Google Finds And Destroys Big Blog Networks!

Posted By Tim Buchalka On Wednesday, March 21, 2012 10:51 AM. Under Backlinks, One Way Links

Today marked a big day in IM – Google smashed a lot of blog networks by their new page rank algorithm. By smashed I mean de-indexing them, rendering them effectively useless.

Build My Rank is one victim who has pulled up stumps and called it a day (at least for now) and traffic planet is reporting Authority Blog network got 25% of it’s 22,000 blog network de-indexed with more to come.

I think this is just the beginning, more and more blog networks will get smashed and become totally useless – In fact I suspect many of them have been useless for a while. The ethical operators like BMR will acknowledge it and tell it’s users and offer refunds, but I suspect many blog networks will operate on a “business as usual” basis either not knowing or not caring that their sites are now useless.

My advice is if you are using a blog network of any kind, cancel your subscription immediately – It’s 2012 and it’s time to do things differently. Yes I know it’s a big call, but I am putting it out there now. At the end of the article I give you a link to a post I wrote a few months ago which contains the answer to getting great rankings and traffic.

You might be wondering how Google could find these blog networks, after all aren’t they all on different class C IP addresses, and don’t the owners go to great lengths to hide themselves from Googles prying eyes?

Wouldn’t it be near impossible to track them? Well what many people fail to realise is that Google has the entire database of search engine results to work with. Frankly they can query the search engine database in ways we cannot.

They can look for patterns. Here are just a few ways off the top of my head they could be using to figure out the blog networks.

1. Google analytics – Many blog network sites will use the free Google analytics program to track their traffic. Many blog networks require you to login to a central site to submit your article and have a preview button to view the article – Google could just scan all google analytics data for income links from that site to figure out sites that are in the blog network.

2. Patterns – Many blog networks do things in an identical or very similar fashion – For example submitting the same or similar article to many sites – So a query of all sites with the same article would be a way of identifying those sites that are in a blog network.

3. Perfect SEO – As you may all know Google has now some sort of seo penalty for sites that are too perfectly optimized. Many of these blog network sites will have perfectly optimised seo sites with “proper” headers, proper header tags, and maximised for SEO – Another way to identify a potential blog network site.

4. Plugins – Many plugins that form the basis of a blog network leave a big footprint in the html – For example there is a plugin that shall remain nameless that inserts an image for a Like button that is actually in the plugins wp-content folder – A simple query of the database could identify all sites using this plugin.

5. Lack of any real social interaction – Sites that have no sharing of content from other users, or engagement (comments and the like) might not be real sites.

6. Fake profiles – Sites that have some engagement but link to profiles on twitter and Facebook, etc with little to no interaction.

Remember Google are in the box seat here because they can see data you cannot and query their massive search engine database (and other programs like google analytics, google docs and heck even gmail). Just identifying a single site in a blog network would give them a solid lead to automatically discovering many others.

What is clear is they have done just that and hit some of these blog networks hard. Matt Cutts confirmed it himself in a recent tweet.

Bottom line: If you own a blog network be afraid, very afraid, and if you are using a blog network to get rankings consider if you really want to risk it anymore. Carefully check your results and consider the risk factor and the money involved. If you think it’s not worth it get out now.

These six factors that I identified above are ones I thought of, off the top of my head – There would be countless more ways to look for them. The thing is any one of them might be a false positive in it’s own right, but if a site starts suffering from 2,3, or more that has to be a sign right?

Frankly if I were Google, I would sign up for an account at the top 100 biggest blog networks and test them out and look for the common patterns that these blog networks use – Almost all of them would have a recognisable signal of some kind. Don’t think they would do this? Consider this post where Google indirectly employ at least 4,500 people to manually review websites.

If anyone has the resources, it’s Google. Think about what they have to gain – Eliminating tens of thousands (maybe millions) of pages of websites that should probably not her in the position they are. That and the concern in the “blog network” community which would likely prevent many people from doing it.

