GoCompare gets hit by a huge google penalty.
So the big news in SEO recently is the huge hit GoCompare have received due to their link co-op use. This behaviour is typical when these insurance affiliate sites are worth so much money, so having your site rank top for ‘insurance’ or ‘car insurance’ is worth millions.
An excellent example of extremely recent link spam can be found with moneyexpert.com, whom have almost 10 million in bound links all from the interesting digitalpoint co-op! So what can google do about this technology, which can easily provide millions of links and essentially linkbomb a site to top position?
- Penalize sites that advertise on the network, rather than the sites that run the adverts.
- Modify the google robot to include a link positioning rank, so that if the link is in the footer of the page it has less value than elsewhere on the page. Studies into a website based on something like crazyegg could help.
- Stiffer penalties for companies that engage in blackhat seo.
Ironically, the digitalpoint co-op is clearly related to the ‘greyhat’ social link directory spammer that I developed although considerably more powerful..
January 31st, 2008 at 11:53 am
Penalize sites that advertise on the network, rather than the sites that run the adverts.
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Great, i’ll just add all my competitors to the network! You cannot be penalised for links pointing to your site, or people have a weapon!
January 31st, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Yeah, I see your logic. However there are multiple examples of blackhat competitive spoofing anyway within SEO. But you’re right - that isn’t a possibility.