Penguin 5 confirmed Oct 4th

The "no SEO at all" bit confirms some suspicions I have had for a while as I have a site which ranks really well on Google which has had no external SEO done at all.

Another of my sites has had an extraordinary number of orders overnight which is unusual for a Friday night but I can't check the rankings until I get onto a PC. Interesting.
 
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The "no SEO at all" bit confirms some suspicions I have had for a while as I have a site which ranks really well on Google which has had no external SEO done at all.

I have been noticing for a good while now that 'less is more' with regards to obtaining decent serp rankings but it is still generally hard to obtain decent rankings for competitive phrases with no SEO at all.
 
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If you've being performing SEO against Google guidelines then you should be worried. Exact match anchor text in links are being targeted, time to download your back link profile and get a nice removal email in place.
 
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I am a bit shocked some people are commenting in this thread without even knowing what Pengiun is. Not to insult anyone, of course.

To make it clear - this algorithm targets unnatural link profiles, as welikepr said. Discussing on the way to prevent your rankings from falling down, if you have violated google's guidelines, is a whole new story that will need a bit more writing.

My websites have not been affected, but the strange things is some sites with 20k spam links from .pl domains rank top 10 for strong search queries. Google cannot beat spam? I certainly think so.
 
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Our website has dropped significantly but not enough to suggest its any kind of penalty.

It just seems that our site has either been devalued or other sites have been upped in their 'value'.

Quite possibly the links that were keeping us up their previously have now been discounted.
 
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Penguins are bad if you've been building links in bulk, or building links on sites with no editorial control. If you can pick up a link instantly, free, with no one reviewing what you're placing or where, then think twice about picking up that link.

If you can go to fiverr.com and get 5,000 or 10,000 submissions, submits, links, backlinks, or similarly termed offers, where the links have been blasted, smashed, crushed, destroyed or somehow committed acts of violence against Google and search rankings in general, then walk away.

Penguins don't like xrumer, scrapebox, article robots, demons (ultimate or bookmarking) or other autospamming tools, and the output they generate.

Penguins don't low quality, high volume links, whether they are bookmarks, blog comments, forum profiles, wiki entries, article sites, press releases, or whatever other link du jour there may be.

Penguins particularly hate blog networks where you can buy 20 posts for $50, whether they are Russian (like SAPE) or western. If it's in the BST section on BlackHatWorld, WarriorForum or similar, and you can buy 20 or 30 posts on "authority" sites for less than a tank of fuel for the family grocery getter, odds are good that the penguins will find and ruin the gains from these posts as fast as you can burn that tank of fuel.

Penguins are great little beasties, though a bit like chickens with rather small brains and single minded focus. So, please be aware of what they like and what they don't, please don't feed the penguins.
 
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Penguins don't like xrumer, scrapebox, article robots, demons (ultimate or bookmarking) or other autospamming tools, and the output they generate.

Interesting, I'd like to know more - do you have a source of reference that states that the google algo can tell how a link/article has been submitted, manually or otherwise?

Surely all the tools that you mention are only as good (or bad) as the person using them, and the output they produce would vary depending on the content loaded into them and the settings used?

Ironically, and as I'm sure you know, some of those tools (and others), are actually useful for recovering from algo penalties.

Just sayin.
 
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that states that the google algo can tell how a link/article has been submitted?

I'm sure you know the answer to this one lies in the tears being shed by thousands of website owners and online marketers.

Visit the forums and read the shock and horror. Look at the backlink profiles. The source is purely anecdotal. Just as I see the sun rise every morning for a few thousand days, then conclude the sun will continue to rise, so too will do I see the many Penguin victims and their backlink profiles which were created by autospamming tools.

I do not believe creating spam via xrumer or scrapebox is an effective recovery tool for those having been penalised, period. If you think so, you're well down the wrong path.

Advocating people spam as a way of promoting or repairing their situation is doing them a great dis-service and potentially opening yourself up to a ton of liability. Doing something the wrong way is not the way, period.
 
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I'm sure you know the answer to this one lies in the tears being shed by thousands of website owners and online marketers.

Visit the forums and read the shock and horror. Look at the backlink profiles. The source is purely anecdotal. Just as I see the sun rise every morning for a few thousand days, then conclude the sun will continue to rise, so too will do I see the many Penguin victims and their backlink profiles which were created by autospamming tools.

Ahh, ok, so you don't have anything to cite, your statement was solely based on your own perception of things, not hard facts?:D

Just because you see lots of people on various forums complaining that the way they use tools for link building has got them penalised, does that mean that the tool will inherently cause the same outcome for everyone, regardless of how they use it?

On the forums I see lots of people who haven't used tools on their sites complaining that they have suffered losses due to google updates, does that mean that the same is true for manual link building as well then?

At the end of the day, you could just as easily tank a site manually building links if you don't know what you're doing, it just might take a bit longer.

I do not believe creating spam via xrumer or scrapebox is an effective recovery tool for those having been penalised, period. If you think so, you're well down the wrong path.

I agree, using scrape box or xrumer to spam links directly at your site to dilute your anchor text ratios could be a bad idea, but what about possibly using them to help index any potentially useful links that are already pointing at your site?

Advocating people spam as a way of promoting or repairing their situation is doing them a great dis-service and potentially opening yourself up to a ton of liability.

I'm not advocating people spam or otherwise to promote or repair their situation, just that they should consider all the options, as trying to manually link build your way out of some penalty situations might not be the best move ROI wise.

Also, liability isn't an issue for me as I only do SEO on my own sites.;)

Doing something the wrong way is not the way, period.

As far as Google is concerned, there is no right or wrong in my book, just risk and reward. - They don't care about my business, so why should I care about theirs?

Sometimes the 'Right' way might be to go about things the way that you are suggesting, and other times not, IMO it just depends on the returns - after all this is business.

BTW I'm not interested in getting into a white hat vs black hat debate, as it's been done to death, and I personally don't believe in either.:)
 
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does that mean that the tool will inherently cause the same outcome for everyone...?

Dishrags don't cause powderburns.

Pigs don't make chicken nuggets.

Arguing for the sake of arguing is pointless.

There are legit uses for scrapebox, but blasting out mass comments isn't one of the sane ways of doing sustainable link building.

If you're going to use blackhat tools, admit that to your clients before undertaking the work and let the field of online marketing retain a bit of whatever dignity it once had intact. But please don't confuse people and try to get them to believe that somehow you can turn spam into pheasant under glass.
 
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Google can't tell HOW a link was made, then again they don't have to. They will just deal with something regardless of whether someone has spent 10 minutes or a nanosecond via auto tools. :)

There is information online to back up most of what was posted by webgeek though. do a search for some terms and John Mu . he mentioned about article links and nofollow etc in the webmaster help forums and google hangouts.
 
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Dishrags don't cause powderburns.

Pigs don't make chicken nuggets.

Arguing for the sake of arguing is pointless.

There are legit uses for scrapebox, but blasting out mass comments isn't one of the sane ways of doing sustainable link building.

If you're going to use blackhat tools, admit that to your clients before undertaking the work and let the field of online marketing retain a bit of whatever dignity it once had intact. But please don't confuse people and try to get them to believe that somehow you can turn spam into pheasant under glass.

I don't know about pigs, dishrags and chicken nuggets, but I think that perhaps it might be better if we just agree to disagree, as you're clearly not reading my posts properly, and also starting to insinuate that I'm saying things that I'm not. :)
 
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