The time has come to acknowledge that content is king - Give google just what they want. Great content!

I just wrote an article about the Google authorship program since a few people mentioned the problems of stolen content, so have a read!

About Tim Buchalka

Tim has been a full time "in the trenches" Internet Marketer and SEO Geek since 2008. He writes about stuff that (hopefully) is of interest to other Internet Marketers. His most recent love is Google+ and you can join him there to see what he is up to and find out the best ways to get the most out of Google+.

http://www.seo-theory.com/ Michael Martinez

I don’t know how Google is identifying the blogs but if I were in Matt Cutts’ shoes I would have asked Amit Singhal for permission to run a special learning set through the Panda algorithm to see if it could identify blog networks. They probably would not need to put nearly as much effort into the process as most people seem to think, since Panda would be doing all the hard work. It would only have to split a list of blogs into (Likely part of a network) and (Likely NOT part of a network). Having a control a set to compare those results to, they could refine the signals Panda uses to improve the probability of finding blogs that are part of a network.

All these people trying to come up with new blog networks to get around this latest round of de-indexings may find that dog won’t hunt as well as it used to. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months.
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  I think the most likely thing that happened is they got more people manually checking – Perhaps they bought memberships and then took a look how these programs worked and looked for the footprint – Almost all of the networks will leave footprints to some degree as I outlined in the article.
  
  And yes I agree have a control set and the ability to query the search engine results in ways we cannot will make this much easier.
  
  With all those blog networks going down, it will be interesting to see what happens. I for one will be focusing on the content!
  
  Thanks for dropping by.
  - Sergiu
    
    Guys, I saw no one talking about the ownership of the domains. I saw a comment on a forum, saying that the guy had more than 100 domains de-indexed. Some of those were aged, some newer, most of them in a network, but some of them very cool domains, with no link to those from the blog network. All of them were de-indexed, why ? – because being able to see the even private WHOIS data [as Google is a registrar] they can easily see the footprint.
    
    Imagine you are Google, and you guess a blog does nasty things. You go see the whois, because you can. Then see some outbound links from that blog.. and so on.. continue checking the whois…and of course if many many of those blogs linked are registered from the same name – the decision is simple.
    
    I think If I have had all available databases and information – I would easily have done myself an automated mechanism to check that. Not even needed human checking.
    
    Pay attention guys with tens/hundreds of domains having the same ownership.
    Good luck.
    - http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
      
      Absolutely this is another factor – Google is actually a domain registrar so technically they have “insider” access to this information – There is even talk they have access to private domain info as a domain registrar (not confirmed).
      
      The thing is though, owning a lot of domains itself is not a signal – They need something to warrant an investigation – Once they find a domain is in a blog network, sure they could use the whois data to query the other domains but they would still need to confirm these other domains are infringing.
      
      I would think it’s a lot easier to (say) find a domain that is definiately in a blog network (finding that though any of the methods I mention or other methods) and then look at ALL websites that blog links to. That identifies all domains that are in the blog network.
      
      Then for each domain that is linked to, they look at all the links to that domain and find other blogs in the network – So it would be I would think a relatively easy process – especially given they have the ability to query the search database in ways we cannot.
      
      The biggest issue is the initial identification that a blog is in a network – once they do that the rest is easy.
      
      Cheers
      
      Tim
Allstarbrian

not a comment just a question What about the AMA service I have been using on your recommendation should I cancel that. I did try BMR but not for long so I haven’t seen a tremendous drop off in rankings.
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  AMA is a blog service, yes we recommend you stop it. The thing to note her is this stuff used to work well in 2011 and possibly into a bit of 2012, but with this massive cleanup by Google it makes no sense to bother with blog networks.
  
  The problem with these services is twofold – All their content (or a lot of it) has been de-indexed so you will lose any backlinks you had. Secondly if you are using their plugins, etc to get content onto your own blog, then the contents of that blog will most likely get de-indexed.
  So whichever way you look at it, there is no real point using blog networks any more.
  
