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Ann Smarty of MyBlogGuest Responds To Google Penalty

MyBlogGuest

Matt Cutts broke the news via Twitter early this morning that Google’s webspam team had penalized a “large guest blog network.”

Matt did not identify the blog network, and at the time of this writing hasn’t publicly said anything further.

Ann Smarty of MyBlogGuest later confirmed on Twitter that it was her site that received the penalty:

Ann Smarty’s Response to Google’s Action Against MyBlogGuest

Despite having a speaking engagement at Pubcon New Orleans today, Ann managed to find the time to provide a comment to Search Engine Journal:

Yes, we realize and recognize the problem of many people abusing our community. We have invested lots of effort in educating our community members on how to do guest blogging right. We have been fighting paid links, duplicate content issues, link farms, etc for years. We have had some awesome success stories from our members and we have always believed in adding value to the web.

Have we deserved the “hit” (now I know what that means lol!)? I’ll let the community decide. So far we’ve had some amazing support from the community which I could not be more thankful for!

The reality is, Matt Cutts is using us for the PR game: To get more people scared. We are the hugest guest blogging brand out there: He could not have got more publicity by hitting anyone else.

The future? I’ll be honest. I am not sure yet. I am a human being and as much as I believe in doing the “right thing”, I am getting tired of all that publicity. We’ll re-brand out of “guest blogging” niche in the near future (we’ve been working on more functionality for a few months now and we have lots of features allowing to connect to influencers already in place now). We’ll keep supporting and helping our community members and advocates as much as we can.

We have some great technology and we’ve build the most awesome team in the world. I’ll fight for them and you’ll hear more from us in the near future!

The internet marketing community was quick to respond. While some seemed to think a ban was “inevitable”, sentiment currently seems to be trending in support of MyBlogGuest, some using the hashtag #isupportmyblogguest.

Ann continues stand by MyBlogGuest’s linking policy, stating via Twitter that even in light of this penalty, MyBlogGuest will continue to not use “nofollow” tags.

I’d love to hear what SEJ readers think about all of this. Do you think MyBlogGuest.com deserves to be penalized (apparently) because some of the members use it for purposes that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines?

 

Featured Image Credit: Screenshot taken March 2014

Category SEO
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SEJ STAFF Matt G. Southern Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal

Matt G. Southern, Senior News Writer, has been with Search Engine Journal since 2013. With a bachelor’s degree in communications, ...

Ann Smarty of MyBlogGuest Responds To Google Penalty

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