During the past weekend a large number webmasters and website owners have fallen foul to Google’s continued war on ‘black-hat’ link building techniques. Over the past weekend Google has informed people that an unspecified German and also an unnamed European network have been affected. This action has resulted in many people having received the dreaded unnatural link penalty notification through Google Webmaster Tools. Google has been sending out notifications to webmasters in Europe on mass whose sites have utilised these unnamed link networks or link schemes that manipulate their rankings within Google.
Johannes Mehlem from Google tweeted on Monday morning that Google has “taken action on one European and one German linking network.” A similar message was also published in Polish by Karolina Kruszyńska reaffirming the message.
This is not the first time mass messages have been sent to webmasters through Google Webmaster Tools, with Google continuing to clamp down on unnatural link schemes globally. This is another compelling message that web site owners and SEO practitioners should review their SEO techniques and practises to ensure that they comply with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Google have also reaffirmed their stance on the utilisation of low quality guest blogging, as previously outlined by Google’s Matt Cutts. This stance on guest blogging has also now been included within Google’s Webmaster Tools guideline.
As Google continues to clamp down on unethical link building practise it is important to review the tactics of an SEO agency to ensure that their techniques are not illicit and could severely damage the long term success of your website.
