Can Penguins Fly?

[deepsand]

I suspect that some didn't really need my efforts, and that many of those who might will never come to understand that Google's just running in circles.

[chrisJumbo]

No Penguins can not fly.
Spammers will not stop... many are too stupid to realize that their efforts are wasted.
And dumb butts will continue to pay link posters...

Spammers continue to Spam because it does work for them. They don't care about the carp. One site gets knocked out they just move to the next. Probably even use the same spun, scraped content.

And dumb butts will keep buying links for the same reason.

The biggest change I have seen is the onslaught of people believing in negative SEO and probably partaking of it.

[chrisJumbo]

So I logged into my WMT and two sites are sending 35K in links to my home page. I looked at the sites and currently they are pending deletion in Go Daddy.

I typed the following in Google: site:discoverirarates.info jumbocdinvestments.com and site:cdinterestrateguide.info jumbocdinvestments.com. I did "repeat the search with the omitted results included."

I have not received an unnatural link notification but as our homepage seems to be the one drastically affected on our site and not the internal pages makes me wonder. Now, is this because of Penguin or Panda. Do you guys think this was a negative SEO attack? Very, very disheartening.

I did use the Penguin form. Just not sure if that was the right place.

Now, most people would have no idea where to even start looking. How can these updates be helping the little guy?

Thoughts?

[C0ldf1re]

So I logged into my WMT and two sites are sending 35K in links to my home page... Thoughts?

The same sort of thing, but more so...
I bought a new domain, and put up a skeleton test website. I did not even submit the site to the search engines. I created not a single link to that site. I told nobody about it. It should have had zero visibility on the web.
It has a toolbar PR of 2. Other sites that I have never heard of are reported as linking to it, but when I look at those sites I can see no links.
Here it is: Almost empty test site with no SEO at all
One explanation is that I have finally ruined my brain with alcohol, and can no longer correctly perceive reality.
I cannot think of the other explanation!
Does anybody know better than me?

[LD]

Other sites that I have never heard of are reported as linking to it, but when I look at those sites I can see no links.
Does anybody know better than me?

My experience has been that I've also found a good number of links pointing to sites, that actually do not exist (the links, that is). They are accounted for in WMT and other tools, but further analysis or when manually checked, a good number of backlinks do not exist. Those links may have existed at one time, but the instance of those links seems to linger on even when gone.

Having said that, I have not constantly checked to see if and when any of those "ghost" links (for lack of a better term) finally drop off the radar.

CJ's issue is a different one, but as per Steve G's explanation in another thread, the instance of a mega number of backlinks can happen very easily and in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

---------- Post added at 02:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:47 PM ----------

So I logged into my WMT and two sites are sending 35K in links to my home page.
Thoughts?

Assuming you have been following/checking your link profile more than just periodically, when did the bulk of those links appear?

[chrisJumbo]

I noticed the one site about a month ago and didn't think much about it. The other site not sure. Just seems odd that our home page is the one primarily taking the hit and 35000 spammy links pointing to it, ghost or otherwise.

[PhilipDunn]

Fortunately, most of my sites actually received a bump from Penguin, except for one site. And that site that lost ranking, I have done very little link building on.

[C0ldf1re]

Fortunately, most of my sites actually received a bump from Penguin...

Yes, mine too. Google must think that we are white-hatters.

[leonstreete]

Yes, mine too. Google must think that we are white-hatters.

I had a mix of sites up and some staying the same, whilst others were hit, but on sites where clients had not updated content and they offered very little beyond product promotion.

[collusion]

Most of my marketing includes getting backlinks to articles, so I would say that I have a huge amount of backlinks that are not simply anchor text abusive for keywords. When I market a site, I tend to install a Wordpress blog and post original articles to it. I then promote each article through CommentLuv and social media sharing. Later on, my posts sometimes get snatched. All of this ads to the backlinks and allows for a natural diversification. Those marketers that spent most of their time only posting a bunch of keyword focused links are the ones being hit by Penguin hard.