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Friday afternoon, I broke the news at Search Engine Land that Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, announced they just targeted yet another link network. This one is named Anglo Rank, which you can learn more about at Black Hat World.
How did Matt announce the demise of this link network? Basically by mocking it:
"There are absolutely NO footprints linking the websites together" Oh, Anglo Rank.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) December 6, 2013Is Anglo Rank alone in this network attack? No, Matt Cutts told me, "we've been rolling up a few" link networks in this update.
When will you see a negative impact in your rankings or see notices from Google Webmaster Tools? I suspect any day now. Matt said:
@RyanJones @mattmcgee messages can take a few days to show up in WMT, so timing of when to post can be tricky to predict :)
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) December 6, 2013I've been tracking the threads in Black Hat World and so far, no one has been complaining of a drop in Google rankings or link warnings but it may be too early.
Anglo Rank is not alone, here are some past link networks that were hit over the years:
- Google Crushes Ghost Rank 2.0, A Russian Link Network
- Google Penalizes Another Link Network: SAPE Links
- Google's Matt Cutts: Text Link Ads Link Sellers Targeted
- Your Rankings Drop Around May 15th? May Be Due To Link Networks Google Busted
- Google Penalizes Blog Networks, Did SEOs Use It To Hurt Competitors?
- Beware: Google To Squash Another Link Network Very Soon
Truth is, Google has been going after link networks well before link networks were all that popular. Even before the times of the DigitalPoint co-op link network.
Forum discussion at Twitter, Google+ and Black Hat World.
