Reporting Private Blog Networks

[Tim Colling]

This is a question about reporting organic webspam, not local spam, but maybe someone can offer a suggestion.

My primary SEO competitor (in my industry niche) operates a large, very visible "private blog network", and that appears to be the primary way that they create links to their client sites.

And, they apparently haven't been caught by Google.

This is irritating, because the competitor's clients are benefiting (up to now, anyway) from that spammy practice, and my clients are not because I won't do that.

There are Google pages/forms for reporting other sorts of webspam, such as paid links, but I haven't found one for reporting PBNs. Is there one?

Thanks!

 

[Phil Rozek]

There's no specific place to report PBNs. Google uses the term "spam" as a catch-all, as far as reporting goes. So just use their generic reporting area:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en

 

[Tim Colling]

Thanks Phil!

 

[Linda Buquet]

You could also try to do a search that pulls them up, then scroll to the end of the page, click on "Send feedback"..and report it there.

Found that tip at the Google Webmaster forum when I was looking for a place for you to report spam there.

 

[Tim Colling]

Thanks, Linda!

 

[Howell]

I wouldn't waste time reporting any PBN's as they have mostly be detuned because of the vast amount of spam that's been going on for so long now.

I've always said to myself, do I want to chase ghosts - or spend time making my site the best it can be.

My .02 cents.

 

[Tim Colling]

You may be right about that. Thanks.

 

[JimFranco]

did you ever report it and did anything ever happen. I see so many pbn these days that are so obvious.

 

[JacobMaslow]

Google reviews all reports. Their primary concern is beefing up their automated detection capabilities.

Google may not take action right away and also may only de index the network without taking action against sites that are receiving links.

 

[Tim Colling]

...Google may not take action right away and also may only de index the network without taking action against sites that are receiving links.

I'm the original poster. In my case, at least, Google appears to have taken no action whatsoever.

 

[JimFranco]

I'm the original poster. In my case, at least, Google appears to have taken no action whatsoever.

thank you for the follow up

did you report the whole network ?

 

[Tim Colling]

Sorry, it's been so long that I don't remember exactly what I told them. Once it seemed to be that they didn't read it or didn't plan to take any action, I decided to drop it and move on.

Sometimes I wonder whether Google doesn't really just ignore these reports and count on most people to follow the rules for fear of being caught. (Kind of like the way that most governments really work).