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Recently there has been a lot of concern in the SEO space about a site named Updowner.com. Scan through some of these threads and you will see the concern.
In short, SEOs and webmasters are noticing tons of links to their sites from this site and it concerns these webmasters mostly due to the unnatural link warnings being sent out to webmasters.
Google's John Mueller went on record saying Google doesn't penalize sites for being linked to by Updowner.com, but rather Google simply ignores any of the links from Updowner.com.
John said in a Google Webmaster Help thread:
Just to follow up here -- for what it's worth, we do ignore the links from updowner.com.
I don't believe I've ever seen a Googler publicly say they ignore links from a site. They might have but I don't remember. I know they do ignore many links from many sites but not sure if they've ever specifically called out a site.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Comments:
Martin Macdonald
06/29/2012 12:52 pm
I'll bet they ignore links from digitalpoint as well ;)
Barry Schwartz
06/29/2012 12:59 pm
Probably from my site also. :)
Anti-SEO
06/29/2012 01:29 pm
Why care ? Are you selling links ? )
Anti-SEO
06/29/2012 01:31 pm
Anyway good promotion for this website. Well done guys )
ScottyMack
06/29/2012 02:01 pm
Good to know. All of my websites have thousands of them from that website.
Chase Anderson
06/29/2012 02:32 pm
Yes, >>>>> Sponsored Links. and I approve!
Barry Schwartz
06/29/2012 02:37 pm
http://www.seroundtable.com/links
Andy
06/29/2012 02:48 pm
The problem is that they have to announce this because of the hysteria created by the seo industry (that was initially ignited by google of course) about being penalized due to incoming links beyond anyones control. They employ a brigade of highly intelligent harvard-style graduated engineers who should be able to find a pattern that ignores any dofollow links from such type of sites.
Keri Morgret
06/29/2012 04:21 pm
A rep from UpDowner also pointed to the FAQ at http://www.updowner.com/faq#q7 for how to block the updowner bot and how to get those links removed.
Milania
06/29/2012 04:56 pm
Barry, I just want to say that I've never received any type of warning whatsoever, including unnatural link related, and I've been hit severely with each Penguin flipper on two particular sites. So I suppose that my point is that warnings aren't always sent out or maybe there is more to the Penguin. I have also noted that both the Panda and the Penguin are black and white. That might be a slap to the Black Hat/White Hat SEO. Google appears to enjoy shrouding itself in mystery, creating things with hidden meanings.
Anti-SEO
06/29/2012 05:27 pm
But this is not about the links. You just can afford to ignore Google. It could be links, titles or whatever. You built enough authority to do as you wish. This should be pointed to all these Google haters, who built nothing and blame Google for this.
cutey
06/30/2012 08:10 pm
Hmm don't have any links from them
Webstats Art
07/01/2012 08:15 am
I very much doubt that Harvard graduates would be interested in doing that kind of job.
Gregory Smith
07/01/2012 03:46 pm
I'm in the canoe with you, my friend. I too, as well as a brigade of our (RxSEO's) happy SEO customers have NEVER received an unnatural link warning. During the "fain at heart" Penguin depressants, and Panda missionaries, we stood firm. This is the result of a quality SEO company, one who is not only white hat, but provides their customers with rock solid results, that stand the test of time. Those of you spending your time reading articles (low quality - 5o words) such as these, should be putting more time into working on your site(s) to assure that upon Google's next site update (Algo refresh), you won't have to take so many Asprin. In my opinion, Google as a search engine whole, should not release information, unless it is released to the public as a whole. Who is to say stalking Google employees, such as those similar to John, Matt and fred, isn't black hat in itself?.
Gregory Smith
07/01/2012 03:47 pm
They should, DP has become 99% black hat. When do you ever hear kind words about DP anymore? :[
Alan
07/01/2012 10:58 pm
Low Quality! that is a bit harsh. Although yeah Barry has never really been verbose.
Kaushalam
07/02/2012 07:28 am
Let me check my site's backlinks
...
07/02/2012 10:54 am
feel free
Mags
07/02/2012 01:13 pm
Ha! It was just a week ago, when I contacted webmasters from updowner.com to delete all incoming links to one of my sites! Within a few weeks the amount of links coming from them increased from 2 to almost 500. It's good to know that Google ignore that anyway though...
Mags
07/02/2012 01:14 pm
just to confirm, I haven't received any type of warning from Google re that, those links looked just a bit weird...
stan
07/04/2012 05:44 am
Hello, I checked this updowner site and I couldn't find any backlings to any sites that they have (except one on each site details page), so I don't understand where is the problem. They just download some meta info form sites. I also didn't get any warning message from google.
Matthew Taylor
07/04/2012 03:25 pm
I saw those threads on GM forum as well. But i had a client who recieved 22,000 links from them and the same week their rankings tanked. I managed to get them removed (go through their hosting company instead of using their site or their suggested method) and within a week of the bulk of the being removed my client site went up again. That's one hell of a coincidence if Google are ignoring them. I was also contacted by someone else who did the same and got the same results.
lucky joe
07/17/2012 12:48 pm
Luckily updowner is going down the drain, good riddance: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/updowner.com#
Lord of SEO
08/08/2012 04:44 am
Thanks for the tip, so they have black and white lists interesting!
jane doe
03/07/2013 02:45 pm
Reviving this thread. A year ago I asked updowner to remove my links, which they did. I prompty implemented their robots.txt solution. One year later they're at it again. Check your website by Googling: site:updowner.com yourdomain