Google's 950 Penalty

[CaptainJSparrow]

Does anyone here know if google actually has a 950 penalty and, if so, do you know of a tool to check to see if your site has been penalized with it? Also, same question regarding the 30 penalty?

[Bill]

I don't really believe in it.

Notwithstanding the fact that I've got pages suffering from it, ha ha.

Never heard of a tool to test for it.

[Jim]

Greenie is a believer :)
This tip and trick was given to me in January
http://www.greenguysboard.com/newsletter/newsletter387.html

[DangerDave]

Another bullshit theory...

Unproven... unprovable... and another waste so time..


DD

[Halfdeck]

Just avoid triggering the MSSA (My Site Sucks Ass and Google Just Found Out) penalty.

[CaptainJSparrow]

Thanks Jim.

[DangerDave]

Googles "No Brain" Penalty
by DangerDave


Webmasters have discovered a new Google filter that Google uses to downrank web sites in its result pages. Has this filter been applied to your web site? How can you avoid that Google applies that filter to your site?

What is Google's No Brain filter?
The No Brain filter is a penalty that Google applies to web sites that are run by webmasters with no brains. If Google applies the penalty to a web site, the rankings of that site are downgraded by 9875.354 positions.

Many webmasters reported that they had top rankings on Google and now they cannot get beyond position -485.12 in Google. Some webmasters even have #5854.54 rankings for all of their keywords on Google.

Why does Google apply the No Brain filter to some web sites?
It seems that Google applies the No Brain filter to web sites whose webmasters hang out on WebmasterWorld too much talking about bullshit theories that can never be proven or unproven. It seems that following the current theory-of-the-month triggers the No Brain filter on Google:


-30 penalty
If the webmasters age is below thirty google penalises the site for being run by an immature nincompoop.

-950 penalty
If a site was ranked at any number and is now ranked at any other lower number then webmasters can say that this penalty has been applied without showing any reason, argument, proof or supprt.

Standing on left leg penalty
If the webmaster of a site in the northern hemisphere stands on one leg and then falls to the right , then this penalty is applied. Of course the opposite is true for webmasters in the southern hemisphere.(Though this could change due to global wamring.)

Pull a rabbit out of my arse penalty
If a webmaster(wether standing on one leg or two) can pull a rabbit out of their arse, and the rabbit comes out clean, then no penalty applies. If the rabbit comes out stained, skidmarked or suffocated, the webmaster and their site suffers the RSPCA penalty.( also known as the dog penalty) In this case Google delivers savage dogs via UPS to the webmasters home and they are torn limb from limb.(Webmasters must also pay the return postage for the savage dogs)


First of all, you should remove the spam elements from your web site - because if you don't you are a fucking spammer and you will die a horrible death. If you use JavaScript redirects or doorway pages, then you are a redirecting lame-arse spammer and you deserve everything you get

The NO Brain filter seems to be an automated filter. If you remove the spam factors from your site then you'll probably turn your site into something that may actually be of value to the surfer and therefore you may get your rankings back after some time. You can also send a I am a spamming cunt and I want to be forgiven (http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006222.html) request to Google.

If nothing helps, then the only way to get reincluded in Google is to stand on one leg, pull a rabbit out of your arse, face mecca, and state three times in a lound voice "George Bush is the smartest man in the world"(or you could just get a new domain name to start spamming with)

Google doesn't like spammers. If you want lasting results then you should focus on NOT BEING A FUCKING SPAMMER!




Jim, you could include this in the next newletter, as it contains the same amount of factual information as this article (http://www.greenguysboard.com/newsletter/newsletter387.html) did..


DD

[Bill]

Dave, it's easy to say that kind of thing (and the "Pulling Rabbit From Arse" penalty is pretty funny), but pretty much by definition 98% of adult sites are spammy.

I don't doubt that most adult sites, with their reliance of reciprocal linking, inherently heavy keyword loading, and multiple pages any one of which is inherently indistinguisable from so-called doorway pages, are likely to get some kind of knocked-back penalty applied automatically by the algos.

To say the knock-back is 30 positions or 950 positions is probably bullshit - to think that there's a knockback probably has some truth to it.

But, ultimately, we are still left with the problem that adult sites are inherently spammy - they exist to acheive a commercial goal, not to provide commercial free information, which is what google prefers and rewards.

[Halfdeck]

First of all, you should remove the spam elements from your web site - because if you don't you are a fucking spammer

Yeah but if you got no brains you wouldn't even know you're spamming.

[Cleo]

Personally I'm just trying to get this fucking rabbit unstuck from my arse.

[oldbrad]

Dame, i gotta wait 21/2 years to get better results :(

[Ms Naughty]

Here's the thing.

Since January one of my sites has been consistently listed on the very last page of results for one particular search term. Previously this site was in the top 10 for that term.

I've been going through my site, trying to make sure there are no spammy elements to it, and I'm fairly certain it's clean. It was pretty clean to begin with.

Still, there I am, stuck on page 9 (and sometimes booted off into the omitted results). It doesn't matter what I do, I'm still there. It's maddening.

What's more, I'm in the company of several other well known GG&J webmasters, people who I know aren't spammers. Greenie's site was there with me for a while.

This thread http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3215939.htm (yes, it's at Webmaster world, bear with me) shows a lot of other sites who have had the same thing happen, and they're not spammy sites.

Google gives no clue as to why this might have happened. I've done a bit of reading and I'm still in the dark.

I think I'm going to have to try a reinclusion request.

I guess this post is just a whinge on my part. I do my best to make clean, non-spammy sites that users will like, just like Google says we should. And then shit like this happens and I'm left wondering what the hell I did wrong. It's very, very frustrating.

[Bill]

I think I'm going to have to try a reinclusion request.

Well, a reinclusion request definitely won't help.

From everything you've said, you are clearly already included in the database.

Otherwise, it sounds pretty classic. A lot of people have experienced what you are experiencing.

As for what you can do about it, well, that's just not easy to say with any certainty.

I'm sure we would all have our theories about what to do, but there's no guarantee any of them would work.

[CaptainJSparrow]

[CaptainJSparrow]

I'm pretty sure that the penalty is real. Whether you call it a 950 penalty or something else, it's pretty easy to check for. To do that, follow these steps:
1) go to http://google.com
2) click on "Advanced Search" ... this is to the right in small text
3) type in the search term (the keyword phrase that you're targetting) in the first field of the "Find Results" area that says "with all of the words"
4) change the "drop down" to the right to "100 results"
5) click the button labeled "Google Search"
6) scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the #10
7) click on the link that says "repeat the search with the omitted results included." ...note, you should really do everything without this step first and then do it if you don't find your site/page
8) use your web browser's "find" or "find in this page" capability to search for your domain name
9) if you're not on page 10 then go to page 9, etc until you find your domain

I've heard from folks that it's not too difficult to get your site (so far the penalty appears to just be a page by page penalty as opposed to penalizing a whole website) unpenalized for this particular penalty. I'm hoping that folks won't turn this into a lynch mob and see other familiar sites with this penalty and immediately assume they're a "bad neighborhood."

