After my last post several weeks ago Don’t Miss a Franchise Opportunity!, which got a bit off topic, I lost interest in this blog for a while. Noting much was happening in the Make Money Online arena and of course all the new information coming from Vic’s place was dampening any enthusiasm for the make money online niche. It just didn’t seem worth putting any effort into any of my make money online blogs, as they weren’t exactly making money hand over fist and let’s face it, the make money online niche itself just doesn’t make money for the vast majority of its marketers.
So where does that leave us now? And why am I bothering to post anyway?
Well, we’re left in an interesting situation right now. A very interesting situation.
You see, Google is tweaking its infamous algorithm yet again only not in a small way, but in a very big way. An this is a way that is going to affect, and is in fact already affecting a heck of a lot of marketers who derive the bulk of their money online from the SERPs placement they’ve acquired for their money sites using links gathered artificially, or not in a natural way.
Got your curiosity? Good. Read on…
We all knew that a time would eventually come when the marketers who were generating backlinks to their adsense or affiliate websites by the bucket load and climbing over the shoulders of those who were getting them naturally would come to an end. Some of the methods used were:
- Using article marketing software to blast an article to multiple article directories for links
- Using BookMarkingDemon to generate thousands of social links to sites
- Using paid for link farms to create links
- Using blog commenting software to comment on hundreds of “do follow” blogs
Well, Google have known about all these methods for a while now and were not best pleased that more and more marketers were using these artificial link building tactics to game their index. To sat that they may have been ever so slightly pissed off with it all is probably an understatement.
So they have acted.
And acted in a huge way. Long has it been known that Google are not about to start handing out penalties to websites that have lots of inbound links, because that would create a situation where competitors would simply spam their competition’s sites with iffy links and hope to get them de-indexed or at least sandboxed.
No that would not do at all.
So Google have boxed clever. Rather than hand out penalties to a site owner for using BMD, or paid link farms or whatever, they have a much more subtle yet effective way of dealing with it.
They simply ignore the links coming from sources they suspect of being used to game their index. Simple. That way, no one can complain that their thousand links coming from such and such group of sites has suddenly disappeared overnight and they have taken a drop from page one to page 50. Or all those hundreds or thousands of links coming from all those articles they spammed to every article directory that exists suddenly not being counted.
So how are they doing it?
Well, only their tekkies know that exactly, but the educated guess is they can quite easily find link farms and flag all the domains involved and then simply not count the links coming from them. Same goes for article directories. But that one has got to be even more subtle and beautifully genius in its working.
You see, not all links coming from article directories are being ignored. That would be terribly unfair. No, what they’re doing is just not counting links embedded in duplicate content. I have to laugh my ass off at everyone who’s been blasting the same article out to 400 article directories. Only one of those links will be counted because the other 399 are embedded in duplicates.
I’ve been saying this loudly and clearly since I first learned this important marketing truth well over a year and a half ago.
NEVER USE DUPLICATE CONTENT
I’ve always known this, it is such an important thing to know. I’ve always written my own articles or taken information from other articles and put my own spin on them so they are original. I’ve never used an article submitter because I’ve always known that if I did, then I’d be putting my name to duplicate content.
Ok, I’ve lost a lot of ground because of sticking to my guns - my competitors have outstripped me in many niches. But now the tide is turning.
All those websites that were sitting above my sites are falling away as their duplicate content links are no longer propping their sites up. The ones that were getting their links from links farms are starting to feel the pinch too as the link farms get found and their links discounted.
Guess what is happening and will continue to happen?
Google’s index has been jumping around like a barrel of Mexican jumping beans for the last couple of months. Sites have been winking in and out of the index for their keywords. Some have gone for good. Some of the numbers have been changing enormously too. I’ve been watching niches that previously had a million competing pages drop to a few tens of thousands.
Why do you think all this is happening if you still don’t believe that Google are discounting certain groups of links?