  Regards
  
  Tim
  - Allstarbrian
    
    So is there another direction to look for links. Web 2.0 sites also have to already be on the radar already.
    - http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
      
      For now my advice is as mentioned at the bottom of the article, focus on the content. To give you an idea, I started a brand a blog recently and have posted only content to it linking to a lot of other sites and have done ZERO backlinking.
      
      It’s now generating 200+ visitors per day – Irrefutable proof I would think that backlinks are not like they used to be.
      
      You want to focus on content, and lots of it (but dont make the quantity drop the quality of the site).
      Not trying to say backlinking is not important, it is, just that most of your focus should be on the content.
      - Allstarbrian
        
        Thanks Tim,
        Just for a little background I started doing this about 3 years ago in my spare time while working a full time job. I have been able to make some income while still working a full time job. I generally put most of the money I make into ways to make my job easier(blog networks, article writing, submission serves) and one of the first things I invested in was one of your submitters.I have a ton of respect for you but I do create good content but I don’t think that is enough.
      - http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
        
        Content should be where the focus is, no doubts about that in my mind – As I say it does not mean not to focus on getting backlinks, but it’s far less of a priority.
        
        Did you read my article about Perfect SEO (click this text in the article above). Google are introducing penalties for SEO “perfect” sites!
http://www.digitalmarketingbrisbane.com.au/online-marketing-blog Steve Fallon

Hi Tim,

Fantastic post, I love it how you guys are so on the cutting edge of the industry, and as you are so I can be in the eyes of my clients, I applaud people like you for making me look like a guru for my clients.

So in your opinion I wanted to ask the following question:

How about services like Traffic Geyser, Tube Mogul, Ping Kaching etc? I know that you say good content is king, and I believe that 100% also.

I am sending great content using these services, and have seen no cause for concern as yet, even increases in some niches, maybe my gain due to losses to others.

These are not my only sources of great offpage SEO, I do the laborious stuff too.

I an just wondering if I am wasting money in areas due to this latest change.

Thanks Tim

Regards
Steve
Digital Marketing Brisbane
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  Hi Steve,
  
  Thanks for dropping by. In general those services might still be ok – It’s all about the quality of the content. You say you are sending out great content, so it might still be ok.
  
  Sounds like you have your bases covered with offpage SEO – Please do read what I mentioned below when replying toAllstarbrian re: content.
  
  Given a choice I would be focusing most of my efforts if I were you on content on the main site.
  
  Cheers
  
  Tim
http://www.intentionalprosperity.com/somethingismissing.html Bob Baran

Bob Baran

Well, it seemed like only a matter of time before Google would upset the “players” and begin to find a way to determine legitimate content. I hope this is a trend that continues and rewards those who create original “rich” media content too.
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  Bob,
  
  Totally agree with you. The fact is I see evidence Google is rewarding those who create good content be it text of rich media! and thats a good thing!
acnarra

I think the key problem is that webmasters go against the key purpose of backlinks.
Maybe the Big G has said enough is enough, you are going against the real purpose of backlinks.
Has anyone really sat down and looked at what the real purpose is.
If webmasters are creating artificial backlinks to get pagerank is that actually ethical… I don’t think so, if webmasters think its okay, then I hope the Big G finds all your websites and puts them worse than page two hundred.
Come on Aussies, look at some of the stuff thats gone on with creating .edu backlinks, the huge amount of emails sent around to join this or that program and learn how to create .edu baclinks and get better pagerank, don’t you think the Big G is going to eventually go after this stuff…
Maybe I am wrong and its okay to to lie and cheat with artificial backlinks… learn what is the real purpose of Backlinks… put this in Google “the real purpose of backlinks” and read for yourself the purpose…
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  Yes I would tend to agree that it’s hard to argue that blog networks are there for anything other than to artificially help with rankings.
  