One of the things that I'm guilty of, and have some pages that have gotten penalized for, is hyperlinking in link trades to too many different sites using the same keyword phrase on the same page...ie linking to too many sites from my amateur page using the phrase "amateur sex" to link to each one. To fix this, I'm just changing the anchor text in the links to differentiate each one a bit.

What other thoughts do ya'll have regarding this?

[spacemanspiff]

I don't know if there's a 950 penalty or a rectal rabbit penalty, but there's definitely something going on. Google applied for a patent in December of '06 for a "phrase based information retrieval system". While this new system appears to have some storage savings and document retrieval speed benefits, the main focus appears to be on identifying spam documents, keyword stuffing and the like.

Here's the patent application:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20060294155.PGNR.&OS=dn/20060294155&RS=DN/20060294155

Here it is in plain english:

http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=413

[Jim]

Dave, I'm just not sure if you don't believe in a spam penalty or if you just don't like what people call it.

[Halfdeck]

I'm pretty sure that the penalty is real.

You don't need a stamp of approval from Dave - he doesn't work at Google and neither do I, so what do we know? Just because the problem isn't impacting any of our sites doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist. I wouldn't assume it exists, either.

Let's talk facts - opinions on whether a penalty is real or myth don't solve problems.

Your site doesn't have to be spamming to show up in the last page of results. Grandmascrotum's site is far from spammy but it nevertheless ranks 900+ for several related terms.

All I can suggest at this point is to get rid of any negative signals - cleaning up questionable outbound links (e.g. linktrades with low-quality hubs), nofollowing aff links, reducing duplicate content, fixing 404s, eliminating canonical issues, reducing keyword frequency, etc.

Filing a re-inclusion request, after all that's done, is an option. You are allowed to file one not only when a site is banned but also when a site is penalized. Whether you're just ranked poorly or penalized is up to you to decide.

The best cure for any site IMO is to gain links from authoritative sites with your target keywords in anchor text as part of an article - that's more powerful than blogroll links, thousands of cheap recips, etc, but in adult, as we all know, "quality links" are hard to come by.

[Bill]

You really think filing a reinclusion request could help in a case like this?

I think it's more likely to cause harm than good.

And I don't see how it can cause a good result with an adult site, which is, as I've said, basically a commercial platform.

I tend to think you are applying a mainstream hope to the adult site arena, and that as soon as a google worker sees that reinclusion request for an adult site like ours, he's going to either ignore it completely, or assume that a reinclusion request wouldn't be filed unless there was something sneaky going on, and start looking for something to penalize the site for.

Do you have some reason to believe a reinclusion can help an adult site that hasn't previously been banned?

---

Having too many links with identical anchor text has been a known risk for two years or so now, it's one of the things we do have a bot of control over, and one of the things that can be worked on.

The phrase thing - which is basically the newest term for keyword stuffing - has probably been affecting adult sites for months now. It's not easy to create a large adult site without putting too many related phrases on any given page - that's the nature of describing porn that's for sale, and putting any more than a few links on any given page. You are going to end up with "too many" related phrases on the page.

[Halfdeck]

You really think filing a reinclusion request could help in a case like this?

Bill, saying re-inclusion is an option for penalized sites is not the same as saying I recommend filing a re-inclusion request.

Many adult sites, including some I own, are low value, disposable surfer-traps. But Ms. Naughty's blog? I see no reason not to file a reinclusion request for a quality sex blog if her blog is really penalized.

...that as soon as a google worker sees that reinclusion request for an adult site like ours, he's going to either ignore it completely, or assume that a reinclusion request wouldn't be filed unless there was something sneaky going on, and start looking for something to penalize the site for.

Unless you're guilty of spammy tactics, there's nothing to worry about.

I've emailed Adam Lasnik asking him to take a look at one of my sites. He emailed me back, saying there's no penalty applied.

You think Adam doesn't occasionally surf porn? Even Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Spam Team, regards Link O Rama, Persian Kitty, and The Hun as "quality porn sites." Not all adult sites offer value - but that goes without saying for any niche, adult or mainstream.

[Halfdeck]

As for adult VS mainstream, here's a quote on Threadwatch by Mr. Turner (whoever he is) in response to Matt Cutts admitting Google cannot tell the difference between a quality porn site and porn spam:

To understand why the results are poor in adult, you have to understand how adult sites work. You essentially have under 1% of the sites that actually sell something, and over 99% of the sites pushing traffic to those sites as affiliates. There is very little middle ground here. You have very few sites that put up porn for the fun of it. It’s essentially like taking a mainstream industry and dropping every site in it that doesn’t sell something or is an affiliate for someone.

So what that leaves is a group of webmasters all fighting for the same dollar. No one is giving up links to other affiliate sites because they feel it is beneficial to their user. No one is linking to adult sites just for the hell of it as well. The primary way of getting links has been through trades. While this was fine and dandy in the past, as Google’s algorithm advanced to spot link schemes, adult has been sacrificed because of it. Since most sites have relied on reciprocal link trading and since the industry lacks any natural linking because of its nature, it simply doesn’t work in an algorithm geared toward mainstream sites.

So what you’re seeing is sites that were popular in the past become untrusted, which in turn flourishes to new sites that receive links from them. A lack of “trusted” and “authority” sites has made it difficult for new sites to flourish as well.

To me, it’s not about Google blocking out adult content. Heck, a good percent of their searches are adult oriented and there are certainly better ways to block out that content than this. I think it’s just a case of adult having a completely different structure than most mainstream industries.

Here's an unfounded theory for thought:

If Google is using a variation of the TrustRank algorithm, then Google cannot tell the difference between low PageRank quality pages and low PageRank spam. Because most links on adult sites are devalued due to lack of trust, average TBPR in adult compared to mainstream is low. Specifically, I don't know any adult sites with a TBPR 9. Even if low TBPR has no impact on rankings, it means that you'll see more spam on adult SERPS than in mainstream. It also means adult sites have a bigger tendency to lose rankings or go supplemental.

[Bobc01]

Anyone know if NASA are hiring?
I was thinking about applying as a trainee rocket scientist.
I think that's the only way i'd be able to understand search engine logic.

They say things like hidden text etc are banned by search engines but i can find several sites packed with the stuff in the top 10 links after a search on google.

[Bill]

Slightly interesting...

In a thread about google webmaster relations, Matt Cutts referenced the "950 penalty" and said:

annej, regarding the -950 thing, I'd watch this video I made: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4814548594071648913#1m42s
Starting around 1:42 into the video is where I talk about this.

----------------------------------------------------------

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/013473.html

"Matt Cutts of Google Comments on "-950 Penalty" as "Over Optimization Penalty""

http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_thread/thread/a163f856edc10ec4/

"The points I got out of it.
...
-overly seo'd sites
-don't listen to what SEO forums say
-don't optimize quite as much

Which seo methods are the trigger? Link exchanges, Keyword density,
Header usage, interlinking, pagerank hoarding, nofollow abuse, uniform
anchor text, common link schemes? I don't know.

