Oh man, have you guys seen this? Oh, Wait, I can't post a URL to a story here can I?

There are some guys, who did a negative link campaign against a noted "White Hat Guru", and got his keywords killed in G's SERPS... LOL

Hey Admin? Can I post the link? Please? It goes with this discussion... LOL

Please?

Tell me what I can post... His name? Who did what? Seriously, it'll be fun.

If you're talking about Dan Thies, it's already been posted and discussed in the big April update item, or maybe it was the competitor harm you post. Can't remember. But it's been done.

Dang. LOL

maybe it was the competitor harm you post

that was the one..with a link out to warrior etc..

[webmasterworld.com...]
AlyssaS #4442737

This is squarely a Google ranking issue, let them fix their own mess.

If this was the case, and Google is penalizing sites with footer links such as wordpress links. Then what about those banner builder tools that will generate a banner for a website and it has an embedded link back to the tool? I would see that to be a much bigger issue, as those tools have been around since the web started. This could even go in more of the direction of CMS tools such as Joomla or Drupal with mods that are free that have links back to the creator. This really can open up a can of worms, why can't Google just de-include the links vs having the person linking to them remove the link. This makes no sense!

Here is the solution:You put a php script in
your footers of your wordpress themes. Then you have a command server
somewhere on the internet with a csv file. When the user installs the
theme for the first time, the script contacts the command server and
downloads the csv file converting the entries into the links in your
footer. The script on the users server then dates the file on the local
machine. Then based upon a set time period set in the file refetches the
csv file from the server on a specific date. You therefore have
compelete control of the links on your entire theme network. Make it
more complex than this tho this is just a basic outline. O yah I also
built in an anti tamper mechanism so if the user changes the code in any
way it breaks everything because its a sponsored link and your work. When
Google detects bad links you change your server csv file and all the
themes update at their specified time limits. You have full control
because its your property

[edited by: Andy_Langton at 10:36 pm (utc) on Apr 27, 2012]

@Aoe2913: thank you for the proposed solution but I have to say it's a little bit too late for changing the theme: the core of the problem is that is has already been downloaded and installed, I have no way of changing an installed instance of WP theme on someone else's website. I have no intention to "control" the links, I just want them gone or their effect on my site nullified.

Come to think of it: there never was any positive effect these links had on my site, this is exactly why I almost completely forgot about them. Having seen no positive change in a long time I have assumed (wrongly) that Google is able to automatically discount links located in the footer of a template on any site whatsoever. I think it's usually talked about here at WebmasterWorld like an established fact even. And now it looks to me like the discounting of those links is not automatic (algorithmic) and requires a lot of manual work, partly by the search quality team, partly by the webmasters in who's interest it is to see these links gone.

Personally I think Matt Cutts, or someone at Google should address these concerns so we as webmasters can clean them up if Google is wanting us to vs. banning sites based on bad links. For example I had a competitor drive a ton of #*$! links back to one of my websites, does that mean I need to contact all those nasty sites and introduce myself to say PLEASE REMOVE YOUR LINK TO ME and then after that they have my personal email with more chances to get #*$! SPAM emails directly to my box. I would rather just leave those links as they are junk anyways.. Google really should of just stuck with filtering out the good vs bad ... Links are not controllable. Especially when comp goes out to Google Bowl.

@ 1script:

Sorry if I missed this, but overall, about how many links from wordpress sites are we talking about?

I know you mentioned about five or six themes, but I don't remember seeing how many people were using them?

Also, what about sending in a question to Matt cutts for his youtube videos? I think there are probably LOTS of people now who are faced with this same situation.

