Matt Cutts at PubCom

Matt just did a Q&A for all of PubCon and then an Adhok .15 hours with about 100 of us asking questions. Lots of great info but some of what stood out to me:

1. He confirmed that Google is now actively identifying reciprical linking strategies, 3-way linking strategies and purchased links, both programatically and by human intervention. He did not say exactly how they were handled, but he made it clear that those links, once identified wh=ould not be very valuable. He specifically suggested that is was silly to think that Google does not keep track of sites selling links. He suggests that if you go down the road of buyng links, know that you will likely be buying something of little or no value.

2. He confirmed that humans manually went through every Jagger spam report and manually removed MANY spam sites.

3. He stated unequivically that Google does not and in fact cannot manually add or raise the ranking of a site by hand, but that they can and do manually penalize and/or remove sites for legal reasons or spam.

4. He stated that thinking Google won't notice 3-way linking as easily as reciprical linking is silly.

Basically, what I took from the sessions is that Google is actively removing or significantly decreasing the value of non-earned links, and that this trend will be continuing and expanding.

Nothing new, but a lot of confermation for what many of us have been saying for some time.

Thanks for the info Brandall! I wonder what William C has to say about this stuff as he said that detecting three way linking would be more processing than G could handle. (At least thats what I thought he said, dont quote me on it but I know someone implied that in a thread a while back). Its always nice to have confirmation on that kind of stuff... is there a link to the full session?

Thank you for confirming that brandall! Anything else at the PubCom you'd like to share?

I don't know about a link to session text. I'd check on pubcon.com next week.

I don't know what William thinks about this, but he and I have disagreed on this point in the past. Matt made it pretty clear that they can and do look at "link maps" for a site and that a large amount of 3-ways stand out in a very obvious way.

It was just a matter of time...

Did he indicate if there was going to be any penalty associated with buying/trading links? Or will the backlinks just be devalued?

That is very cool, but as always I'll take things with a grain of salt. While I don't expect Matt to post a buch of lies, I DO expect him to bend the truth a bit in Google's favour (hopefully causing people not to start spamming after they've read his stuff???). TBH that must be on his "hidden agenda", don't you think?

WilliamC and I disagreed on this as well. It went on and on. He said it would take too many resources, I said G could figure it out...

Now I'm trying real hard not to say "I told you so!"

But we still don't know for sure

I know my sites didn't bounce much through Jagger. And I know how I got the links those sites have. Speculation? Sure. 100%-absolutely-positively-sure-and-confirmed? Nope. Still...

He certainly has a point of view of his own, but I don't think he is bending the truth at all. In fact, I think he is telling it exactly as it is. Now, he may think Google's efforts are more effective than they actually are - so purchased and recip links may still be of more value than he is suggesting. BUt then, he didn't say that they were NOT of value. He said they MAY NOT be, and suggested clearly that Google is working to identify and devalue them.

As to whether or not they are penalized, he did not answer that question directly. I definitely got the sense that they were devalued. He did suggest in the ad hok session that Google did penalize sites abusing paid links, guest book spam, etc., but that as soon as they saw others using this penalty to "attack" competitors, they stopped. He suggested this more generally as well - suggesting that as soon as they see any type of penalty they issue being abused in way that can hurt sites not causing the behavior, that those penalties are eliminated. Didn't sound like that happened often.

OK lets see if you cant recip link or Buy links or 3 way link or....

then how do you get links and dont give me the BULL well if your site is good people will link to it. You all know in certain industries it just does not work that way.

What this does mean in my eyes is that INTERLINKING within your own site is even more important than ever no?

I mainly buy links and do one ways in the sense of this
I link you to site B you link to my site A

how can google "catch" that

What industries don't work that way?

i have been in the debt business for over 7 years making sites getting top rankings in the SERPS.

I have NEVER seen anyone say oh boy thats a great site i am going to link to it.

Now they way to get links now through directories and maybe writing articles for people to publish with your link on the bottom of the pages. But besides that people just dont go wow thats a great site I am going to link to it

I do.

Obviously others do as well because I have natural links going to my sites...

Well that would certainly make it more difficult so long as you covered your tracks well... there will always be ways around G's measures... its just do you want to take the time/risk?