But he does concentrate on "on your site" so I'd think the answer is
still on the site, perhaps an examination between an SEO'd site and
one that is ranking but obviously put together without SEO in mind
would be good (gov or edu sites for example) "
------------------------------------------------------

Nothing dramatically new, but I thought it was interesting that Cutts used the 950 term, and mentions "overoptimization" as being the cause.

[Jim]

I saw that video a while ago Bill. That was kind of the point I was getting to about believing or not. If you take what he says about Google practices as gospel, you have to believe there is a penalty.

[Halfdeck]

When you're hit with any kind of penalty, I think the obvious course of action is to clean house. The problem is adult webmasters' sense of a "clean house", in general, is way dirtier than what Google considers clean.

For example, link list owners try to boost their ranking with identical anchor text on recip links. When you have thousands of recips with identical anchor text you have a problem. More you have them, more they're likely devalued. Then add the fact that those recip links are reciprocated and you have a bigger problem. New link list owners try to compete by accepting more and more free sites, but more links doesn't mean higher ranking. In fact, more links may lead to greater link devaluation.

If you take what he says about Google practices as gospel, you have to believe there is a penalty.

I don't necessarily take Matt's word as gospel, but I believe he is honest. And since his main responsibility is fighting spam, he's the man when it comes to ranking penalties.

[Ms Naughty]

The "950 penalty" thing has been making me into a craven beast, and I'd just about given up on trying to fix it since nothing has worked.

Interesting that Matt Cutts would say overoptimisation was the trigger, since I believe my site wasn't really optimised when it got the boot. I've since worked hard on trying to clean it up to Google standards, as Halfdeck says, but it's made no difference.

Still, this might inspire me to keep trying.

If recip linking with uniform anchor text is a problem, it's pretty fucking hard to fix, because you can't really ask people to change links all over the place.

At this point in time I hate Google with a passion and long for Microsoft and Yahoo to somehow kill it. LOL

[Halfdeck]

For example, suppose that in April you had a bunch of links at the bottom of your page that looked like "Online Loan | Santa Cruz Hotels | Xbox Mod Chip | Home Loan | Mobile Phones " or "Bad Credit Mortgages | Afvallen | Problem Remortgage | Mortgage | Myspace Layouts". Linking to bad neighborhoods or spammy sites can affect your site's reputation. So the webmaster help group might look at your site and say "Hey, why not remove that link co-op stuff and then do a reinclusion request that says 'In case this was a factor, I'm no longer participating in this co-op link exchange and linking sites like this from my root page.' That might do it."

If you're penalized, I think you really have no choice but to submit a reinclusion request. Even if your site is clean, once your site is penalized, according to this quote, the penalty will not go away automatically. Someone inside Google has to flick a switch.

[jennym]

For example, suppose that in April you had a bunch of links at the bottom of your page that looked like "Online Loan | Santa Cruz Hotels | Xbox Mod Chip | Home Loan | Mobile Phones " or "Bad Credit Mortgages | Afvallen | Problem Remortgage | Mortgage | Myspace Layouts". Linking to bad neighborhoods or spammy sites can affect your site's reputation. So the webmaster help group might look at your site and say "Hey, why not remove that link co-op stuff and then do a reinclusion request that says 'In case this was a factor, I'm no longer participating in this co-op link exchange and linking sites like this from my root page.' That might do it."
Wow, that is a pretty interesting quote.

[Jim]

If you're penalized, I think you really have no choice but to submit a reinclusion request. Even if your site is clean, once your site is penalized, according to this quote, the penalty will not go away automatically. Someone inside Google has to flick a switch.

Matt has said that. If you have a penalty, you should do a reinclusion request.

[CaptainJSparrow]

Now, the big question is, if you have a penalty on just some of your pages (i.e. not your whole site) should you do a reinclusion request? If so, do you make the request for each page that's down, or the site as a whole? I've seen alot of sites that we're all familiar with, where some of their pages are #1 for certain terms, but alot of other pages are buried (950 penalty) for other terms. There are pages that are buried for the keyword phrases that they target, yet show up as #1, or top 10, for other phrases.

That said, I don't know how the reinclusion request works...never done it. Just wondering if you can request it for a page, or must it be for the whole site?

[Bobc01]

How can you tell if you've been penalised?

[CaptainJSparrow]

1) go to http://google.com
2) click on "Advanced Search" ... this is to the right in small text
3) type in the search term (the keyword phrase that you're targetting) in the first field of the "Find Results" area that says "with all of the words"
4) change the "drop down" to the right to "100 results"
5) click the button labeled "Google Search"
6) scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the #10
7) click on the link that says "repeat the search with the omitted results included." ...note, you should really do everything without this step first and then do it if you don't find your site/page
8) use your web browser's "find" or "find in this page" capability to search for your domain name
9) if you're not on page 10 then go to page 9, etc until you find your domain

[Preacher]

Now, the big question is, if you have a penalty on just some of your pages (i.e. not your whole site) should you do a reinclusion request? If so, do you make the request for each page that's down, or the site as a whole? I've seen alot of sites that we're all familiar with, where some of their pages are #1 for certain terms, but alot of other pages are buried (950 penalty) for other terms. There are pages that are buried for the keyword phrases that they target, yet show up as #1, or top 10, for other phrases.

That said, I don't know how the reinclusion request works...never done it. Just wondering if you can request it for a page, or must it be for the whole site?
To add more confusion to the mix, I've seen what looks like an obvious penalty for a keyword and yet that same page can be in the top 10 for a different keyword or keyphrase. |loony|

[eman]

To add more confusion to the mix, I've seen what looks like an obvious penalty for a keyword and yet that same page can be in the top 10 for a different keyword or keyphrase. |loony|

Same here.

I've got pages that support that view.

[Bill]

If you're penalized, I think you really have no choice but to submit a reinclusion request. Even if your site is clean, once your site is penalized, according to this quote, the penalty will not go away automatically. Someone inside Google has to flick a switch.

However, I felt one couldn't be certain that the "penalty" referred to in that part of what cutts said to be directly tied to the so-called 950.

The links descbribed at the bottom were part of a moderately well known link trading "co-op" - which is substantially worse in googles eyes than a more simple type of "over-optimization" - it's clear participation in a linking scheme to game google.

But, I agree, that was an interesting statement, with implications for the reinclusion request.

I'm just not sure it's directly applicable to the problems adult sites are having.

However, someone should test it, and see what happens.

[Jim]

If you are being penalized, could a reinclusion request really hurt? I was told that if you are listed at all, you don't really want to bring attention to yourself.

[jennym]

I'm just not sure it's directly applicable to the problems adult sites are having.
I have been having the thought that there are some LL that are in a group sort of like that co-op. They all pretty much interlink. That is why I thought some sites were penalized. It is what I was trying to convey in that *other* thread. Not that my site was special, but that I wanted to get out of "the group" to see if it helped me with Google.

[CaptainJSparrow]

To add more confusion to the mix, I've seen what looks like an obvious penalty for a keyword and yet that same page can be in the top 10 for a different keyword or keyphrase.