I would phrase it more generically, like: "I have lots of good links pointing to my home page, and lots of bad ones that I CAN'T get removed and that I am being penalized for as stated in a re-inclusion request. What should I do?"
~~~~~~~

WARNING: The following contains potentially useless advice since I haven't really thought that much about it. Read at your own risk.

I wonder if there is a way that you could nuke your homepage, yet somehow how "redirect" page rank from LEGITIMATE inbound links, but not from the wordpress footer links.

I wonder if it would be possible to create a "new" home page such as: mydomain.com/home.html and through .htaccess redirect the links you have from legitimate sites, yet serve 410 response to links from the wordpress sites.

Again, I have no idea if this is even possible, and if it were, what google bot would think? Would they think it was cloaking? After all, if they crawl a link from legitimate site A to your index page, they end up on an alternate home page. but if they crawl a link from a wordpress theme, they end up on a 410 page.

As an aside, I have seen some sites rank well that DON'T have a real index.html page. When you go to their site, the home page is something like:

mydomain.com/our-organization-name.html

I sometimes see this for non-profit organizations, where the mydomain is the acronym and the our-organization-name is the name spelled out (usually WITHOUT hyphens, I just put the hyphens in to make it easier to read in this example).

@Robert Charlton

I think the issue of these links vs other designer links is that these links are hidden. Google is big on intent. The intent here was unquestionably to deceive.

@Planet13

Sorry if I missed this, but overall, about how many links from wordpress sites are we talking about?

I know you mentioned about five or six themes, but I don't remember seeing how many people were using them?

I wonder if this is a combination of these two things. If you do something with bad intent that fails, who cares, but if it flies and you get noticed you are stuffed.

I wonder if this is a combination of these two things. If you do something with bad intent that fails, who cares, but if it flies and you get noticed you are stuffed.

I noticed that a LOT late last year. some people had me look at their sites and they seem to have been brutalized by having in-content links.

The sites were fairly obviously selling links to several other sites as well. If you browsed around the site, you would see about three or four in-content external links per page, and they were all for pretty competitive terms.

@Planet13 Re: making a non-root URL (example.com/home.html) a homepage.
I suppose it's possible. But whether or not it will be effective, it's still an open question. It is now about three weeks since I invalidated all non-homepage URL WP theme link destinations by making changes in .htaccess to return a 410 Gone on all of those URLs. The links to those URLs in my WMT have not yet started to disappear. It may be an indication that "just" 410-ing is not enough. What else can I do to make sure that the world (in this case mostly Google of course) knows that the URL does not longer exist and the link "juice" flow has to stop?
In other words, I can easily butcher the structure of the site without actually gaining anything in terms of fixing the bad links.

Also, there's a problem with "switching", as it were, "good" links to the new non-root homepage. I do have a few that are my actual on-line or off-line contacts in the industry who I can contact and ask to edit the links to the new URL. I'd say probably 75% will eventually get to it and do it. But doesn't it also mean that these links are now also "unnatural" (pardon me, "inorganic" is the term) because I have some control over them? Where is the line being drawn?

Some of those links from my contacts are also sitewide blog links, from blogroll sections in this case. I thought they are "good" links, but could it be that Google thinks those are also "inorganic" because they are also on WP blogs and also sitewide? One of the two examples of bad links was one of those blogrolls.

Regarding how many "good" links vs "bad" - I wish there was a good way to find out. Links I can see in WMTs seem to be just a tip of the iceberg. I see approx 40K WP theme links and just about twice as many coming from other sources. Which of those Google thinks are good, it turns out, is also open for a debate. But let's say all non-WP theme links are a-OK. Then my ratio of good to bad is 2/1 if I go by WMT.
If I simply Google search for the phrase "Designed by #*$!", which is the anchor text of those WP theme links, a whopping 240K+ results come up. I don't know if this number can be trusted either but there is a potential that my good/bad ratio, depending on how you count those is a depressing 1/3.


I've started a campaign of asking webmasters to remove the WP theme link and offering my help in doing so. Not surprisingly nobody responded yet. Frankly, I myself would probably discarded such a request because I would have no way of knowing if it's legit or someone is just trying to take down links to a particular site...

Anyway, I'm going to continue asking people to alter their WP themes and remove my links, all the while checking if the links to 410-ed URLs start to fall off in WMT. If they do, I will revisit the idea of moving the homepage to a non-root URL.

Cheers!

Could you:

1) Threaten to sue them if they don't remove the links? (and then follow through if they don't remove them).

2) Go after their hosting/domain provider with the same threat?

How bizarre is that?
How do we get a SEO free world?
If GWT sends out messages "you got a penalty and only can surround it if you jump out of the window".

@1script, why don't you just send out mass emails and tell them that the script is now branding free without any cost and give a instruction how to remove the link?
Many people even pay for a branding free script, so most theme users would be happy if they can remove your links.

Dumb question:

