Google is in the process of a massive penalty sweep targeting many Private Blog Networks (PBNs) where they have been applying penalties and deindexing sites that are utilizing PBNs.
Private blog networks (PBN) get their name because they are generally controlled by a single person or company and are supposedly harder to trace. But with the demise of many link networks, more of these supposed “private” blog networks have popped up offering links from within these networks for sale – which people argue takes it from being a private network to a public one. But selling links also makes it much easier for Google to discover.
Unlike many other networks, they generally try and keep their feeder sites limited to only a set number of outgoing links and sites. This is one of the ways they tend to be harder to detect. They also use a variety of ways to keep the sites seemingly controlled by a variety of different people by using different registrars, hosting companies, TLDs (ie. they won’t be all .com but also include some .net, .org, and country specific TLDs), different WordPress themes, author profiles, AdSense accounts, ad networks and unique quality content.
With Google’s assault on many public link and blog networks, private ones have become more popular this year. But private blog networks being penalized isn’t new – but because they are controlled by one person or a small group of people, you don’t hear about it as often as when public blog networks or link networks get hit, when many different people are penalized. However, this time Google seems to have targeted many different private blog networks at once in a massive crackdown, which makes sense given their increased popularity.
How did Google discover the private blog networks? As we have seen with link networks who claim Google would never be able to find any footprints, it likely started with the investigation with one site that led to the unraveling of them all. But people are speculating on several things that could have been seen as footprints:
- Using CloudFlare to anonymize IP addresses across all the domains
- using the same registrar/hosting
- same domain registration info; blocking third-party link analysis tools (such as Ahrefs and Majestic)
- blocking third party link tools by using the same tool
- all use WordPress
- all use the identical set of WordPress plugins without variation
- powered by domains that have been purchased from auction sites
- powered by expired domains
- selling links within the PBN to any site, especially when they buy from multiple networks, not just “quality” ones
Then of course there is always the question of:
- using the same AdSense account
- using Gmail addresses for anything related to PBNs
- using the same Analytics account
- using the same Google Webmaster Tools account.
- sites people include in disavow files that aren’t supposed to have any impact on the sites included, but many wonder when that data will be used.
Many of the sites hit were NOT penalized with unnatural link penalties however, which is what the natural assumption would be for anything resembling a private blog network. They were hit with thin content penalties for having “thin content with little or no added value”. However, many people involved in PBNs say that the content was actually well written unique content, and nothing that should be hit with the thin content penalty.
Matt Cutts tweeted about it as well, referring to PBNs as a “blackhat SEO fad”.
Blackhat SEO fads: like walking into a dark alley, packed with used car salesmen, who won't show you their cars. http://t.co/pQEpSv5LIT
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) September 24, 2014
Will this be the last of PBNs? Of course not. Those who have been penalized are already rebuilding… but many likely won’t be so greedy to sell links without vetting them more carefully, as opposed to the “we will link to any crappy site” that many employ – and that puts it in danger.
Jennifer Slegg
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Andrew Shotland says
It’s hard to say no to easy money I guess, but the amount of effort I have seen put into some of these PBNs (e.g. 10,000+ sites) for the sole purpose of getting clients or self-owned sites ranked seems like a strange risk/reward strategy. It reminds me of the guy who was recently arrested for being one of the biggest pot dealers in the U.S. and had created this intricate system for not getting caught. It worked for 10 years or so and then one of the cogs in the system messed up and he got busted. All I could think of was if he had put that much energy into a legal start-up, today we would all be talking about his IPO.
Jennifer Slegg says
And often networks don’t think about how all it takes is a single person who gets penalized who will decide to give up everywhere they bought links from and detail what they know about the network in hopes of both “payback to the sites/network responsible for getting banned” and thinking if they give up networks that Google might grant them a pass to get their site back in…. like an SEO plea deal or something 🙂
Michael Martinez says
I have reviewed a number of the sites that received these “thin content” warnings. All but one of them were publishing vague, innocuous articles that basically said nothing of value. The one exception was borderline. These people have learned nothing from all their years of setting themselves up for failure.
99ProblemsButPBNdeindexingAintOne says
200+ PBN sites powering 10 of my money sites. 0 Penalized. But, I love reading everyone’s comments. Thanks for discouraging my competitors!
Jake says
99ProblemsButPBNdeindexingAintOne
Good, I am glad, but I sure hope you are diversifying your strategy because you WILL eventually get found out whether or not it is manual action or not.
I understand black hat opinion. You can build a white hat site only to see it blasted away in the next update. Black hat is easier to rank and much cheaper/les lime consuming. So I understand. But if you are using PBN’s as your main ranking strategy I advise you to diversify. To be a successful marketer, you should diversify. This has allowed me to make over 250k here in 2014. Sure I have owned PBN’s but I have since moved away from this strategy and moved to almost fully white hat.
Anon says
Google has an enormous artillery dedicated to fighting spam. You’ve not touched on some obvious methods, which include:
1. Outing from other SEO’s when they are offered networks, from which to buy backlinks.
2. Detecting linking patterns within shared hosting, even though network builders think they can obfuscate across dozens of shared hosts, in my experience, it’s fairly obvious where the spam sites are when doing a reverse search of an entire B-class of IP addresses, for example.
3. General site designs, and word counts on blog sites will have a footprint within themselves. Blog spam network builders run businesses, and will invest as little as possible into the splogs and spam sites. It’s fairly obvious when there is a pattern of 10 – 20 websites, all with very similar backlinks, and those websites all have 800 – 1200 words on them, or every blog post is 500 words long.
A spam network which has been build for your own purposes is likely the last of the few ways to build a few links safely. However, the cost associated with building decent websites that won’t be burnt taking your main domain with it far outweigh the cost associated with building some backlinks in a more organic matter. ie: Linkbait, viral marketing etc.
Gregory Smith says
Hello,
Great article. I have to agree with Michael Martinez. It’s sad that all these SEO’s and Webmasters haven’t learned anything, after all these years. Then again, this puts me ahead of the competition.
Greg Smith
Cesar says
Just was talking about this very same subject with one of my clients the other day. We both agree that Google most likely has a dedicated PBN detector division that just goes out and reads and filters what people are doing to keep there PBNs alive. I would imagine the most successful PBN networks are truly private, and I emphasize “private”..