Well, I don’t mind what anyone else thinks, to be perfectly honest. I know what I know, which is what I can see with my own two eyes, so either agree with me or don’t - either way that’s fine with me.
What I do know is what I’m already seeing is some of my sites that were previously flailing around on page three or four are creeping up to page one or two in several niches. They all got their links from original articles or other legitimate (in the eyes of Google) sources of links - see my article about that at the Honest Way Blog here: How to Get Legitimate Backlinks
So now it might just be a good time to get back into the make money online fracas, as I’ll bet that a lot of the competition is starting to lose ground.
We shall see…
27 comments ↓
That is why I never really understood people paying for a lifetime membership to ArticleMarketer.com. Everyone knows SEO is a constantly evolving practice and when the article backlink trick reaches a tipping point in the SERPs Google has to act. It sucks for guys like me but really can I blame them? I want good SERPs as much as the non Internet Marketing person, so I understand.
But paying a lifetime membership for ArticleMarketer? That’s a sucker’s game.
Hi Terry,
I’ve been building all of my links manually since I started. My posts get indexed normally in under 6 hours (I don’t know exactly, but the latest was under 4) and usually end up on page 1 or 2 of Google’s index. It takes longer to index on Yahoo, but then they usually end up on page 1 or 2 as well.
Behold the power of manually commenting, submitting to Digg, BlogginZoom, and Propeller and getting someone to Stumble it. I don’t mess with bookmarking services (although anyone else is welcome to do so and actually do on occasion), article directories, or anything like that.
Thank goodness I stayed away from MMO niche or I wouldn’t stand a chance. Your suspicions are well-founded — I’ve noticed the same things happening.
Well Terry, you know I’m going to have to go ahead and disagree with you there.
I still see a lot of scuttle sites and social bookmarking links that are counted. Google probably doesn’t count Scuttle too highly and probably never has. They do place a higher value on social bookmarking sites where there is a level of human editing and spam control involved.
As for article marketing, the same applies. They trust more sites than others and they will count links on duplicate content. They do dilute each other somewhat but it’s been like that for years.
Overall Google is well aware that it’s easier to build quantity links than quality links and will score a site accordingly. Getting a wide variety of authority links is going to give you the best search position.
Where Google is cracking down is on paid link networks and massive web spamming. That’s why Blogger blogs and .infos got hit hard with the recent algorithm changes. They have to build trust longer in Google’s eyes to show that they aren’t part of a spam operation but legit sites.
Hi Don,
I’ve always known it would eventually come to this. Make Money Online Marketers have been getting away with it for too long now and yes, with a constantly changing world, why would anyone pay for a life membership to anything that might not be valid in anything less than a lifetime!
Richard, spot on! Doing things manually is damn hard work but it is natural and that’s what Google wants to see - websites and blogs growing naturally and they’re the ones that will win out over all artificial means to grow in the end.
The make money online niche has always been a tough one simply because of its competitiveness and the fact that so many people who are fed up with their own situations will look in the search engines to find out how to make money online because they’re looking for an easy way to add to their income or quit their crappy job or whatever.
Many Marketers prey on these hopefuls by selling them magic beans that people are unbelievably naive about handing over their cash for in the hope of some easy money! That’s why its such a tough niche.
Most other niches are fairer and real goods are actually sold, making them less fought over. Although not without competition, that competition is generally less savvy about SEO and marketers who can see past scamming newbies to where the real money is are the ones doing well and not scabbling over each other for the make money online dollars.
Hi Frank,
I love it when you disagree with me because you end up agreeing with me on most of the points in the end!
Everything I said in that post is of course my own take on what I see and hear other say is happening right now, but not everyone will see the same effects for the very reasons you point out.
Link juice coming from duplicate content is a sticking point and maybe its more wishful thinking on my part, but that juice has been devalued and will probably continue to be devalued as the Google machine continues to cut swathes through the Internet Marketing / Make Money Online jungle in its relentless march on relevance in its index.