  2012 is the year I feel to focus on great and compelling content first and foremost and I hope people get the message that this is where their focus should be!
http://www.wickedonlinemedia.com/ Phil Squires

Hey Tim

Thanks for the timely update… as always appreciate your insights !

Any word on Article Samurai ?

I know the boys at Noble are a great lot but that doesn’t mean Google loves their networks – what do you think about continuing with that service ?

Look forward to your reply

Be well

Phil

http://wickedonlinemedia.com
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  If I were the noble samurai guys, I would be very worried right now – If article samurai is not already indexed, chances would have to be high that it soon will be. Yes I agree the Noble samurai guys are terrific.
  
  Personally nothing against those guys but I would be dropping ALL blog networks including article samurai!
http://increasewebtrafficeasy.com/ martoons

Hi Tim,
I’m in agreement. Funny how Build My Rank would suffer though… with such a fantastic Alexa ranking… I guess there’s a lot more to it than that though. This is all good news for those of us who produce quality content and do it real and honest for the benefit of the reader. )
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  BMR suffered because Google seems to be on a mission to remove all services that try and game the system. The Alexa rank is just a sign that a lot of IM’ers are using a site. In my experience pretty well all IM sites get a far better (lower) alexa ranking than they should because I suspect an unusually high percentage of it’s users are using toolbars.
  
  But yes I agree for those of us creating top quality content this is indeed welcome news!
http://increasewebtrafficeasy.com/ martoons

PS. What is the Wp plugin you are using above your “About” box? Thanks – Martin
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  We have a modified version of a wordpress plugin as we are using the Google authorship product linking to my google plus account – I’ll go ask my coder what the product was – perhaps we can take the changes back to the original plugin developer.
  
  Did you click my name at the top of the article and visit the “author” page – It contains some details about me, and links to the articles I have contributed on this site, etc.
  
  I think it looks pretty good.
  
  Cheers
  
  Tim
Sean breslin

Every one is shouting the google news from the rooftops…. with a few exceptions; the same people punting in the past for the high residual commissions gained by putting punters into those (always a bad bet) sinking ships!!!
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  We make no secret of the fact we have promoted blog networks in the past, and yes used them. But we are also the first to let you know when things are no longer working, and right now blog networks are out !
  
  Its interesting that many of the emails that I have received today from Marketers have mentioned blog networks, but have used the opportunity to try and sell another product! Not many people seem to have just posted an article like this with the real facts and laid it open for all to see.
  
  Interesting times ahead!
http://FirstPageOf-Google.com/ FirstPageOf-Google

It’s so tempting to get sucked in to these networks to gain rankings, however I have avoided that as I expected that this one happen sooner or later.
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  You have done very well to avoid it, congratulations! You’ve probably also saved a not insignificant amount of money in the process :)
http://twitter.com/KellyWSmith Kelly Smith

I wonder when they are going to start de-listing directory sites like YP.com? They are almost useless too and are really just trying to compete with Google in the first place. I know its a bold idea but lets face it, there are a LOT of worthless directories out there.

I am glad that I have never used blog networks and only do my own blogs, all self-contained like this one: kellysmithmarketing.com

I also wonder how long Facebook is going to put up with its current PAGES policy. I mean, how long is it going to be before someone sues Facebook for their Pages policy. There are just too many screwy things going on, similar to the early days of the Internet when you could buy a domain name for anything or anyone, i.e. www Madonna com whether you had any real reason to or not.

Just my two cents worth. I am actually writing a much longer paper on that last one.
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  Hi Kelly,
  
  It’s hard to know where it will end up. Yp is a real business where blog networks are really just there to artificially help other sites to rank better.
  
  I do agree there are a ton of useless directories out there – I think the vast majority get little to no traffic.
  
  Most do a very poor job of competing against Google – My feeling is when any site (or set of sites) starts messing up with a lot of the SERPS (at blog networks are doing) then they will take action.
  
