Quick Update: Although PBNs still work, they now have a history of being targeted by Google and therefore may not be the safest option. This is why we now focus on creating online businesses that are independent of SEO traffic.
Like our host Greg Nunan says at the beginning of this episode, “Boy oh boy what a week for SEO”.
Our post last Friday about de-indexed PBN sites was followed by many articles on other blogs in the SEO sphere (here, here or there for example), showing that Google’s hit on PBNs wasn’t targeted at us in particular, but rather towards PBNs in general.
Now it’s time to analyze what happened and learn from it.
Today our guest is Lynn, NoHatDigital’s in-house data analyst. Lynn has been working hard over the weekend in order to understand more precisely what triggered the de-indexation of so many PBN sites.
The info she shares is very valuable for anyone who is still planning on building up their PBN and making it safer.
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Have your sites been affected? Did you notice any patterns? Do you still trust PBNs as the main source of traffic for your websites ?
Share your thoughts in the comment section!
If you want to know if your sites have been affected by Google’s recent crackdown on PBNs you can use our Index Checker for Free by Clicking on the Link Below
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susan says:
There has been a lot of beating around the bush. Do you think that the private Rankhero network would have been hit, just by pure algo – and not because so many of the sites were compromised by a common name/gmail in both the whois records and/or the hosting. After all 60% of it survived and you would assume all the sites had similar characteristics. Over 150 sites linked to same gmail is a heck of a footprint!
Then again you guys have the data and will know if only sites with certain emails and whois were hit and ones without were not. Maybe we are jumping the gun looking for complex algorithmic patterns when a simple email is the common footprint. The public rankhero was always a target I guess because it was a Public Blog Network.
Also, it is early days but at the moment I still see a lot of sites ranking with almost exclusively PBN links – just a thought. Thanks for sharing the info.
sean says:
this is so funny, you guys and seos in general are too stupid. You have a chicken that lays golden eggs and you sell the damn chicken, stop being stupid and you’ll stop getting slapped. ~allhatdigitalnobrains
GregNunan says:
Thanks Sean, insightful comment.
Max says:
Yeah thanks for the great takeaways
sean says:
actually if you’ve paid any attention to all the “advice” on how to build pbn’s and what not and the awesome rank hero that leaves no footprints and it’s ultra secure and all that jazz.
their sites were devastated by google algo. All this talk about great unique hand written content is just mental masturbation.
No human really spent any time looking at those pbn sites, they were hit with a mathematical algo by google. There are too many sites for google to manually check.
You got slapped because [it’s your duty to learn how to not fall into these traps
1) thin content
2) high authority sites linking to crap sites; ie- thin content sites
3) sites with many pages that target singular keywords
4) sites with buying intent keywords
5) publicly available data that links you to known bad sites
6) dumb ass seo hosting or bad hosting of your sites
I can go on and on but honestly you guys will continue to look for the next shiny thing to rank #1 in google. Stop being stupid and think, if your doing what everyone else is doing your going to get what everyone else gets.
Let someone from the nohat team state publicly how much money was lost by this google algo. costs to include in the calculation.
1) price of the domains
2) cost of labor for, building out site, writing articles, etc
3) cost of hosting up until last month
three simple things, anyone from the team dare to state publicly?
GregNunan says:
Not sure how much we lost in terms of $s is at all relevant to anyone Sean. Suffice to say though, we’ve been very upfront about this, the first prominent blog to post about the PBN update in fact. Your 1 through 6 is a fair way off the mark too. 3 in particular is a fairly 2012 way to go about targeting keywords.
Nate Tsang says:
Hey Sean,
Thanks for all your thoughtful insight.
Appreciate the offer to cast your expert eye over our numbers. Here are the metrics you requested:
1) Well into the 5 figures
2) In the 5 figures
3) Our hosting costs were under 4 figures a month. They’ll probably be a bit less going forward, so that’s a plus!
Hope that helps. I don’t really understand how you can calculate how much money NoHat lost from the algo update without asking:
1) How much the money sites were earning at the time of the deindexation
2) How much asset value was lost
2) How much profit the money sites had generate in the past, and whether they had already covered the expenses you mentioned
But hey, guess that’s why you’re the business expert ;)
Ken says:
Well was that really necessary?
Mark says:
The chicken is still laying golden eggs ;-)
Matt Stack says:
Lol. Well. That was weird.
John says:
Greg great podcast with Lynn!!
very valuable i appreciate it and the fact you are aussie you get a double thumbs up!!
Barbara says:
Now that RH is shut down, will you continue selling expired domains at domain jawa?
Great podcast by the way!
GregNunan says:
That’s a question for DJ Barbara, we’re not affiliated with DJ.
Pike says:
Like Seth Godin said all good things are ruined by marketeers..I knew something like this had to happen at some point and im sure more will come from google..Im really great full for all info you guys give but at the same time every blog every forum just talks about PBNs and Google is has to do something about it..Im sure google doesnt give a f… about pnbs but they want to put all this talk to rest and for as long as we talk about this and bragging about rankings pbn produce google will go harder and harder on them..just my 2 cents
Karri says:
Great podcast.
Are you guys still committed to building out niche sites with PBN links, provided that the PBN is built well?
Alistair Cochrane says:
So we all start to improve our PBNs to make them less detectable. Eventually the only way to make them truly undetectable is to be running a real site.
But no matter how well you hide your PBN if the money site is low quality it will always be the giveaway because people would think ‘who would genuinely link to this crap’.
So we improve our money site so your PBN links look legit. We turn them into authority sites with great content.
In the end if you are running such high quality PBN’s and such high quality money sites do you end up white hat anyway?
Derek Smith says:
As far as long term for PBNs what value, if any, do you think they have as far as resale/ building other sites? I’m sure that some of them may have the ability to be resold or is it better to just drop them and move on?
GregNunan says:
I think buyers will be a bit more wary of PBN links on sites for sale now. So best to spread the link profile out.
Koen van Emden says:
Dear Greg – Lynn – Hayden – NHD team,
I want to thank you for all the great information you share on your website. I have a question regarding VPS hosting and PBN’s.
Currently I have different affiliate websites hosted at several shared service hosting providers with PBN links pointing to those affiliate websites. I would like to know if it could be a possible risk if I would decide to put all my affiliate websites (not the pbn itself) on 1 VPS with different IP’s in the same C class?
Thanks in advance for your answer!
Kind regards,
Koen van Emden
ryan says:
Analysis of what happen is too complicated. But in reality its easy to spot a pbn.