All of the above sites have been re-ranked by Google for some reason, and while many are speculating that it has to do with buying text links, many seem to think it may have something to do with the excessive interlinking by many blog networks. (more sites re-ranked are here and here)
This month, we are seeing networks who links among themselves penalized.
The only clear change appears to be among large scale blog networks and similar link farms, where each site in the network provides hundreds of outgoing links on each page of the blog to other blogs in the network, in some cases creating tens, even hundred of thousands of cross links.
I suppose that inflammatory talk will impress some readers, but to me it just sounds sad. Is the practice of linking to other sites in your network bad? Um, no. Should it be rewarded by Google? Um, also no. So, in my opin, Google has not really penalized these sites, but really corrected their algorithm.
But honestly, what is up with TechCrunch? You’d think someone there had a beef with b5…
Darren (Problogger) and Brian (Copyblogger) certainly don’t need the network links to retain their pagerank, and their search results indicate that they still have all the trust they always have had.
This is purely a cosmetic change, or to prevent passing of juice – I am fairly sure I pass less juice than before, and maybe it also affects my rankings a little on some more competitive terms.
Heh, I only rank 10th for dofollow now
I did feel a twitch of the same sentiment when I read Duncan’t post, but I had also been saying the same to the B5 guys in the past. That is one of the reasons they committed to changing their blogroll to link only to related sites.
You now work for Yahoo. How many of the links on the front page are related? How many are sitewide?
The Yahoo Directory sells links for $300 – is that more legitimate than my 9 paid reviews many of which are 3000 words or more?
There are some real problems with the logic
I’ve honestly never thought paid links shouldn’t be acceptable, but then I’m not a google algorithm generator so they don’t take my opin into account. 😉
I suppose Google could be shooting themselves in the foot with this one, but then who really has the power to do anything about it? They essentially are a monopoly when it comes to search (no offense to my employer intended), and you either rank well in Google or you don’t exist. It’s that simple. Webmasters have to suck it up and take whatever they dish out.
Sucks though…
I’d note, that despite your suggestions otherwise, that I gave no opinion as to whether Google’s actions were good, bad or otherwise, I simply reported the fact that blogs and websites that engage in heavy cross linking have lost page rank. Indeed, I have made no mention of any of my previous affiliations nor have I checked to see whether this applies in that case (which I’m legally bound to not do), the only example I cited was with Weblogs Inc, and again, I made no observations other than to note what had happened. I’m interested as to how reporting facts is some how inflammatory? are you suggesting that this didn’t happen, or perhaps should not be reported?
Link farms is an unfair description. When someone uses such inflamatory language, what are we supposed to think?