor on Feb 25, 2008 at 9:29 am
If anything, looking at the backlinks that Barry and Matt pointed to (I just can’t bear to link to them from this blog), this story is great exxxposue of the negative results of distributing free templates, no?
OK, about to head to the airport, perhaps the conversation will continue in Santa Clara :)
Loren Baker, Editor on Feb 25, 2008 at 9:30 am
@ Barry, of course! I was going to embed the poll too, but thought better just to direct the readers to the source. OT, Did you notice if PollDaddy works in RSS readers?
shyboy on Feb 25, 2008 at 3:14 pm
As the owner of the site, I have to say without a doubt that sponsoring themes is the worst thing you can do to a site you care about. Thinking about it now, I just can’t believe I did it to my site. Especially after all the hard work we put in to get it the way we want it. In all honesty, I had no idea that it was wrong. I suppose the fact that so many of my competitors are doing it, recommendations from ’seo’ experts etc has convinced me it was an ok thing to do. Seeing the list that Matt showed me of the porn sites pointing to ours was a shock. I literally had no idea and in a way it detracts from the image we wanted to create for the site. Pure naivety (stupidity?) prevented me from figuring out that if anyone can download the themes, it’s very likely that a substantial percentage of those will be porn. After all, it would not be common for a porn site to point at a furniture site normally.
jonson roth on Feb 25, 2008 at 11:27 pm
How can you “deserve” a penalty because someone else is a prick? That makes no sense. If you give away a theme, you have no control over how it’s used.
Cedano on Feb 26, 2008 at 12:20 pm
@jonson roth: I agree with you, google can´t (could not) give you a penalty for something like that, if that happen, so what next? you will be penalized for give free tools?
That make no sense.
Jaan Kanellis on Feb 28, 2008 at 8:19 am
Anytime I see a “woe is me, my rankings are gone” post. I usually can find the problem in the back links. That should be a lesson to most. Look through your back links first and see what you did wrong there before complaining about ranking drops.
Tworzenie Stron on Mar 4, 2008 at 3:33 am
Placed links in catalogs (f.e. qlweb) is good or wrong? I have many links in qlweb but i think they do nothing….
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