And as for link farms, that one has been a long time coming but inevitable and yes, blogger blogs got hit hard. I think most of us who have the odd new blogger blog have noticed them not doing well lately - not that they’re used for anything other than legitimate purposes, of course.
Interestingly, Squidoo has not been doing quite so badly despite its obvious ease of link providing, but where I’ve noticed big gains is with Hub Pages and Wordpress blogs - both have good measures in place to limit the amount of outbound links making them much less likely to be used for SEO or as link farms. Well, at least by spammers anyway.
Of course the best way to promote sites that will make money online by generating links to them in large numbers and of the best quality is the most expensive and time consuming of all. That’s building lots of self hosted sites using lots of different hosts - more work than spammers are prepared to do or pay for.
So it looks like the all-out war on spammers is starting to bite once again - that is of course until they figure out yet another way to game the system.
The only really new thing I see Google doing is making .info and Blogger blogs wait a bit longer to see if they’re legit or not before getting fully indexed. This might be best described as an extension to the fabled sandbox.
They’ve always been on the lookout for paid linking and blatant link farms schemes and they’ve always discounted links from low quality or duplicate sources. I don’t see them giving any new priority to discounting scuttle or article sites. It looks like the same old, same old to me.
You do have a lot of people who’re new to tools like BMD and article/directory submission software. They seem to expect these links to be counted right away when, in reality, it will take a while for them to be counted if they are at all. Newer, less trusted, sites are less likely to get links counted as quickly. Bottom line, many people are being overly paranoid about what has been business-as-usual for a while.
In some ways this is to our advantage as it unsettles the competition - it might even make people panic enough to throw their hands up and quit in disgust!
Whatever, all this hasn’t really affected me much as all my promotional work is done manually, as I said. My sites that were on Google’s page one before everyone started to run around like headless chickens are still there, quietly generating traffic and income.
I also still get decent traffic for my newer eBay Aff sites from other search engines which is fine by me - I don’t care where the organic search traffic comes from as long as it comes!
Nope not one change except like Frank said on .info an even then I found a work around on that one. Since the date this post was written I have taken over 90 position ones in SERPS and using the same old techniques. mmmm let’s see here BMD, Article Submissions Directory submissions, link farm, commenting with fast blog finder so I would say like it has always been the noobs get caught cuz they are clueless and those that live form net keep killing it. Just like the real word
Hey hey Vic, I wondered when you’d spot this. Out of anyone I know, you and Griz are probably the only two people who will ride out this storm. We both know where BS and LV have gone, so they’re not options anymore at least for the time being.
Link farms mmm, I was talking about the paid variety, not the DIY ones - different kettle of fish. They are the things that are propping up sites that are sticking around more than anything else. Authority keyword anchor links that are much more stable than most anything else.
As I said, only my opinion and what I can see with my own dos ojos amigo!
So, what’s your take on Grizz’s most recent post about D-Content not really being an issue if you have an authority site? That would put the kabosh on your article. I don’t have enough sites to test his statement.
I would be curiouse if you have tried it though?
It would also seem to me that if use some of the automated methods described above as long as your being careful and not abusing it it would still work. I guess the point is if your using automated tools you still need to try to make it look natural. I.E. I only use 3 article directories to submit my articles. The reason being is I can always can find my articles indexed fairly quickly by doing a search for an obscure keyword combination I put in the article.
Well, i’m with frank and vic, i’m not seeing anything different for now, i continue to use the same old methods, nothing spammy of course, but the same old methods.
I believe that google is becoming clever on the type of sites, that i’m seeing some difference, we need allways to have legit content.
Griz’s post on duplicate content doesn’t exactly put the kybosh on my post as it is in a different context. What Griz says is that content scraped from your site and winding up on a site with more authority will be deemed the original in G’s eyes and your’s the duplicate.
My post is about links from duplicate content not being counted, or if they are having very low or no juice.
