Although Matt Cutts claims that this is an algorithm change and does not involve any human review of individual websites - this is not true. They went after specific guys who sold links on their splog farms, but those who didn't are up and running. A lot of people who hired "SEO experts" were burned just because the expertise of those "experts" was buying links on said splog farms.
The thing is that google's algorithm looks like this (http://imgur.com/XxhZg) and the real "SEO experts", the black hat guys, run circles around it. If you doubt that just look at the results of your search queries. See any spam?
I've built a blog in 2005 which I basically abandoned in 2007. That blog was scraped and its content republished by a few BH guys who didn't bothered to remove links pointing to my original blog which resulted that today my blog has over 75% of its links coming from the splog farms. I'm not talking about a few links here and there. I have over 40000 of those and yet I have no warnings in GWMT and the blog ranks #1 for its main keyword.
If you're running an online business avoid hiring "SEO experts", they are not just useless they are dangerous.
So, how can you get hurt by some asshole?
First, he can buy links on the splog farms already penalized by google. Second, he can create extremely transparent splog farm and link to your site. (by transparent I mean autogen content, no keyword variations in anchor text, trackback spam, ...) Third, he can just "xrumer blast" you out of google index.
I believe that the approach google took recently will get a lot of small business (and webmasters) hurt, but it will have almost no effect on black hatters. Why? Because, with all being said and done, the only thing that really counts in SEO is the number of links and the BH guys are masters at creating those. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb)
Google screwed it up big time by making negative SEO possible, but I doubt they'll change their approach. I doubt that they even care about it.
They have so many links from various sources that any effort at generating enough "bad links" would be virtually unnoticeable. Other than that, they don't care about their rankings. I mean, would you go to google.com (or bing.com) to find a search engine by typing "search engine"?
You can have a few laughs by doing a google bomb, but that's it. You can't hurt google with negative SEO.
I'll bet you don't even realize it's spam. Do a search for something like 'water heater reviews' and several of those links on the front page will ultimately send you to an affiliate site or zip submit. Spam.
No matter how well designed or "active" websites may appear, if its only function is to send you to some affiliate offer - it's spam. The best of them are very good at faking legit websites (even having an active "community" engaged in "discussion"). They are extremely good at faking normal human activity and I don't see the end to it. There's virtually nothing you can do that a script can't do also.
>if its only function is to send you to some affiliate offer - it's spam //
I don't think this definition is quite right.
A site can be good and still have as its raison d'etre referring you to a product manufacturer. After all any sales website is doing the same thing, there's just a certain distance between affiliate sites and the manufacturer.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of affiliate sites are bogus, unhelpful and given unwarranted prevalence in SERPs; but that doesn't make them all bad. For example in the UK there are sites that offer money back on all purchases - they're affiliate sites that share the affiliate fee with the purchaser.
Monetizing your website with affiliate offers doesn't make it spam. Having no other purpose than to redirect a visitor to an offer - does. Especially if you use less than lilly white SEO techniques. Here's a nice way to put it:
Google believes that pure affiliate websites do not provide additional value for web users, especially if they are part of a program that distributes its content to several hundred affiliates. Because a search result could return multiple sites, all with the same content, they create a frustrating user experience.
I was about to say the same thing. I haven't noticed any spam in my Google search results for a while. If anything, there's less now than there used to be.
The thing is that google's algorithm looks like this (http://imgur.com/XxhZg) and the real "SEO experts", the black hat guys, run circles around it. If you doubt that just look at the results of your search queries. See any spam?
I've built a blog in 2005 which I basically abandoned in 2007. That blog was scraped and its content republished by a few BH guys who didn't bothered to remove links pointing to my original blog which resulted that today my blog has over 75% of its links coming from the splog farms. I'm not talking about a few links here and there. I have over 40000 of those and yet I have no warnings in GWMT and the blog ranks #1 for its main keyword.
If you're running an online business avoid hiring "SEO experts", they are not just useless they are dangerous.
So, how can you get hurt by some asshole?
First, he can buy links on the splog farms already penalized by google. Second, he can create extremely transparent splog farm and link to your site. (by transparent I mean autogen content, no keyword variations in anchor text, trackback spam, ...) Third, he can just "xrumer blast" you out of google index.
I believe that the approach google took recently will get a lot of small business (and webmasters) hurt, but it will have almost no effect on black hatters. Why? Because, with all being said and done, the only thing that really counts in SEO is the number of links and the BH guys are masters at creating those. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb)
Google screwed it up big time by making negative SEO possible, but I doubt they'll change their approach. I doubt that they even care about it.