We have numerous instances of that. On some pages, we're buried for the target keyword phrase (this is the anchor text of all the incoming links) but we place #1 for slight variations of that phrase. We have a theory that google will flag a page for a certain keyword phrase...say if you have 75 links at the bottom of your amateur page with most using the words "amateur sex" to link to your link exchange partners. Google will flag you so that you can not show up well for "amateur sex" but for "sex amateur" you're fine, or something such.

If this is the case, will just changing the anchor text of your link exchanges away from the phrase "amateur sex" be enough, or did google already identify all 75+ sites (because most of those sites also trade every category page with each other) as some sort of link farm and you will never place well until you remove those links, and submit a reinclusion request?

[Bill]

I have been having the thought that there are some LL that are in a group sort of like that co-op. They all pretty much interlink. That is why I thought some sites were penalized. It is what I was trying to convey in that *other* thread. Not that my site was special, but that I wanted to get out of "the group" to see if it helped me with Google.

And getting out of "the group" is certainly a valid and interesting experiment.

But, I'm definitely not sure that "the group" and the kind of co-op linking Cutts described would be seen as similar by google.

The reason I think that, is that there is a natural tendency for sites devoted to the same subjects to link to each other. This doesn't make them a linking scheme to game google. (altho, as we all know, adult sites come damn close to doing this, especially, ESPECIALLY, with the tendency to link based on PR)

Note the anchors of the links in the site cutts mentioned:

"Online Loan | Santa Cruz Hotels | Xbox Mod Chip | Home Loan | Mobile Phones " or "Bad Credit Mortgages | Afvallen | Problem Remortgage | Mortgage | Myspace Layouts".

This is radically different from what adult sites do.

I do happen to have some big concerns about the way adult sites handle:

1. uniform anchor text
2. links at the bottoms of pages
3. not giving one way links to each other
4. and still this, IMNSHO, idiotic obsession with PR, as evidenced by all the crazy people posting links about how they want "PR4+ links", without ever once mentioning the damn niche and relevance of the links.

[CaptainJSparrow]

However, someone should test it, and see what happens.

We are testing these things in a few different ways and hopefully will have some positive results from at least one of our tests over the next few months.

[spacemanspiff]

But, I'm definitely not sure that "the group" and the kind of co-op linking Cutts described would be seen as similar by google.

I've long thought that this was the case. A typical "link farm" or "co-op" to me has always been one of those deals where you're given some code to put up on your page(s), so a whole lot of pages have exactly the same list of links with the same anchor text. I think everyone would point to that and scream "link farm".

Now what if Google has tightened up the algo just a little bit (which I suspect is the root of their patent filing of Dec. 06), and due to the way we provide our trade partners with our desired anchor text we've fallen prey to the more sensitive algo? We don't all have identical lists of links, but they're just close enough. If every LL webmaster had changed his anchor text recip page after every trade, would we be seeing a whole lot of link lists in the 950 graveyard?

[Bill]

If every LL webmaster had changed his anchor text recip page after every trade, would we be seeing a whole lot of link lists in the 950 graveyard?

I'm not sure I've understand what you mean by this - "changed his anchor text recip page after every trade" - could you explain this a bit more.

If my current theory is correct, one thing every link list owner _could_ do, that might help, is edit and rewrite the anchor texts for trades on their index and other pages, so that instead of everyone trying to "overoptimize" for specific keywords and texts (usually the name of their domain, or something similar), the links would start to become more unique and natural looking.

The obsession with getting everyone to use the same anchor texts, which DID work 3 years ago, is now coming back to haunt us, I suspect.

Unique and changing anchor texts are now the way to go, imo.

[Bill]

I also think the pattern of everyone clustering their "google" link exchanges at the bottom of pages is a danger - as I understand it, we know based on certain recent patents (tho the details of which patent have slipped my memory) that google has ways of breaking a page up into areas, in order to seperate out the "content" from headers, footers, and so on.

I personally suspect that links at the bottom of the page, that are not navigation links to pages within the domain, are now raising a flag.

It's a fairly easily detectable form of "overoptimization".

[Halfdeck]

If you are being penalized, could a reinclusion request really hurt? I was told that if you are listed at all, you don't really want to bring attention to yourself.

Jim, no one can guarantee that a reinclusion request won't harm you. At the very least, if you request one without cleaning up your act, its not going to help. And I can understand how some people can be overly suspicious of Google's handling of adult sites. When someone manually reviews your site, the outcome sometimes depends on irrational Googlers with pre-conceived biases. Some Googlers just don't like porn; that's a fact we have to live with.

But that back-alley mentality has to die. Remember, what... 25%(?) of all searches on Google are porn related. Google needs porn sites as much as we need Google. What would happen if Google stopped displaying porn results? They'll lose a huge chunk of their traffic to Yahoo/MSN.


Google will flag you so that you can not show up well for "amateur sex" but for "sex amateur" you're fine, or something such.

That's in line with how Google deals with Google bombs, where, for example, colbertnation.com was deranked for "greatest living american" but still ranks first for "living greatest american", "american greatest living", etc.

However, I felt one couldn't be certain that the "penalty" referred to in that part of what cutts said to be directly tied to the so-called 950.

Bill, it really doesn't matter what penalties are involved. If you're penalized, whether its the -30 penalty, the -111 penalty, or the 950 penalty, you're likely not going to get off the hook by just de-optimizing a site.

This is radically different from what adult sites do.

The point here is this:

- 90% of all outbound links on adult sites are non-editorial.
- anchor text on recips are too targeted. Anchor text like "click here" looks more legit than anchor text that targets big money terms like "free porn."
- tens of thousands of recips pointing to a category page with identical anchor text screams "I really, really, really wanna rank high for 'amateur porn'" aka search results manipulation
- a high number of reciprocated links underline the fact that the links are non-editorial.
- 90% of outbounds are non-contextual sidebar/bottom-of-the-page/top-of-the-page links. When links point to an external site and they aren't embedded in a paragraph, that's a big tip off and its easy as hell to detect.

Look, Google doesn't sit still. What worked last year isn't necessary going to work this year or the next year. This year, Google declared a war against link manipulation. You can work against the grain or find the path of least resistence.

It's not just a race about who gets the most free site submits/backlinks/day anymore. Whoever figures out how to adjust to the post-Big Daddy Google will have a leg up on the competition.

[Bill]

halfdeck said---Bill, it really doesn't matter what penalties are involved. If you're penalized, whether its the -30 penalty, the -111 penalty, or the 950 penalty, you're likely not going to get off the hook by just de-optimizing a site.
---

Well, I could easily be wrong, but I don't think this is a "penalty" - I think it's just what the algo is supposed to do.

A penalty implies that a domain or page has been tagged as trouble. I tend to think that is still fairly rare.

I'm one of those people who thinks it's as big as a risk as a potential benefit to file reinclusions on most adult sites - because as we've been saying, adult sites are inherently close to googles current definition of spam.

As soon as you file reinclusion, google people are going to apply their investigative tools to the page. No adult site is going to get a great score under those tools.

It needs to be tested. Some folks should file reinclusions and see what happens. Some folks should make changes without reinclusions and see what happens.