Of course if you only submit a few articles at a time, then it will be more natural, which is the whole point of my article - natural will win over artificial.
Jonix,
As long as Google don’t see anything that looks spammy, then they’ll most likely count it. Its the artificial, fast build kind of links that my article is hitting.
I agree we have to have legit content which is honest work. If you cheat, you’ll get caught, unless you’re Vic and then you’ll get away with it and be able to call everyone else a noob dumbf**k!
Remember, Griz doesn’t use BMD or any of the other “artificial” link building tools and he ranks better than Vic in most areas.
If no one else can see this, then I don’t mind really. I see it and that’s all that matters to me.
Of course Ted, we’re not saying that your article it’s not exact. Like you said “it’s the artificial, fast build kind of links that my article is hitting”, and this, i totally agree 100 with you. Thousands of links in a few days, it’s the key to a good old fashioned ban from google
, but that it’s not new, 2 years ago that was happening with the old “guestbook spamming”.
I know, that’s why I find it so amazing that Vic is still able to build authority using BMD - when clearly Google is out to jump on stuff like that.
I’ve seen too many people say they’ve recently lost links previously gained with BMD and stuff like it to think it is not really happening, when it is.
I remember guestbook spamming and how it was taken out, same as most of that kind of activity has been over time, same as comment blasting doesn’t work. Every time something new comes along, it gets slapped down.
The old tried and trusted ways of getting links are still the best, despite being the slowest. Hare and tortoise stuff, which wins in the end? Slow and steady wins the race!
Terry I totally agree with you…
two years back I stopped my subscription with articlemarketer not only for the fact that they sat on some of my articles for up to three weeks without publishing them…
but more importantly through my Google Account I noticed that not only did the search deity never register nearly 95% of those links from article directories to which my articles had been posted courtesy of articlemarketer…
but more ominously Google started “vanishing” article-directory links that once pointed to my site!
The writing was plain to see on the wall…I knew it was time to stop wasting anymore time or money utilizing article submission services and to submit my articles manually to just a handful of article directories that still stood in Google’s good graces!
I am curious what proof you have of this? What you are saying is absolutely NOT true.
I submit the same article to many article sites and all my links are counted, by Yahoo and Google, I can see them all there from hundreds of article sites from within Yahoo Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools and PR on two of my sites has gone up in yesterday’s Google PR update.
Oh and by the way, how in the world would Google know which articles are submitted by you or by Article Marketer, for example?
Article Marketer is a service where humans submit for you, all it is is a huge time saver and there is no way that Google can tell the difference, and in reality there is no difference.
Also, I am curious, if you don’t use these services then how can you gather accurate information about which links are being counted and which are not?
Duplicate content applies to mirror sites, and that is the only time duplicate content is penalized.
Your blog is PR1, that says a lot about your knowledge.
Ba Kiwanuka
Thanks for your support and seeing what most marketers appear to be blind to. I knew for a fact a year and a half ago that Google did not like duplicate content and it was only a matter of time before the teckies there figured out how to combat it. Looks like they are doing that now and it is making an impact on how links are counted.
JR, you’re way overthinking this.
Google can’t possibly know who submitted articles to directories - did I say they did? No. I said they can detect duplicate content and discount links embedded in it. That is true. If you don’t believe me, that’s up to you. If you’re still seeing SERPs ranking gains then good for you.
By the way, you are talking about SERPs gains and not PR gains aren’t you? Because I have several PR1 and 2 sites that sit on page one for their keywords outranking thousands of other sites, many of them with PR4 and 5. Now if I didn’t know what I was talking about, how could I possibly do this?
As for article marketer, you still offer up one article to be submitted to multiple article directories. The first one they submit is the original. The rest are all duplicates, no matter whether you use article marketer, submit them using automated software or do it yourself by hand. Duplicate content is duplicate content whichever way you look at it. The whole point of this article is that links embedded in duplicate content are not being counted towards SERPs authority and placement. Nothing to do with page rank, by the way.