  Interesting times ahead, that is for sure!
http://twitter.com/billing_coding_ Medical Billing Info

After reading many posts about blog networks, I cancelled my account to the one that I was a member of. A few quick questions. Will this affect your Web Traffic Genius Plugin, and I have a few plugins that automatically post snippets of my blog posts to a variety of web 2.0 sites, should I get rid of these plugins?
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  Howdy,
  
  Sounds like a wise thing to do with your blog networks – just too risky right now. Regarding WTG – It’s not using blog networks, so no direct issue there, but who knows where Google will stop - for now we are not seeing any slow down or de-indexing.
  
  Regarding plugins, etc posting extra content is usually a good thing, I see no reason in what you have said to stop doing that.
Darren Moore

Hi Tim,

Over the last 12 months or so, I have subscribed with you for one key reason, and this has just identified without a doubt, THAT simple reason….. content, updates and most importantly, honesty.

Yes, you want to earn a living in this industry, and don’t we all. But what many people do not see are the hours and days, coupled with the cost of testing products and services to make sure they work, before you offer them to your list.

This post is exactly what I have grown to expect from the both of you, real world examples of what is happening, and with the added bits of alternative measures. Yet there is something which is not stacking up, and a huge point that is being missed – staring in the face of marketers globally.

“Real People see Real Things!”

I know that Matt Cutts has published content saying how many employee’s they employ to manually overlook websites – and I know that this is probably not far off the full truth. But up until now, they have been silent about these blog networks, and rightfully so if they were under investigation.

If the truth be known, there are probably only around a couple of dozen serious blog networks around the industry, a few smaller ones yes, but honestly – how difficult would it be to find out about them? Warrior Forum springs to mind, and equally being on lists like yours, mine and how many hindreds of like minded people within this industry…. it aint rocket science!

But not detracting from the main subject, yes – it has been on the cards with the blog networks for 16-18 months now, and they are not going to stop just there. Panda, Adsense, over optimised sites – they are all going to get kicked in the gonads over this next few months, and what can you do to overcome this?

Simple, you have said it yourself and I can not echo it enough in support….

CONTENT – CONTENT – CONTENT and even more CONTENT!

Like youselves, I have been doing exactly the same and pushing absolutely buckets full of content to a few of my blogs. My results are no different to what have experienced, with traffic stats increasing more and more every month.

So, if anyone is looking for a few tips on how to work the system – just follow these easy steps and you will find huge amounts of Google love.

1) Produce content like it is oxygen replacement. Don’t just re-hash old stuff, go get someone to write for you if you can’t find the words you need to fill the pages. Example, (no links) we use a service online to get content written for our clients, and we pay around $500 for 100 good clean articles.

2) Yes, get them posted on a few article sites – and yes, up the word count, decrease the word count and yes, spin the article a couple of times…. but that is is, don’t try and fool search engines by posting 100 copies of one spun article.

3) Make sure that the website/blog you are linking to answers everything that your article doesn’t. Take the article, see what it is saying and dig deeper to answer the questions being asked in more detail.

I have my own personal thoughts about what Google is asking for, and it isn’t what millions are giving right now. Yes, there will always be a way of producing content re-jigged, re-hashed and spun… but the fact of the matter is that many news websites already do this, so it isn’t all wrong!

The difference? Simple – the news sites are simply offering a service to their readers and not trying to create links for sites with poor content, affiliate offers and the sale of ebooks.

Guys, sorry for taking a high spot – and hope you find at least one bit of use.

@timbuchalka:disqus & Anthony – I think we need to have a talk!!

Live life, love lots and make plenty!

Thanks
Darren
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  Appreciate your long and thought ful post – And I totally agree Content, Content, Content – It’s where it’s at. As I have posted about recently, I have setup an aged domain and just posted a lot of content, and done zero backlinking and am currently getting 260+ uniques per day (I have not tried to monetize the site yet).
  
  If thats not telling you there has been a huge shift with backlinks, I don’t know what will!
  
