LINK FARM & EXACT MATCH ANCHOR TEXT: Google, Y U NO DO ANYTHING?!?

[HurricaneK8]

This little (ok, BIG) piece of spam has been driving me NUTS!

A client has 2 websites for real estate services, one we were working on and then another he created for a company to "prove" they could get better rankings. Obviously the duplicate website effected our rankings as well, and we're fighting to claw back the rankings from this site... We're currently A in the maps for "Georgetown Real Estate" but struggling to get the other keywords he WAS ranking for back into the maps.

BUT, what's more annoying is this other SEO company is ranking the new website organically using link farming techniques that Google went ape poop on a long time ago.
Here is the ahref link profile: https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains/?target=www.move2day.ca

So they're all exact match anchor text links, and they own a bunch of websites they're linking to a bunch of clients from (Open Site Explorer) to pass page rank.

Here is the webspam message I reported with, along with 2 others in our company:
"AgentLocator offers SEO services:

http://www. agentlocator. ca/c/real-estate-seo/overview/

These domains are part of a link network, on which Move2Day.ca is getting inbound "dofollow" links:

www. villas-in-javea .com/Villas For Sale
www. sarasotareal-estate .com/Sarasota Real Estate
www. va-estates .com/VA Real Estate

EDIT BY LINDA: Had to remove 16 additional live links & edit those 3 to make them NOT LIVE.

Most of the above domains have a map at the base of the page with "dofollow" links to the Agent Locator SEO clients. There are also keyword links on internal pages of the sites.

Most of the .COM domains are owned by Dmitri Kaminski, one of the principals of Agent Locator. We can't tell the owners of the .CA domains from the WhoIs info -- but judging from the identical architecture of those sites, the identical outbound link target domains, and the fact that they are all hosted with the hosting company FortressITX, it is reasonable to assume that they are owned by the same person.

The domains were registered in January, February and August 2013.

The Move2Day.com website is ranking very well for phrases like "Georgetown Real Estate", "Georgetown Homes for Sale", etc. in Google.ca and we are confident that this placement is a result of this link network."

Is there anything else anyone can do? This seems a little rediculous that in 2014 these tactics are still working.

<img title="spammyplace" src="http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/spammyplace.jpg" alt="" width="15%" />​

 

[Linda Buquet]

Kate just had to do a lot of editing on your post to try to get those top 3 so they would not show live and delete all the other links.

Those 19 live links could hurt us. Google does not like it when you link out to a bad neighborhood and if that's a link network it is. Plus the whole post is about link networks and link farms then with all those links G spider could think we are promoting one or something. Just made me nervous.

So I stripped 3 to be not live, just to give folks that want something to look at and had to delete the other 16. Listing them all was not really needed to give folks the idea.

 

[HurricaneK8]

Opps! Ok. I just copy & pasted when I had in my records. I'll remember that for next time.

 

[Linda Buquet]

No worries Kate.

Have a great 4th of July!

 

[Eric Rohrback]

It actually looks like the link-building started a relatively short time ago... You might be thinking now that the link farm technique is working for them, but give it a few months. It's possible that Google hasn't crawled some of the new pages, and it appears some of these sites have relatively thin content (total # of posts). This could all be playing into a temporary boost, which soon could crash down on them.

"Temporary Boost" in SEO terms could be a few weeks, or it could be a few months. It takes a while to really understand what's happening here. My advice is to stay the course with acceptable and legit promotion methods, and don't fall into the trap of thinking this could work long term. It wont. I've seen this happen before.

If you're selling on rankings, you've set yourself up for a losing battle. Show the client the sites you're getting them placed on are actually generating real traffic and helping their bottom line (track conversions and sales). Rankings aren't the end-all. Show how you're helping their business grow.

Hope that help

 

[Blake Denman]

Totally agree that this is a link farm, and reporting it all what you can do.

Most algo updates only effect certain spammy queries. Like the PayDay Loan update effected some 5-6% of total search queries in the US. Penguin went after link networks. Little link networks like this can live for years without getting caught. It sucks, but that's the reality of it. I have a couple of clients' competitors that are doing the exact same thing, buying an exact match domain, "blogging," and adding keyword rich anchor text in each post.

Focus on user experience and great content to tell a compelling story. Long form content is making a big comeback. Use ubersuggest to find synonyms to include in the copy.

 

[HurricaneK8]

Thanks guys, I hate waiting....

Unfortunately the client has already left as the link farm is working, and since it knocked out the website we were working on (the new site was ultimately a duplicate site), there was nothing we could do for the client.

I'm going to continue to track it though and see how long it takes Google to take action.

 

[HurricaneK8]

UPDATE:
The link farm continues to work and they now rank #3 organic for "City + Real Estate". It really stinks! I hope the upcoming penguin update will shut it down... but I'm not holding my breath!

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I didn't do a deep dive into this but you have to realize that not all of those links are working for them. Only a select few are I would imagine and they have escaped so far.

However, depending on how intense their anchor text profile is, I doubt they survive the next Penguin update.

Google only slaps spammy linkers when an iteration of Penguin runs.

It's been over a year since Penguin last hit. All signs point to one coming before the end of the year though. Let us know if they survive it when it happens.

 

[HurricaneK8]

The website is an exact copy of the one that was ranking before on page 2, and the only difference is the links... So I would say the links are definitly working for them!!! We removed many of them from the post here, so Google didn't think we were part of the link network.

Although I think Panda will hopefully notice these links, you'd think the webspam report work work as well. Google CAN apply manual action between algo. updates, which is way many reports have been filed and what we were hoping for.

 

[HurricaneK8]

Looks like Penguin took care of devaluing the links.

It sucks that the web spam team couldn't take care of things manually before waiting so long for the update. I realise that they can't tend to every single web spam report... but it's still frustrating when blackhat networks still work and we have to wait for an update (and lose a client) before everything is set right. We've emailed the client to let them know and hopefully we looks like the knight in shining armor now

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Looks like Penguin took care of devaluing the links.

It sucks that the web spam team couldn't take care of things manually before waiting so long for the update. I realise that they can't tend to every single web spam report... but it's still frustrating when blackhat networks still work and we have to wait for an update (and lose a client) before everything is set right. We've emailed the client to let them know and hopefully we looks like the knight in shining armor now

I hope so too!