Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, made an announcement on Twitter early this morning that action has been taken on another link network:
Today we’re taking action on a French link network that violates our quality guidelines (Buzzea).
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) January 29, 2014
In a follow up to that tweet, Matt added in the form of a reply: “today France; Germany soon.” So expect news in the near future of a German link network being taken down.
That marks two more link networks to fall victim in Google’s ongoing crusade against websites that flagrantly violate Google’s guidelines.
Buzzea is one of the few to actually take offence to being called a link network and attempt to defend themselves. In a translated statement posted on their website they state that they “oppose this assertion since we never stopped wanting to keep the ethical side of sponsored articles focusing on quality and natural links created.”
However, in the same statement they also decided it was time to leave their business behind: “This marks the end of an adventure for our team but also the end of our collaboration with thousands of publisher sites, agencies and advertisers who have given us their trust.”
That trust Buzzea speaks of will likely result in a notification in Google Webmaster Tools very shortly, as well as a dip in rankings. It would be wise of anyone who participated in the link network to disavow the links immediately and stay far away from anything resembling a link network in the future.
