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

Last 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.

@gaberivera today France; Germany soon.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) January 29, 2014

Here is Matt's tweet on Buzzea:

Today we're taking action on a French link network that violates our quality guidelines (Buzzea).

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) January 29, 2014

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:

• Google's Matt Cutts Calls Out Nailing Another Link Network
• Google Penalizes Another Link Network: SAPE Links
• Google Crushes Ghost Rank 2.0, A Russian Link Network
• Backlinks.com: The Next Link Network Penalized By Google
• Google's Matt Cutts: Text Link Ads Link Sellers Targeted
• Google Penalizes Blog Networks, Did SEOs Use It To Hurt Competitors?
• Beware: Google To Squash Another Link Network Very Soon

Forum discussion at Twitter & Google+.