Did I conduct scientific tests on this? Of course not, I’m not a scientist. So how do I know this to be a solid truth?
I listen to what hundreds of other marketers are saying is happening to their sites through use of duplicate content from within the forum that I run. We are all working closely together to find ways around this.
And my methods are working nicely for me.
As I also stated in this post, I have totally ignored this blog for a long time, because it is the MMO niche which is a waste of time competing in. Or didn’t you read that part?
Peter, I approved your negative comment just to show I don’t hide behind the moderator button.
You are only looking at surface results.
This site was a PR3 a few months back, but it got slapped to PR2 in the last PR update for reasons that I will not go into here. This time round it got dropped down to PR1 because I have totally ignored it for so long and haven’t bothered getting any links for it. Besides, Page Rank is not the be all and end all. When it comes to SERPs ranking it means very little and from a marketer’s point of view, SERPs ranking and good placement is everything. See my previous comment.
This blog is in the MMO niche which is really not worth competing in. Read some of my other posts about why that is, I’m not repeating myself here.
As to my knowledge, I know more than most marketers who just recycle and regurgitate the same old crap in their blogs.
I don’t know who you are, which means you’re probably new to this and don’t know what you’re talking about.
I have around 80 hosted websites and another 100 or so free blogs that make me money and they are doing very well thank you very much, so I know exactly what I’m talking about.
Tel,
I was actually talking about PR gains, not SERPS, two of my sites, rose yesterday from the update, one went from 2 to 4 and the other from 0 to 1 and I only use Article Marketer to submit my articles, although I do spend hours and hours on other link building methods.
I do not use BMD, it’s lame to spend so much money on something that you can do on Social Marker for free and I actually like to hand pick the social sites I submit to, and I don’t use link farms, but I have to say that Article Marketer really works for me.
There is also another side to this, besides backlinks, Article Marketing gets me a lot of traffic, often more than the search engines and so having lots of them out there really helps to get people to my site. Some of the article sites really have a lot of internal traffic.
I also find that Vic pushes the envelope and I do not follow his posts, just a bad, almost sleezy feeling I get over there.
I will keep an eye on my links per what you are saying, but I have seen no evidence of any links being discounted.
I appreciate honest opinions such as yours and maybe you will prove me wrong, but so far I don’t see it.
I also respect that you posted my contradictory comment and the other one, and did not “hide behind the moderator button”, many other bloggers do and that just sinks their rep to hell!
I’ll be back!
JR
@Peter
Terry is a PR1 cuz he figured out quickly there is no money in this shit MMO niche unless you are Grizz which control tons and tons of Google MMO keywords. Terry does what most of of us do to make money control niches.
Number 2 remember the number on the tool bar is updated every 90 days or so. But in reality the site might have a true higher PR then your site or mine.
JR,
No worries, I do a fair bit of article marketing for my niches (one original at a time - very slow) and sure it gets me some traffic as well as anchored links helping all the sites its supposed to help especially in SERPs rankings which is way the most important part for me. Organic traffic = money!
As for PR, I’ve had a few sites that lost some mainly I believe cause a lot of the links were coming from squidoo/blogger - from that I deduce their PR juice isn’t what it was, although the same sites have held their SERPs places, so the anchor links still give the same authority wherever they come from.
BTW I appreciate you coming back - not many people would do that especially when they call out the blogger on an issue! Thanks!
Hey Vic, thanks for dropping back in. I had to LMAO at that “PR1 must equal dumbass” guy but he probably won’t be back - this MMO is definitely a crap niche and not worth all the hard work to rank in the SERPs for!
Griz stays up there cause he’s getting hundreds of links every week for his site - ok he does make money from it but if anyone put that much work into a less competitive niche they’d clean up and walk away with all the spoils.
I know where I’m putting my efforts!
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