12-Minute Affiliate
  • Home
  • /
  • Blog
  • /
  • Google Penalizes Private Blog Networks – What Next?

Google Penalizes Private Blog Networks – What Next?

September 25, 2014

minutes read

Google penalizes Private blog networkOkay! Its another slap from Google and this time round it is on Private Blog Networks.

For people who do not know what a Private Blog Network (PBN in short) is, it is a networks of blogs created by a person and hosted on different servers or, servers with different IPs which is then used to create backlinks to their primary blog or, moneysite.

Using PBNs to create high PR backlinks is an SEO technique that most of the big SEO marketers have been doing for quite some time. It was just a matter of time that Google came down on them. Considering the kind of crackdowns that they had done over the past couple of years, this was expected.

While a lot of people argue about the genuinity of the system and that PBNs are a legit form of building backlinks, I have always had my argument against PBNs. How can backlinks created by such method be called a legit backlink?

The entire objective of creating backlinks is to rewards sites that have content worthy of linking to which prompts other high authority sites to link to them thus publicizing it further. Creating backlinks using Private Blog Networks was gaming the system.

Google Penalizes Private Blog Networks

Over the last couple of days, hundreds and thousands of blog owners were sent manual action notifications from Google. These notifications had a mention of “thin content” as a reason for penalty. This was also seen under the manual actions tab in Webmaster tools by a lot of bloggers.

google penalty

While we can debate the reason for the penalty, it is worthwhile to notice that a lot of these blogs had extremely good and valuable content. It makes it all the more suspicious, if it really was a thin content penalty.

PBN Penalty

But going a little deeper into the issue and with the number of blogs that were hit and the bloggers who reported being hit, all led to just one place, rather one thing that was in common. It was “Private Blog Networks”.

All of these bloggers who came out with the details of the penalty that they had got were part of various private blog networks.

Spencer Hawks from Niche Pursuits was one of the blogger hit by the “Thin Content” Penalty. Perrin’s aPennyShaved.com was another site that was hit. And surprisingly both of these sites had some valuable content on them. That takes us to the conclusion that it is not actually “thin content” that has led to the penalty.

What Next after the Penalty on PBN Sites?

So, the next obvious question is, does that mean PBN sites are dead?

It is a little too early to answer that question, but from what we have seen in the past, the relevance and importance of private blog networks is sure to go down when it comes to SEO and backlinks.

SEO masters like Glen Allsopp from ViperChill, whom I closely are sure to come out with solutions and suggestions on what to do now. But in the meantime, it only makes sense to keep yourself away from Private Blog Networks.

I have never believed in shady SEO techniques. If your PBNs were actual sources of good and valuable information and that is how you were generating those links, then we could have safely said that this was not right on the part of Google. At the same time, I am also confident of the fact that Google would not have done that at the first place.

I personally feel that these updates from Google are towards building a better internet and am completely in support for them. What’s your opinion about this penalty from Google.

Do you agree with the reason why Google has penalized private blog networks?

Comment below and let us know.

If you want to know how to be safe from PBN Penalties, Click here.

About the author 

Dilip Kumar  -  

My name is Dilip. I am a fan of the internet and love the many opportunities that the world wide web provides. If used constructively , the internet can give you an opportunity to lead a life free of the 9-5 treadmill and will be able to give more time to your family members.
Read about internet entrepreneurship at my blog.

My name is Dilip. I am a fan of the internet and love the many opportunities that the world wide web provides. If used constructively , the internet can give you an opportunity to lead a life free of the 9-5 treadmill and will be able to give more time to your family members. Read about internet entrepreneurship at my blog.

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}
>