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I'm a skeptic. I'm not convinced Google is some bad guy like a lot of folks are, but I'm not naive enough to think they aren't gaming their own system for their own benefit. Which makes me think this is either some kind of propaganda piece to drop people's defenses, or they got cornered because Thumbtack was being stupid.
If you have time to explore the full story, the pre-rankings, the post-rankings, etc... then Cognitive SEO has done a huge case study.
The basics is that this is some kind of local directory of sorts. You know how companies gamify their profile creation with progress bars like "You're 30% done with your profile! Do this next"? Part of their process was having you add a do-follow link to a randomized page of theirs with a very targeted anchor text. You'd get extra credits or something for the site, that was the draw. And they got caught.
Now they are scrambling to get all of the links removed. But we know, especially in THIS case, that all they need to do is show "good faith and effort" in trying, and then disavow them, essentially turning them all no-follow.
But they've kind of screwed themselves with anchor text. Or have they? When the penalty is removed, I'm willing to bet, even with all of those links going no-follow, that they will magically be restored back to full ranking capacity, quite frankly because Google owns them. Google likes to position all of it's stuff at the top, like Youtube and the recent RetailMe fiasco too.
It'll be fun to see how this plays out.
Like Mel Brooks said on Robin Hood: Men in Tights regarding "F.U.K.C.ing" (fornicating under king's consent)... "It's good to be the king!"
If you have time to explore the full story, the pre-rankings, the post-rankings, etc... then Cognitive SEO has done a huge case study.
The basics is that this is some kind of local directory of sorts. You know how companies gamify their profile creation with progress bars like "You're 30% done with your profile! Do this next"? Part of their process was having you add a do-follow link to a randomized page of theirs with a very targeted anchor text. You'd get extra credits or something for the site, that was the draw. And they got caught.
Now they are scrambling to get all of the links removed. But we know, especially in THIS case, that all they need to do is show "good faith and effort" in trying, and then disavow them, essentially turning them all no-follow.
But they've kind of screwed themselves with anchor text. Or have they? When the penalty is removed, I'm willing to bet, even with all of those links going no-follow, that they will magically be restored back to full ranking capacity, quite frankly because Google owns them. Google likes to position all of it's stuff at the top, like Youtube and the recent RetailMe fiasco too.
It'll be fun to see how this plays out.
Like Mel Brooks said on Robin Hood: Men in Tights regarding "F.U.K.C.ing" (fornicating under king's consent)... "It's good to be the king!"
