Google has taken down yet another Polish link network… this time Prolink.pl was taken down over the weekend.

This penalty affects both publishers and advertisers through their link network.  Affected webmasters began receiving unnatural link notices through their Google Webmaster Tools account on the weekend.

Sebastian Miśniakiewicz from SEO Profi wrote a blog post detailing the link network and its penalty.  There is also the possibility that Prolink was also using a free template to gain links in the form of “by ___, keyword”.

Prolink has officially confirmed the penalty on their Facebook page and it affects both publishers and advertisers through their link network.  They are now suspending operations for all new links, however, all current links will continue, although publishers or advertisers can decide to pull them if they wish.

We confirm the information that both publishers and advertisers have received a penalty from Google for the use of the system ProLink.pl. In view of the situation to announce that today, 24 November, suspending operation of the system in order to analyze the problem. Suspension system means that all queued to buy links will be removed. Leave active user accounts, so all available actions in the accounts will be possible. A thorough analysis of the situation will allow us to modernize the system in order to adapt to these changes. The team Prolink.pl

There is also a lengthy thread on a Polish webmaster forum from people who were affected by the link network being banned.

Google also confirmed they penalized a Polish link network, although they didn’t name the network specifically.

Polish link networks have been hit previously, most recently in July, as part of their attempts to clean up international web spam over the past year.