Google Bombing/Bowling Underway

They are bots linking to the top sites at whatever keyword they are going after in an attempt to build keyword relevance.

If my site could be banned by who linked to me, then I could think of a thousand ways to get my competitors banned. hehehehe

They are recorded but nothing negative comes from it.

It does help people report blackhat activities, which are of interest to google.

Thanks for sticking it.

The issue is Google is finding these links to our sites as shown when looking at external links in the webmaster tools.

If they were being ignored surely they would not appear there.

…Merlin

I did stick this thread.

I agree that google does not penalize anyone for this, they know the problem.

These are blackhat sites hoping to make a quick buck.

It is still a very good idea to report them through your google webmaster account.

The more people do so, the quicker the sites will be removed from google.

They may not be able to destroy your ranking, but they do steal your business.

@GaryTheScubaGuy 183934 wrote:

I see I’m a few weeks late on this thread but I’ve decided to start contributing load more than the 7 posts I’ve had for the last 2 years so I’m going to chime in…if this is happening to you I have a possible solution for you.

Look at your logfiles or google webmaster central to identify the individual links, then (unfortunately) go through each one to identify if you want the link.

If you have any links that you cannot identify, especially sitewide links on directories or unscrupulous websites, you are going to need to contact your ISP and get a firewall installed that provides and interface for you to have the functionality to block certain IP’s.

The links from the site will be rejected and eventually purged from google therefore solving your problem.

BTW – this is a very common novice wanna-be blackhat technique that is very easily fixed once you identify the sources.

GaryTheScubaGuy

Could this not be done via a DENY in .htaccess? Or is that too low-level?

All I am asking you to do is substantiate your claims. I’m not accusing you of creating stories or telling lies. You have made some claims in a public forum so please have the decency to back them up. I’m not trying to fight with you. I am looking for an answer.

How would you like it if I created a post on this forum that accused GaryTheScubaGuy of doing something underhanded. You and everybody else on this forum would want me to backup my story with the facts.

Thats all I am asking of you.

From what I recollect no one accused you of anything, they simply asked a question about google bowling, even warning that individuals were out there doing that and you said it doesn’t work because Google said so.

Well I’m telling you it did and still does. The fact that it comes from Google that they have “resolved” the issue in no way makes it true, any more than me saying it isn’t true.

Quoting Google on your part doesn’t prove a thing, and your fooling yourself if you think different.

Again, I’m certainly not going to out anyone for the purpose of convincing you of the obvious.

For Christ’s sake do a little research beyond google’s t’s and c’s.

Look at any bh forum. Here, let me do it for you…

SEOblackhat.com ha s dedicated top-level thread that specifically says,”Googlebowling, Toolbar abuse, Programming and Script Development Discussions”

Beyond that ixian I recommend to FIND a blackhat and ask them what they think.

You’ll be surprised how common it is.

I know of a dozen programs that will do it, but for the sake of this arguement I’ll only tell you one – X-rumer

If not, well then we agree to disagree and your justifications (google’s t’s and c’s) are no better than mine (I know several bh’s doing it – oh, and I’ve also had 2 clients that we had to implement firewalls on their ISP’s after identifying this technique).

And I’ll leave you with this excerpt from the Google Webmaster Central Blog Chat on October 22nd regarding this exact issue;

ResdazMedia, Rehoboth Beach, DE: Some blackhat linked to my blog from 300+ adult splogs as revenge for calling him out. My blog had #1 ranking for it’s keywords, now it is on the second page at best. Can mass amounts of links from “bad neighborhoods” cause a drop in site ranking?
Nathan J: We work hard to make sure a site can’t have a negative effect on another site. Feel free to report spam if you think you find some – https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport

Why do we need to report it if it doesn’t happen? Why do they have the option built in next to their “report link buying” request???

And here’s yet another;
Anonymous: When checking out your links to not found pages, what would you do about links from spammy sites? In fact, what to do about links from spammy sites in general?
Wysz: In general, it’s not something that you should worry about. We understand that you can’t control all links to your site, and work hard to make our algorithms robust enough to prevent this type of activity from harming your site’s ranking.
If you do notice any spam sites that are affecting Google’s search results, please let us know by submitting a spam report:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35265

“In general” let them know about what???? Something that isn’t happening?

If you want to contact me directly, I will absolutely change your mind on this with a real case study and robust reports to back it up…but unfortunately I cannot and will not ‘OUT’ someone simply to prove an obvious point.

Sorry mate.

Now was that so difficult. All I wanted was an explanation from you.

@ixian 186110 wrote:

Now was that so difficult. All I wanted was an explanation from you.

Man, you know how to rub someone up the wrong way.

This is an excellent thread, just for those that are interested – myself and a fellow SEO are running a test over the next two months as we believe Google are devaluing links that have keywords in anchor text. I do SEO outside the Gaming world and two sites that I regulary build links for got hammered in the SERP’s. Both experienced a massive drop of near 50 positions. This was no random algo tweak, it all happened on the same day with almost the same drop. The weirdest thing was that both sites still ranked on other keywords, just not on the ones we had been building around. This would possibly disprove the theory that G only penilises those sites that sell links.

With no explanation for G and not a great deal of evidence I am forced to conduct a test to try and get to the bottom of this. If this works you may be very suprised at how easy you could knock your competiton out of their primary keyword.

Of course it needs to be proven first ” title=”” class=”bbcode_smiley” />

Will let you know the outcome, as we intend to make results public.