  And yes the linking is important – This post (below) gets more traffic currently than any other single article on this blog. And it has the most links out to other sites!http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/blog/wordpress/best-wordpress-plugins-for-2012-list/
  
  Good information attracts visitors from Google like flies to meat!
  
  Your talking about blog curation? Posting news – We do that a lot on this site. Well I dont, but the two other writers on the blog, Karmin and Gem do.
  
  See this sample.
  
  http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/google/google-adsense/types-google-adsense-strategies/
  
  It essentially links to the original site with the story and adds a bit of news about the post – our site also does some internal linking on these posts.
  
  End result? Great traffic.
  
  Keep up the good work. Happy to chat anytime – Maybe you could write some guest content for us? Happy to give anyone the option on our sites for this.
  
  Our standards are high though
  
  Cheers
  
  Tim
Anonymous

Hi Tim, this is a timely post indeed because I had just got an email
from a blog network I was interested in joining and I had an account
with 3 way links before and just ended that (I wasn’t satisfied with
their service)so you just made the decision easier for me. Is is ok if I
leave a link to one on my sites, here goes..
http://cheappaygmobilephones.net
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  I think the decision you have made right now is a good one!
http://www.productiononline.net thriftgirl62

All that great original content is not going to help when the spam dragons decide to steal whatever ranks for the keywords they want. First they fire up the SENUKE machine and blast your site with garbage links and then use Google’s spam reporting system to generate an email warning notice with instructions to get your site in compliance and then resubmit your site map.

While you’re busy wondering how to get abandoned forums, directories and junk sites to remove thousands of links, the spam dragon slips right past Google-Bots with authority – sporting your original content. When it can’t get any worse, then it will get better. Good or bad – nothing lasts forever except Death!

The Solution: hire a professional team of forensic security experts to make sure your content cannot be stolen without dire consequences. Cost: $1,000 at the most.
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  The other thing you can do is to set yourself up with the Google authorship program – That will pretty much protect you from this (or reduce the chance of this happening). I will do a post in the near future about this (what it is and how to set it up).
  
  Cheers
  
  Tim
  - http://www.slotbonuses.info/ Slot Bonuses
    
    I’d love to see something that can protect me from those content thieves.
- http://www.woman-sexuality.com/ Julianne
  
  Seriously, do people do that? I am still a relative newbie and trying to make an income on the internet is looking to be harder and harder every single day?
http://depressionandtreatment.org/ Andy

Hi Tim,

I totally agree “Content is King”. You also mentioned the fact we have to keep building backlinks.
Can you tell me the kind of backlinks you mean. I used ALN, Traffic Kaboom and AMA. So I will cancel my subscriptions but what are the alternatives you use?
Thanks
Andy
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  Hi Andy,
  
  No I did not suggest you need to keep building links, in fact at this stage I suggest you don’t put much of a focus on that, instead as you say Content is king, so work on great content.
  
  Some social linking is good (sharing of posts social networks like Google +, twitter, and facebook), that type of things.
  
  Other than that focus on the content.
  
  Cheers
  
  Tim
Daniel Duckworth

Hi Tim, you’ve got some good theories there. I also heard that Google employees were buying links and manually tracking where they came from as well as following patterns in spun content.

I wrote a short guide on how to recover if affected by the de-index: http://www.designquotes.com.au/resources/business/internet-marketing-business-resources/5-tips-to-recover-from-googles-sting-operation-blog-network-de-indexing
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  Hi Daniel,
  
  Nice article – Thing is though in some situations – there is no recovering from the de-index – You can do what you want to try and fix it, but unless Google decide your site is worth of re-indexing you’ll get no organic search engine love.
  
  But that does not mean you will get no traffic, there are other search engines and other indirect ways of getting traffic (like posting on facebook/G+, etc and linking to the article).
  
