PBN Link Filters for 2017 & Beyond

[secretsauce]

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to pick people's brains and see if anyone can share if they are aware of any filters in the G algo that might mean PBN links don't pass as much juice to help boost rankings.

Matt Diggity has mentioned how he has found new filters in his SEO testing including this one he shared on a blog post.

tl;dr the finding was wait at least 36 days after between the time you index an expired domain and link out from it

He hasn't revealed the other filters he feels he has found.

I'm currently working on a project that involves buying expired domains and rebuilding them from wayback restores then adding the link to the money site.

I have found at the moment it is more anchor text choice that makes the bigger movements up or down. However, I'd love to know if there are any issues to watch out for that the G algo is picking up on for not passing max link juice equity for the anchors.

 

[Steve Brownlie]

And now he's revealed it you probably have to wait 180 days...

That's the truth, and always has been in the 'blackhat community': once something becomes too well known it won't be true/work any more.

I've never worked with PBNs but the process for thinking about these things is the same whatever hat you're wearing. If you want to figure out the 'filters' yourself sit down for a while and ask yourself over and over for each 'thing' you're thinking of doing:

How many real domains do XYZ? Simply because if real domains do it less than a certain threshold it's 'safe and easy' to filter without causing collateral damage.

eg. How many real domains vanish for 5 years then appear back as a complete wayback clone of themselves? (just using that since you mentioned it in the OP as one of your steps).

You can then think about each one, and if a search engine could filter for it etc safely/easily. Then you can design experiments to test for the main ones.

It probably sounds like a lot of work and thought but building a PBN these days isn't for the faint of heart. Some of the people I 'know' doing it go to enormous lengths to test and tune up every detail of what ends up being a media empire in itself, and bearing little resemblance to the PBNs of old.

 

[ddasilva]

I agree with Steve here. Look at in terms of "how probably or likely is it for a real site to do XYZ?". Just a few potential filters to ponder.

• 301'ing all dead URLs back to the home page (probably 80% of PBNs do this)
• PBN only displaying full posts (no excerpts)
  
• What's the likelihood of a money site having X amount of links from other sites' home pages?
• Does the PBN rank for anything, or have any traffic going to it?
• Is the PBN domain at all related to the previous niche?
• Does the PBN have X amount of referring domains, but only 2-3 posts on the site?
• Does all the external links from the PBN come from the home page?
• Do X% of external links on PBN use commercial anchor text?

Having said that, PBNs can still work. You just might want to think about setting them up differently than what most SEOs have been doing in years past.

 

[zelch]

• Does the PBN rank for anything, or have any traffic going to it?

IF you build boring archive.org sites, most of the bullets above are solved, except the traffic question. I wonder the likelyhood of that being a filter