I note that cutts didn't specifically say "penalty". Google has said many times that it wants the algo to do the work, and in the past known penalties have been very clear cut. I note that TGPs haven't been as badly affected by this (which I attribute to the greater number of oneway incomings, from all the abandoned galleries, something the algo would easily detect). One would expect they would be if there was a penalty.

So, I'm not convinced the concept of penalty applies. Only testing can tell.

Anybody done any reinclusions recently?

[CaptainJSparrow]

Well spoken Halfdeck. You're preaching to the choir here.

[CaptainJSparrow]

A question that I'd like to throw up for discussion.

Let's assume that those 50 to 100 links at the bottom of all of our link lists, that are all interlinked, and mostly using the same anchor text, are the cause of a bunch of our sites getting a penalty. This being so, is it enough to move the links from the bottom of our pages to somewhere in the middle (or put them all over the page) and, of course, change the anchor text and put a description to each site...or to be reincluded must we pull all of those links to show that we are not a part of that link farm anymore?

Thoughts?

[Ms Naughty]

Before you start pulling links and pissing off link partners, let me say that I have a number of sites suffering from this "penalty" and none of them have link trades with other sites, so the "link farm" thing may not be the problem. In my case it could be interlinking between my own sites that's done it, although I'm only guessing.

I feel like I should start a new thread about this, but I'll write it here anyway. It feels as though we as adult webmasters could start using the "nofollow" attribute to distinguish between links for traffic and what we could call "full links".

Pulling link trades is not a good idea because you piss off your partners and you also lose a source of traffic. But if you think it's a problem you could contact your partners and inform them you're going to nofollow the link.

If reciprocal links are no longer much use under the new algorithm, then a link trade to improve ranking is not as appealing and the focus becomes traffic.

At the same time, reciprocal linking between similar sites is still a good idea, I think.

I'm talking out of my arse here, just thinking out loud.

[spacemanspiff]

I'm not sure I've understand what you mean by this - "changed his anchor text recip page after every trade" - could you explain this a bit more.

Bill, I think you answered your own question with your next paragraph. Change the links that trade partners use when doing cat trades, or better yet just let them supply their own anchor text (assuming they'd use something relevant).

I also agree with your next post about the links at the bottom of pages. I'm sure they can detect this. Whether or not they will "penalize" for it is unknown, but it can't hurt to assume they do.

It needs to be tested. Some folks should file reinclusions and see what happens. Some folks should make changes without reinclusions and see what happens.

I'm pretty sure someone is doing this. :D

At the same time, reciprocal linking between similar sites is still a good idea, I think.

I think Google has pretty much said that they don't care for reciprocal linking for the purpose of manipulating PR. But in a "natural" linking scenario among relevant sites within an industry where no one is doing any link exchanges, there is going to be some reciprocal linking. Maybe the algo looks are the percentage of recip linking on your site compared to the percentage of recip linking on other sites across your sector of the internet. Just a thought.

[CaptainJSparrow]

Before you start pulling links and pissing off link partners, let me say that I have a number of sites suffering from this "penalty" and none of them have link trades with other sites, so the "link farm" thing may not be the problem. In my case it could be interlinking between my own sites that's done it, although I'm only guessing.



Grandmascrotum, would you care to share a few of the above referenced url's with us where we could take a look? Worst case scenario, we may be able to help you determine why your sites have tanked.

[Halfdeck]

At the same time, reciprocal linking between similar sites is still a good idea, I think.

There's nothing inherently wrong with reciprocal linking. If I link to you one day because I like what you wrote, and then you link to me two months later because you liked something I said, that kind of reciprocal linking happens often and its not a problem.

It's also not about relevance; it's about intent: why are two sites linking to each other? If its an exchange to boost traffic or increase brand awareness, Google's recommendation is to tag the link with nofollow. If its an exchange to improve search engine ranking, then Google's recommendation is, again, tag it with nofollow.

Using nofollow is a last resort. A smarter approach is to reduce the chance of detection by making links look more organic.

As spacemanpiff said, Google doesn't mind a moderate level of exchanged links. If a large percentage of your IBLs is organic, a few link trades aren't going to hurt you.

This being so, is it enough to move the links from the bottom of our pages to somewhere in the middle (or put them all over the page) and, of course, change the anchor text and put a description to each site...or to be reincluded must we pull all of those links to show that we are not a part of that link farm anymore?

If you want to take a conservative approach, you might try emulating a directory-type layout. For example:

"http://www.business.com/directory/accounting/employment/"

Still, you might not see any improvement until Google is convinced the entire network is clean.

Though artifical links like cat-page links are potential problems, I think a bigger problem is the lack of organic links. Many mainstream sites rank using artifical links but they also have natural links as a supporting backbone to create a balanced link profile. We don't have that luxury.



I have a number of sites suffering from this "penalty" and none of them have link trades with other sites

Msnaughty has a few exchanged links (blogroll, links to free sites, sugasm links). On the other hand, forthegirls don't link out, and it ranks on the first page for its target keyword.

[CaptainJSparrow]

If its an exchange to improve search engine ranking, then Google's recommendation is, again, tag it with nofollow.



My understanding is that if you tag a link with "nofollow" then it will not improve search engine ranking. Is that not the general consensus?

[Ms Naughty]

I was thinking of this site: www.sexforwomen.net

It only has one link exchange and is made primarily of articles. I haven't changed it in ages, and it's probably overoptimised. It's also guilty of interlinking between my own sites. This site is on page 10 for numerous keywords.

There was a time, way back in the distant past, when it was number 1 for a quite a few phrases.

I'm thinking I need to go and nofollow all my own links to see what happens.

[CaptainJSparrow]

I was thinking of this site: www.sexforwomen.net

It only has one link exchange and is made primarily of articles. I haven't changed it in ages, and it's probably overoptimised. It's also guilty of interlinking between my own sites. This site is on page 10 for numerous keywords.

There was a time, way back in the distant past, when it was number 1 for a quite a few phrases.

I'm thinking I need to go and nofollow all my own links to see what happens.

I'm not too sure that that site would be a good example as far helping to further our discussion regarding whether the old way of exchanging links could be hurting us. Just the fact that it hasn't been changed (updated, I assume you mean?) in ages is enough to get it buried. The interlinking between your own sites could also support the theory that you might be penalized as part of a network.

[Bill]

the theory that you might be penalized as part of a network.

Where have you folks derived this theory, which you have repeated a number of times, that being part of a network is the source of the problems?

Has Cutts or google said something specifically that leads you to think this?

I haven't been able to follow the logic that it's the networks that are responsible, when the other factors that google has emphasized (anchor text, too high a percentage of reciprocals, lack of oneway incomings) are all so clearly a big part of the recent model of adult linking.

[CaptainJSparrow]

Yes Bill, Matt Cutts has said that being part of a network/link farm will get you penalized by google.

In Google's help area it states:
"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links."

I think it's pretty obvious that a network of somewhere between 50 to 100 sites, where most of them interlink all of their categories with most of the other sites in that group, could be determined to be a link scheme designed to increase rankings in the serps.

