Google's Matt Cutts: We're Taking Action Against Buzzea, The French Link Network

Jan 29, 2014 • 8:45 am | comments (30) by twitter Google+ | Filed Under Google Search Engine Optimization
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BuzzeaLast night at around 3am EST (this morning), Google's Matt Cutts Tweeted, "Today we're taking action on a French link network that violates our quality guidelines (Buzzea)."

Buzzea has already posted a message on their site acknowledging the Google penalty and telling everyone they are closing up. The translated version reads:

This marks the end of an adventure for our team but also the end of our collaboration with thousands of publisher sites, agencies and advertisers who have given us their trust.

We have enjoyed working for 4 years, allowing bloggers to remunerate their work and influence in all areas because it is a largely underestimated by the general public but also by communication services activity.

Buzzea took offense to being called a "link network" saying, they "oppose this assertion since we never stopped wanting to keep the ethical side of sponsored articles focusing on quality and natural links created."

That being said, the French tool that was being used by SEOs to build unnatural links is now being uncovered by Google and rankings for those who participated may drop, with subsequent link notifications.

Matt Cutts said the next country on their list is Germany.

Here is Matt's tweet on Buzzea:

I find it interesting that Buzzea was quick to give up. Other networks, such as Anglo Rank promised to rebuild after their call out.

Here are some recent link networks taken down by Google:

Forum discussion at Twitter & Google+.

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Comments:

Gregory Smith

01/29/2014 01:48 pm

Be Sure To Check Out the Google Plus Discussion here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+MarkTraphagen/posts/PnCkrCcE4vy

Barry Schwartz

01/29/2014 01:49 pm

Why? I covered it all. Did I miss something?

Harsh Wardhan Singh

01/29/2014 01:56 pm

About Germany Matt said after he has been asked to take action against some networks that are going wild. Lols. And this time Matt's tweet was very simple unlike the few he posted previously with a sarcastic touch.

Gregory Smith

01/29/2014 02:02 pm

Nope, you hit it on the head! :) Thanks Barry!

Some guy

01/29/2014 02:50 pm

google looking for more money before end of $$$ year. Matt Cutts tell us "fairy tales" to hide their extremely BAD monopolization actions. Google - you even can find wikipedia, amazon and youtube with us. But nothing more...

Subhash Prajapati

01/29/2014 03:11 pm

Yes, google looking for more money..........

Philipp Kloeckner

01/29/2014 03:26 pm

ACTUALLY, Matt Cutts planned to tackle France and Germany at the SAME time - it's just the french network surrendered and shut down before Google could penalize them...

Barry Schwartz

01/29/2014 03:27 pm

How do you know that?

Some Other Guy

01/29/2014 03:44 pm

I find it very interesting that they're so proud to publicly out these sites but when it comes to WSJ calling Google to ask about the Expedia situation their response is that "it doesn't comment on the search rankings of specific companies". http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304027204579335124135497790?KEYWORDS=expedia

Jay

01/29/2014 03:59 pm

Does anyone know the biggest german link network?

Rem

01/29/2014 03:59 pm

Buzzea announced it http://www.buzzea.com/communique.php

James

01/29/2014 04:19 pm

What makes it interesting? They are two separate things. One is commenting on a site's rank, the other is commenting on a link network that is against Google's rules. I see nothing interesting.

James

01/29/2014 04:20 pm

Rubbish. I find everything I need on Google, as do around 90% of searchers in the UK.

James

01/29/2014 04:20 pm

They are a business. Of course they are.

Spam Cutts

01/29/2014 04:40 pm

Can someone show us an example of a site that ranks well with a 100% natural backlink profile? where the owner has never begged, paid or exchanged any links, just worked on content and received all natural links? Just one site? should be hard should it? I mean that a no one has started, not some person in the press, an normal joe? Is a profile like that really out there because I have never seen a clean profile, have you?

Some guy

01/29/2014 05:20 pm

but not a real search engine, and they now cheating visitors telling them what they are search engine.

Philipp Kloeckner

01/29/2014 05:24 pm

was basically a joke about France' track records of surrenders, however, don't think it very far from truth. Excited about Germany. Happy to see some crap being washed away again...

Some guy

01/29/2014 05:28 pm

may be just expedia joining internet coalition in this moment??? haha

Shane Kapil

01/29/2014 06:23 pm

very interesting.. seroundtable never miss anything.

Tod

01/29/2014 06:39 pm

Another one bites the dust. And another one, And another one....

UtahDave

01/29/2014 06:43 pm

Hey guys is this new, is this semantic badging? www.yelp.com › Automotive › Body Shops‎Yelp, Inc. At the end of the breadcrumb is a grey yelp badge, that links to wikipedia? Is this semantic badging?

Some guy

01/29/2014 07:26 pm

looks like as "in-depth" articles, new service for internet association.

TED

01/29/2014 08:04 pm

Facebook

dorian

01/30/2014 12:09 am

lol. some of us got the joke ;)

Guest

01/30/2014 10:38 am

ayosdito.com.ph buy adwords ads to get famous and everywhere. Now they are famous and people come to the site naturally. They are now ranking well too. You got to be famous first before you get the ranking.

Gareth Mailer

01/30/2014 01:15 pm

It saddens me slightly that Matt seemingly takes so much pleasure out of it (maybe I'm misinterpreting it though). Don't get me wrong, I like to see spammers held to account too, but there is such a thing as being a gracious winner People are invariably going to lose jobs and income over this and while they absolutely need to evolve into a more long-term view, playing the role of the "almighty overlord" in situations such as these does nothing positive for people's impression of Google as a Company. When you strip away the industry nuances and knock down the wall (German pun intended) which divides black hat and white hat "SEOs", invariably all you will see is a whole host of people trying to earn bread.

Ben Guest

01/30/2014 01:16 pm

autotransport dot com, ranks #1 for auto transport. They seem to be the cleanest I've seen at least in this industry.

Peters Frederic

01/30/2014 09:16 pm

I am looking for an official PR from Google concerning Buzzea. I can not believe Google communicate on such a big problem with just a tweet. Nowhere I have read that there are sanctions against the publishers who benefit the first from the system. Penalizing Buzzea is not solving the problem enirely. This is not good job from Matt Cutts !

PM Fiorini

01/31/2014 06:18 pm

Nope. Have not seen one yet by "average joe".

PM Fiorini

01/31/2014 06:19 pm

GestapoLink

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