Has anyone flat out asked Matt Cutts about the recent surge of "negative SEO" and what he plans on doing about it?

Via an interview in real life, or via his blog in the comment section or through Google Plus?

I know there are case studies out there and examples.....would be extremely interested to hear what he has to say about "negative SEO" in this day and age.

Negative SEO 101...so i make a free WP template point a link to my competitor(s) and promote this theme all over the web..., right?

So google said you have unnatural links, you applied for reinclusion and they replied that one site with a WP Theme footer link was unnatural?

They did not tell you that sponsoring wordpress themes is against the TOS, correct?

@Dot_Media: they gave me examples of those unnatural links, one of them was from a site that uses a WP theme I sponsored long time ago. They implied that there are many more of such links and, after a short investigation, I've found out they were right.

They never talk about TOS. This may just be semantics of course, but with TOS both parties would be bound by the terms. With "quality guidelines" instead, G can do whatever they are pleased, but so can you of course, provided you don't want their traffic.

So, if you are looking for a definitive answer on whether to sponsor a WP theme or not, I'd say that unless you are, in fact, a designer of WP themes, you should not do it. It may come around and bite you couple years down the road and you'll find yourself in a situation that's impossible to resolve:

1. the links are clearly "unnatural", i.e. not a result of someone liking your site and linking to it,
   
2. You have absolutely no control over these links, who uses it and what will they do with the theme after they got it. Some of mine ended up on pretty bad sites and many on completely irrelevant ones.
   
3. Plausible deniability does not apply to you: many of those links say it in plain language: "Sponsored by: you"
   

Yeah, in retrospect, this was the dumbest move I ever done in an attempt to promote a site. I definitely do not recommend anyone repeating it.

How about coming at this from the opposite direction?

We suppose Google does not like these footer links as they are not relevant.

These links are pointed towards the designer of the theme, correct?

Why not make the landing pages relevant to the links? Confirm ownership of the designs.
You could offer an update on the landing pages which would add a nofollow. Call it a security update?

Change the whole concept of your site to be one of WP theme design?
Start a new site for current content?
If Google is going to fry your a** anyway, start over with a kw rich domain name?


Best,
Reg

@RegDCP - I am trying to find out if A) Google is really attacking designers and B) how designers or companies could offer free templates without getting burned.

Your solution I think is the most effective. Have all of the links point to a page/subdomain/new domain that is all about the template.

The op admited that he was just buying these sponsored links, so my guess is he was one of several websites linked as the designer / sponsor.

We got pinged on this update a site that's been solid for 10 years in the serps. We have not done very little work to get links they just come it. We lost 50% of our Google impressions so webmaster tools says.

Checking in Webmaster tools. There a couple of blogs that that have us in the word press Blogroll. So 6000 odd links for a couple 3000 for another couple. These are "Natural Links" The bloggers love the free videos they got from us and are prominently sharing them with their community. Which is cool by me.

A/ Do I approach them and say STOP sending people our way as Google is dogging us for it. Get that link out of your Blogroll!

B/ Suck it in ? As let this nice people help us out by sending referrals ? Which are puny compared to Google.


The right thing is not always the easy thing.

One disturbing thing I have seen on this Google campaign is a large decrease in traffic as the sites that Google is removing are a source of traffic.

I sell software and there are lots of sites that review and point to our site and/or download pages. These sites *must* serve a purpose regardless of what Google thinks of their content as they send us a lot of traffic.

An average month used to see over 3000 TOTALLY ORGANIC links placed, (all the links are placed by our users. I do NO link building.), now this looks like it will be under 100. (The last 7 days show 3 links).

Google's not attacking designers. If you want to add a link to your theme before it's distributed, make sure it's visible, make sure it's nofollowed (so it doesn't look like you're trying to game PageRank) and make sure the anchor text is relevant - i.e. "theme design by Example.com" or whatever. Then you should be good to go.

If i ever get email like that I'll tell them to shove it :)
Its my website and I set the rules whats stays and whats goes on it

One of them is a blogroll links from a buddy in the industry (not SEO industry, mind you, an actual "proper" manufacturing industry) that I can remedy by shooting a quick email

And what would you do if your competitor placed hundreds of blogroll links for you on the blogs that are a nightmare comparing to your buddy's one? Will shoot emails?

This is absurd. I don't believe people are seriously considering to play this game.

Its my website and I set the rules whats stays and whats goes on it

Absolutely. And that appears to be Google's position as well.

And that appears to be Google's position as well.

And that was Microsoft's position as well. It was their OS, their software and they thought they could bundle them any way they want.

netmeg that's just insulting. to assume you can take something free and not be asked to give something back as small as a dofollow link? i'm not saying it needs to be loaded with anchor text, but that's just selfish in my opinion.

Suit yourself. But that's the world we live in.

Google tells webmasters the following:
"If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request."