There is no doubt that some form of penalty or flag has been applied to alot of the pages of the sites within this group that we are all discussing. I've already spelled out earlier in this thread how to determine that...matter of fact, I've done it twice in this thread.
Now, we're all trying to determine what caused these penalties...

[Bill]

Yes, but thats very old.

You seem to be saying you have some new reason to believe that the linking thats been going on has either been (1) newly marked by google as somehow illegitimate, or (2) has somehow changed or grown to the point where it is hurting everybody when it used to help.

I was just wondering if there is some new reason you think this?

[Bill]

You said "it's no doubt that its a penalty".

I think it's just as likely that it's simply the way the new algos score and therefore rank a site.

I haven't seen yet a good piece of evidence that it's a flag or a penalty.

I understand you guys think it's a penalty, but I don't think you can claim that just because you are suddenly dropped in the serps, that it's caused by a penalty, when a algo change in ranking determinates is just as possible, and given what I think we know about google, more likely.

When I ask this question about networks, I'm asking, do you have some new evidence that it's networks, and not the other more publicized factors, that are causing this.

For all I know you have good evidence - I just haven't seen it, or heard anything that I think supports it, yet.

[Bill]

I think this question of networks is of critical importance, so I want to keep on asking certain questions about it, questions that very much determine the tactics and strategy of solving this problem for we adult businessmen.

If the crash in rankings is a matter of networks, then:

(1) Why aren't some of the TGPs being affected?

(2) Where could one position a adult sites like ours without being in a network?

(3) If ALL clusters of sites (for example grandma scrotums modest little personal network) are now networks that google penalizes, how could one ever escape networks?

(4) If some networks are worse than others, how could you possibly tell which network is good and which one is bad?

(5) I'm fully aware that you have a network, as do most of us here in this conversation. Why do you believe that google would decide your network is good, but someone elses is bad?

I think question 2 is the most important tactically. How would it be possible to create a profitable adult site that isn't somehow tied to a network?

If just creating a standalone domain with no "risky" links to possibly bad networks was enough to grab #1s again, why do you think we haven't all discovered this already?

[Maj. Stress]

I was thinking of this site: www.sexforwomen.net

It only has one link exchange and is made primarily of articles. I haven't changed it in ages, and it's probably overoptimised. It's also guilty of interlinking between my own sites. This site is on page 10 for numerous keywords.

There was a time, way back in the distant past, when it was number 1 for a quite a few phrases.

I'm thinking I need to go and nofollow all my own links to see what happens.

Is the "distant past" around 2002? There were some interlinking tricks that worked back then that will get filtered out nowdays.

[CaptainJSparrow]

Bill, I don't have all the answers...wish I did. I'm throwing ideas up for discussion. I'm fairly convinced that there is a penalty that alot of our (meaning that group of sites that all interlink) sites are suffering from. When you look at the back of the index, you'll see alot of pages from most of those sites buried there. If you look at alexa's traffic details, you'll see that alot of those sites all fell about the same time.

Whether it's a penalty, or an algo change, we all need to try to figure it out and try to get out from under it.

My company still has sites/pages that do very well with google. We are trying to be pro-active and working to keep those sites/pages from falling. Of course, we've lost placements too and we're trying to get those back.

My best guess regarding an answer to your question #2 is that our (I'm referring to everyone's sites, not just the ones that we own) little group of 100 or so Link Lists are certainly not the only adult sites on the 'net. We barely scratch the surface. We have, however, all placed well in the past for lots of terms. Linking outside of our network is certainly necessary. Finding sites within this network that have been buried, are not being cached by google, have not been updated by the webmaster for a long period of time, etc and ending link exchanges with these folks is probably not a bad idea.

It's a trial and error thing. We can't just sit still and hope that placements come back. That said, the "Chicken Little" syndrome will not help anyone here. Open discussions, bouncing ideas back and forth, and trying new strategies seem to be what's called for.

[Halfdeck]

My understanding is that if you tag a link with "nofollow" then it will not improve search engine ranking. Is that not the general consensus?

Nofollow is a way to shield you from penalties. Google does not need them to detect artificial links.

You can also use nofollow to tweak PageRank flow through internal links. By spreading out PageRank to a targeted set of pages, you exert some influence over which pages Google includes in the main index.

I was thinking of this site: "www.sexforwomen.net"

1) Competition increases over time. If a site doesn't continue to gain inbound links, it will eventually be outranked.

2) A gradual loss of ranking is different from a sudden drop in ranking.

3) The site is 108 pages big, but I only see 8 pages in the main index. The reason is simply that you don't have many strong IBL to the domain. (e.g. "http://d.sankey.ca/blog/322/there-is-a-tv")

4) I agree the on-page text is over-optimized ("Sex for Women, orgasms, clit pumps, g spots, female ejaculation, anal sex, vibrators, adult videos, better sex, centrefolds")

Where have you folks derived this theory, which you have repeated a number of times, that being part of a network is the source of the problems?

Bill, no one is claiming that being part of a network is why people get smacked over the head with the 950 penalty. I'm not even claiming that the penalty exists. All I'm saying is that being part of a network makes artificial links much easier for Google to detect. And considering the fact that linking violations incur the harshest penalties, its something worth keeping in mind.

I understand you guys think it's a penalty, but I don't think you can claim that just because you are suddenly dropped in the serps

Rankings shift daily across various DCs. That shift might be due to several factors, including 1) a dramatic algo upgrade, 2) data refresh, 3) PageRank shift, 4) increase in competition, or 5) a penalty.

When a site that was ranking #1 for "free porn" suddenly plummets to 870th, you can rule out 4 because 870 urls aren't going to suddenly outrank you over night. You can rule out 2 because data refreshes usually will not lead to a loss of 870 positions. A PageRank shift (3) that knocks thousands of pages into the supplemental index is a possibility, but if your site has at least TBPR 5, you should not see huge fluctuations in the number of pages in the main index. As for #1, these days I don't expect Google to unleash monumental algo upgrades; its more likely that Googlers tweak their algo on different DCs so that you see slightly different results on different datacenters.

I'm not claiming that msnaughty.com, for example, is penalized, but I think the chances of it not being penalized is close to nil.

If ALL clusters of sites (for example grandma scrotums modest little personal network) are now networks that google penalizes, how could one ever escape networks?

It's ok to link into a network as long as the link is editorial. And it's also ok to get a link from a site belonging to a network as long as the link is editorial.

Yeah, I know, the problem with us is that its unnatural to link to our competition, and everybody is our competition. But blogs are changing all that.

If some networks are worse than others, how could you possibly tell which network is good and which one is bad?

Relevance and signals of quality. If everybody linked to sites they liked, there would be no bad neighborhoods. One thing to keep in mind is that adult webmasters aren't our only source of IBLs.


If just creating a standalone domain with no "risky" links to possibly bad networks was enough to grab #1s again, why do you think we haven't all discovered this already?

Bill, no one suggested you'll rank #1 by building a domain and not linking to crap. You obviously need people linking to you to rank.

