That’s a quote btw from possibly the hottest forum on the web at the moment…..(EDIT – about the Google Penguin Update or Google Webspam update, as it turned out, that affected A LOT of webmasters – not just the type Google would label webspammers).
Google has dropped the nuke
If Google didn’t win the war today…. they certainly dropped a nuke on a particular battlefield of it.
this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods (GOOGLE)
Nuked!
Forum posters went on to elaborate how this algorithm is treating them:
Here we go again. This has gone from an attack to a massacre.
I have always thought if you want to know if Google is winning the war against webspam, as labelled by Google itself – you listen to the people doing it – and a lot of them are talking. Actually – it’s pretty clear it’s NOT just ‘webspammers’ as GOOGLE labelled them, that are getting hit.
It is way to early to decide if these guys are the experienced ones or not, of course.
I think they may have rolled this change out now in the UK. Almost all of my site have been wiped out!
there’s more
I got hosed bad too, about 4 hours ago.
and more
If these SERP changes I’m seeing hold, we are gong to need to turn off that “profanity” filter because this is a blood bath!
and more
Bah, will this madness never end. The fallout from this algorithm change is shaping up to be pretty messy
and more
A ton of my sites have just tanked big time…….in fact rankings in a lot of my niches have taken drastic changes. My days as an internet marketer look to be numbered….
and
I think my days as an internet marketer are numbered too.
It goes on and on – read the forum posts for more. I don’t want to nick ALL the forum content.
I also think some of these webmasters and/or being a bit hard on themselves. If you can spam – you can probably market a site in Google, without spamming (if that’s what they have been up to).
Where Did It Come From?
I found this comment interesting when the discussion moved to how Google had tracked them down…..
it has to be how many domains link to the same 10, 50, 100, or 1000 or more domains. These are link schemes, doesn’t matter what the anchor is.
It appears a certain type of linkbuilding will be less effective from this point on.
I can’t see anybody going to the hassle of building a private network letting inexperienced webmasters into it…. so it probably just got a lot more expensive, too.
So did white hat seo btw. A LOT more expensive.
IS SEO Finally Dead?
NO.
And even before white hat seo everywhere scream hallelujah and start partying…. consider this:
I see a site no1 in Google on TONS of the same EXACT MATCH keyword anchor text - ranking on ZERO diversity – ZERO organic links – all the same keywords – the only difference?
The links are from real sites.
THAT’s a problem Google cannot blame on ‘webspammers’. That’s a problem Google invited by the way it actually works to rank pages, and has done since it started.
So in a lot of ways – it’s still the same as it ever was.
White hats still have lots to complain about by the looks of it, for now.
Strike ONE?
Google evolves. Spam evolves. Google evolves. Spam evolves.
Though I don’t know how spammers (and no, I am not talking about anyone in particular) can have the stamina to keep up, especially if Google intends this to be the first of a few nukes…. the fear will be enough to put a lot of them of for a while, that’s for sure.
Fallout Cloud
The fallout cloud is rising…. it’s probably going to take time to settle on the web, so it’s too early to say what the final result of all this will be…
One of my next posts may be about this next comment….
soon it will be nothing but name brands because they are the only ones who can really create buzz and backlinks “naturally” - seriously, who the F wants to link to my los angeles personal injury website… no one gives a sh!t
Collateral Damage?
Indubitably.
The reports will be in shortly….. no doubt.