  I would not be surprised about google buying links, etc – It would be smart to do that to figure out how they work and smash the network – What is clear is they are now on the warpath for blog networks, and I suspect other services like directories, and article marketing in general will come next.
http://www.slotbonuses.info/ Slot Bonuses

I think it’s good to go after the big networks and effectively shut them down. The small ‘mom & pops’ need a break every once in a while.
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  Yes sites getting an unfair advantage gaming the system should not get away with it, I agree!
  - Jasonp
    
    It’s not about moms and pops. It’s about manipulation of the rankings. Sometimes these SEO tactics are what allows a mom and pop shop to rank with the big boys. Not saying it’s right or wrong. But the big boys can spend LOTS of money building backlinks that google will never de-index while mom and pops look for affordable ways to improve their rankings.
WayneU

If Google wanted to be fair, they could actually set up something where when you post a new article or a new page on your website, you could ping them and let them know about your new content….
Then if they want to be the policeman of the internet, they could send the Google bot out and crawl that page and any links and date stamp it as being the first type of that content like this, so then when the scrapers and other low life types do something nasty like “spam dragon” as mentioned by thriftgirl62 Google already knows who is the Authority site.

Then the other thing is with SENUKE type activities, Google should be able to smell the dead rat when too many backlinks suddenly appear from somewhere to that website.Rather than penalise the site, as they (Google) do not really know who did this SENUKE stuff, then just discount the backlinks after quickly checking the content. If the content already rates high, forget about all the “nasty” backlinks.

Maybe we have to help educate Google to doing it better, if its a low quality site then by all means give it a page 200 or 2000 listing in the SERPS.

If enough of us rally in some way and present our case to the Big G, maybe we can all survive and the spam dragons and the SENUKE idiots get what they really deserve.
Perhaps if new ideas are presented to the Big G on better ways to give everyone a fair chance they might just listen. The Big G could easily develop a plugin that would allow us all to ping them about our new article.
It is just a matter of training new users how to use the ping plugin, or perhaps the plugin could be done in such a way that when that article has been pinged to Google, it will not work again for that article. Then if individuals want to try and over use it, Google just ignores the site as usual until the Bot does its regular rounds.
If this is done correctly, Google would have first hand knowledge on who posted what Article first, then seeing 50,000 artificial backlinks to a quality article they could do a hmmmmh! theres a rat here, and then when finding the same article on another site with no backlinks to the “authority” site just ignore the spam dragon site as being what it is…

So before you can these words just look it over, maybe it could have been written better, but we all have to get together and work out better solutions, Google has been saying for a long time they were going to do something about artificial backlinks, I agree with those who went around building artificial backlinks getting the chop… play the game, the rules are there, watch the basketball or whatever game you know about, if you cheat or whatever your going to get a penalty WayneU
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  Hi Wayne,
  
  Thanks for dropping by.
  
  The do have a system (Google) to protect your content, and while it’s not perfect it is a step in the right direction. It’s called the Google authorship program and I am going to release a post shortly on what it means and how to set it up and use it.
  
  In regards to discounting links, they are doing this now to a large degree with web 2.0 sites – I think it’s getting harder and harder to get any traction spamming links that way, although that will not stop people from trying!
  
  Stay turned on that author rank article as it is a great way to help confirm to google you are a real person and to link content you release with a public profile as well as getting better results in the search engines.
  
  Cheers
  
  Tim
http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka

Just a quick comment to let you know that I’ve added a new article about protecting your content.

Check it out below.

http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/google/google-authorship-program-more-web-traffic/

Cheers

Tim
http://www.memexweb.org/ Lisa Web

Possibly they infiltrated the networks, easy enough to do, they would just need to join. Then check the links they get for starters. Those blog networks are not quiet, they are advertised all over the place – can’t miss ‘em.
- http://www.overwhelmingtraffic.com/ Tim Buchalka
  
  I agree, as I mentioned in the article, if I were Google, I’d just sign up to one and see how it works and look for patterns. And you are right up until recently at least they were advertised a lot.