[Ms Naughty]

Since Halfdeck keeps using MsNaughty as an example, even though I didn't ever want to mention that domain in this thread (I don't want to be considered a "bad neighbourhood" LOL), I'll say this. The link exchanges I have going on there don't seem to constitute a bad neighbourhood as such, since almost all of the sites I've exchanged links with rank well. There are two that seem to have joined me on the last page, but overall my "neighbourhood" seems to be OK.

So should I get rid of those two links? I don't want to. They're good sites and relevant too. And I link my link exchange partners.

At this stage I'd rather believe that the penalty is due to me madly linking to myself across my many domains, using anchor text that is too similar. This is my theory of the moment because everything else I've done made no difference at all.

I worry that in trying to cater to Google's insanity I'll lose my good Yahoo and Live rankings, but at this point we're all slaves to the monster, so I'll do it anyway.

[Halfdeck]

I don't want to be considered a "bad neighbourhood" LOL

My apologies, but seriously, why are you worried? The entire adult niche is a big bad neighborhood.

The link exchanges I have going on there don't seem to constitute a bad neighbourhood

You seem to not grasp the fact that exchanging links is a violation of Google guidelines.

I'm not saying you should pull links. I have hundreds of trades on one of my domains. The point is if you're black hatting, know the risks involved.

[Bill]

The entire adult niche is a big bad neighborhood.

This is one of the things I was trying to get at with my recent posts about networks.

We've always been, all of us, the "bad neighborhood". We've been the bad networks from the beginning. We exist for purely commercial purposes, despite the pretense of giving away free content. Everything we do violates google guidelines, from their perspective.

We're all bad networks. We're all outside of the "trustrank" circle, and so far I haven't been able to see or imagine any reasonable way to get links from the google elite network commonly referred to as "trustrank".

[Bill]

Whether it's a penalty, or an algo change, we all need to try to figure it out and try to get out from under it.

And that's really the interesting and important thing - how to adapt to these new conditions.

I'm glad that you're doing some tests on this.

I do tend to think we are in a situation where we'll need to be pretty creative and thoughtful to come up with a solution.

[spacemanspiff]

We've been the bad networks from the beginning. We exist for purely commercial purposes, despite the pretense of giving away free content. Everything we do violates google guidelines, from their perspective.

I've heard this a lot and I'm just not convinced that this is the case. I just don't think that Google penalizes a website because it's mainly commercial in nature. Even though they're sitting up their on their mountain, hugging trees and knocking back Starbucks by the gallon, they're in this to make a buck (or a couple billion) just like the rest of us.

Think about this. Joe surfer goes online and searches for "ink cartridges". What is he looking for. "The history of the ink cartridge" or "how to properly dispose of the ink cartridge". No. He wants to buy some ink cartridges. If all he gets is informational sites, he's packing has cyber bags and heading for Yahooville.

I do a lot of searches for recipes. If you think the adult spaces are ad driven, try searching for "chicken and dumplings" (mmmm, chicken and dumplings). Usually what you'll see is a three column table, with the recipe in the middle surrounded by ads for all kinds of culinary junk.

We may have a rep as a bad neighborhood but that's probably because you see a lot more blackhat in adult. Or maybe it's because of guys like Jerry Falwell, although he's now irrelevant as his maker has called him home where he'll spend eternity in a latex bustier and thigh-high boots watching Hit Me Baby One More Time over and over, just like he always secretly wanted.

[Bill]

(*1)I've heard this a lot and I'm just not convinced that this is the case. I just don't think that Google penalizes a website because it's mainly commercial in nature. ...

(*2)Think about this. Joe surfer goes online and searches for "ink cartridges". ... He wants to buy some ink cartridges.

(*3)I do a lot of searches for recipes. If you think the adult spaces are ad driven, try searching for "chicken and dumplings" (mmmm, chicken and dumplings). ...

(*4)We may have a rep as a bad neighborhood but that's probably because you see a lot more blackhat in adult. Or maybe it's because of guys like Jerry Falwell, ...

Well, I should have added the disclaimer that _it has been my theory for a long time_ that google has long regarded all or almost all adult sites, especially our kind of adult sites, as being bad networks and a bad neighborhood.

As part of my general arguments about this, I would like to point out that adult INVENTED reciprocal linking, linking based on PR, making pages solely for commericial reselling purposes, and making and linking pages to game google - all the things that google has said it doesn't like.

But, my responses to your specific points would be:

*1 - no, I agree, not because it's commercial in nature.

But, adult sites agressively and continuously produce hundreds of thousands of pages intended to do very little but put advertising in front of viewers eyes. Especially the agressively SE spamming scripters, but the same is true also of ordinary adult marketers of all kinds.

We take commercialism to an excess, in googles eyes.

*2. Google would rather take the surfer straight to trustranked Hewlet Packard for ink cartridges, and not to every tom dick and harry reseller. As far as google can tell, we are all resellers.

*3. The impression I have, based on reading mainstream SEO information, is that recipe sites and all kinds of reseller sites are suffering just as much from the 950 as adult is, probably for the same reasons. They copied adult tactics. (I do agree there are tons of mainstream pages that are just as bad if not way worse than the crappiest adult pages - at least the pages not created by the scriptspammers.)

HOWEVER - recipe sites have at least a small chance of getting a link from the Trustrank network - and adult sites never will get such a link.

*4. I totally agree that a big part of the reason google has long considered adult a bad neighborhood is because of moral and religious objections to our content, including complaints from surfers about adult showing up for mainstream searches, and dirty tricks by shortsighted adult SE spammers, and possibly malware and the like.

---

The whole reason I'm discussing this is because of the theory of bad networks, and I got the impression that you are part of what I'll call the "school of the new bad networks".

("new" bad networks, because as far as I can tell the theory only works if you assume that there has occurred some recent [as in the last 9 months or so] increase in google picking out specific networks and tagging or flagging them as bad[der], while choosing some adult networks not to flag as bad.)

I think the "950" is caused not by networks but by a new algo that now ads a score for:

1 - percentage of reciprocal links.
2 - uniformity of anchor text
3 - percentage of oneway incomings
plus
4 - positions of links vs content (the links at the bottom of the page -page content analysis)
5 - duplicated content (because we are all reselllers selling the same things with the same phrases)
6 - phraseing analysis

... and, for every one of these things, almost ALL adult sites will score badly, and the algo will suppress them.

(and they are all things I think we know a lot more about than we know about the possibility of google adding new flags for _some_ bad networks.)

---

As a final note, I do totally agree that testing for the possibility that the theory of new bad networks might be the cause is totally valid, and I'm very interested to see how your tests turn out.

[Bill]

So, it seems to me the next level of questions would be:

How do you test for the different theories?

and,

What types of site and structural designs might work better in this new age of google?

As for the first question, the problem with testing is that it's tough to get systematic co-operation with something that is kinda zero-sum. If you do fair testing, some or many folks will end up, at least for a while, in the failure group, as in, "This strategy for linking and structure failed to get google traffic.".

As for the second question, certainly one of the current ideas is the blog. But, it's got it's problems, the biggest one being you still end up with "the group".

I've been thinking that a link-bait strategy might work - but sooner or later, you've got to monetize the link bait, or harvest the traffic, which usually means linking to a bad network.

[Ms Naughty]

My apologies, but seriously, why are you worried? The entire adult niche is a big bad neighborhood.

Well, considering I'm a linklist hoping for submissions, it's never a good idea to say "Hey, submit to me, I'm on the last page of google results." LOL That's why I didn't really want to be the prime example in this thread. I am grateful for your help and suggestions, of course, Halfdeck.

You seem to not grasp the fact that exchanging links is a violation of Google guidelines.

I'm not saying you should pull links. I have hundreds of trades on one of my domains. The point is if you're black hatting, know the risks involved.

I had not considered exchanging links with other similar sites to be "black hat" but I guess you could read it that way.

"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links."
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#quality

One of the reasons I've done link exchanges is to get more traffic to my site. Which is why I've been wondering about the issue of the "traffic link" versus the "full link" idea.

But dare I say that there are plenty of linklists out there who have also participated in link exchanges and they're doing fine. Penisbot's entire system is based on manipulating rank via links and they're still top of many searches.

[Maj. Stress]

You seem to not grasp the fact that exchanging links is a violation of Google guidelines.
The operative word there is "guidelines". Normal link exchanges as far as I can tell do not raise flags. People have been exchanging links way before the phrase "page rank" existed.

As far as the talk about bad neighborhoods, I like to look at it another way. Is your page really optimized for the target keyword(s)? And if it is, does the search engine algo recognize your target keywords to be relevant to the industry you are promoting or something else? ;)

[Halfdeck]

I'll connect the dots one more time, then I'm done. Mainstream is at a similar standstill, but they're fighting over paid links - they've graduated from link trades long time ago.

In the end, you'll believe what's easiest for you to believe. But you know you'll never outrank Penisbot by copycatting their SEO tactics. It's a catch up race and you're a few years too late.

All I'm saying is you can beat the big boys with less work if you think creatively.

Since Big Daddy, Google is no longer passing full link value on every link it finds. Google evaluates trust on a per domain, directory, url, page-component level to decide how much value each link passes. Before Big Daddy, if a link pointed to a page, PageRank calculation was pretty straight forward - it depended on number of links on a page and the PageRank of the linking page. It's no longer that simple.

If Google doesn't trust you, Google devalues IBLs pointing at your domain. That doesn't necessarily mean a penalty or a ban. It means that when it used to take 10 links to rank 1st for a term, now it'll take 30 links to get the job done.

How do you gain trust? By linking out editorially and having people link to your site without you asking for them. When Google sees a pattern of links being planted on your sites and on other sites that point at your site, Google will trust you less.

This is one of the things I was trying to get at with my recent posts about networks.

The adult niche is in a bad neighborhood not because of topic. Matt Cutts himself admitted Google can't tell the difference between quality adult sites and spam. He asked Tony Comstock for suggestions because he thought Google needed to do a better job of separating the two. But he wasn't sure what signals of quality they could use to accomplish that goal:

Dear Tony,

I worked on Google’s SafeSearch filter years ago, so I know that distinguishing between the “good porn” sites compared to the “regular porn” sites is a hard
problem. I used to be able to reel off names like Jane’s Guide, Persian Kitty, The Hun, Greenguy, Luke Ford, etc. These days I haven’t worked on porn-related stuff in years, so I’m less familiar with the space compared to how I used to be.

In fact, I’d be curious to hear your take on what several the highest-quality porn-related sites would be these days. I’m familiar with stuff like fleshbot.com or nerve.com, but less so with sites like tiny nibbles or erosblog.com.

Why are adult sites in a bad neighborhood? Spammy linking patterns that dictate how every adult site links to each other. That pulls every site down to the same playing field. Each link in the adult niche is worth pennies to the dollar. Why do you think LOR and Penisbot, two authority LLs that's been online for years, are only TBPR 5?

Massive link devaluation.

Why is LOR and penisbot still ranking high? Because they are not competing against mainstream sites. They're competing against other sites in the same neighborhood with the same, spammy link profiles. In that game, they win, because they have many more links than you do and your IBLs are no better quality-wise than theirs.

Penisbot also profits from the the rich get richer phenomenon. Sites that rank high in search results gain organic links much faster than unbranded sites that rank deep in the SERPs. I've experienced this. Just by ranking #1 for a search term, people link to me, and people who read those sites link to me, and so on, till I got a ton of links pointing to a page without running a single trade. And because of those links, my site remains #1. More importantly, those organic links make those domains more trustworthy.

DMOZ/Yahoo Directory links also prove that those domains are not spam.

More trust means more value per inbound link. Multiply that by a few hundred thousand and you get a huge boost from even a slight upward movement in the TrustRank of a domain. With complete trust, IBLs pass their full link value.

Finally, a site like Penisbot with high link velocity has an advantage over sites that gain links at a slower pace. A LL that accepts 100 free site submissions a day has higher link velocity than a LL that accepts 10 free sites a day. You can improve ranking just by increasing your site's link velocity.

--

I'm not telling you not to spam search engines. I'm not telling you black hat SEO is bad. I'm saying you can outrank the big boys without spending month after month collecting free site recips if you exploit Google's new algorithm instead of fighting against it.

[Halfdeck]

What types of site and structural designs might work better in this new age of google?

Having access to several adult-oriented contextual link brokering services might be nice.

[Bill]

Having access to several adult-oriented contextual link brokering services might be nice.

As far as I can tell, nothing like that is even on the horizon. Which is too bad.

Context links would be a labor-intensive content strategy, rather than an easier to create structure strategy.

What I infer from your comment is that you think link structure strategies (small linklists being an example) are pretty much doomed in the new google. Which is close to my conclusion too, altho I wonder about combination linklists, small linklists with more content pages - which could out-profit a conventional small linklist.

Personally, I've been thinking that adult in general will be forced to return to a pre-google traffic-trading environment.

Trustrank and "the rich get richer" have hard implications for the small adult webmaster.

[Preacher]

...What I infer from your comment is that you think link structure strategies (small linklists being an example) are pretty much doomed in the new google. Which is close to my conclusion too...

...Trustrank and "the rich get richer" have hard implications for the small adult webmaster.
I agree, and I think it would be in everyone's best interest to just close down their submits.

Me, oh I'll keep mine open in protest, but I'm with the rest of you in principle!

My long-term strategy is to maintain a healthy diet and rigorous excercise and outlive Kit and Greenie! |thumb

[Halfdeck]

Context links would be a labor-intensive content strategy, rather than an easier to create structure strategy.

One mainstream broker is automating it.

What I infer from your comment is that you think link structure strategies (small linklists being an example) are pretty much doomed

Small linklist owners will never win the catch up game by relying on old tactics, but they're far from doomed. In fact, newbies have an edge over older webmasters now because newbies are more open to change and thus quicker to adapt.

You see "studio.montserrat.edu/gd/old/lesbian-porn.html" ranking 5th for "lesbian porn", outranking LOR, smutgremlins, and hoes?

You think that url nailed 5th position for "lesbian porn" by collecting thousands of free site recips?