A few interesting things I noticed about REW's "contextual link" scheme:

1) They are spammy-looking and will not pass a hand review.
2) Links point to the same set of domains - creating an easily detectable pattern
3) A few of the links pointed to a domain Morgan owns.

I believe REW was manually penalized. The home page TBPR dropping to 3 is an indication of a link-scheme-related penalty; Google also stated TBPR penalties are generally done manually. The drop wasn't a natural drop from a 6 to a 5 but all the way down to a 3. Not being able to rank for the domain name is also a bad sign.

Just like NASCAR, where sometimes, cars spin out, hit the wall, or blow a tire, SEO is never risk free. Some people are too afraid to take any risks; others take unnecessary risks and go under.

I'm not advocating SE manipulation as the way to go; chasing short-cuts can end up costing more time than walking in a straight line. But if you want to know the truth about Google, you cannot just blindly accept what you read - whether the information comes from SEOMoz, Google, or mattcutts.com/blog, if you're only defining your reality based on what other people feeds you, you end up just scratching the surface.

We are really getting off on a tangent here which started when somone mentioned that they believed that paying for links could get you penalized - which it doesn't. How that bridged to REW's recent troubles I am not sure but I will go even a little farther off course...

The way penalties often arise is as a result of a website showing up in the serps for keywords it should not be showing up for. In REW's case that would be "real estate" for example.

When the public searches "real estate" they do not expect to find a web design company on the first page or results - and they complain.

When enough complain, The search engines check it out and then look for the reason why their search engine would be showing such an irrelevant result. The answer is almost always because of links. At that point the search engines will do whatever is necessary to "fix" the serps.

I never paid that much attention to their links but If REW was using their directory to solicit links back to them with the link text "real estate" - or if they were using their clients sites to do that - then yes indeed they may have been penalized and removing the cause of their showing up for "real estate" would likely result in the penalty being removed.

If that is the case we should see them slowly disappear for "real estate" - and all will be well for them. If they continue to show for "real estate" over the longer term - I would expect that the real penalty has not yet been assessed.

In any event, REW would not have been penalized just for having a directory and just for their setting up a contextual links program - it would be because of the effect the links to REW were having on the serps.

If their clients experienced some damage as a results of their contextual links being on their websites - the clients would not have been the target. They would have been collateral damage because REW would have been using the contextual links to feather their own nest (linking to their own REW website for example)- looking out for themselves first and using their clients to do that.

To tie this back to the actual topic - you do not get penalized just for buying links, running a directory or participating in one, and you do not just get penalized for exchanging links. The links may be devalued in all of these cases but "penalties" where sites disappear are more involved then just not following Google's official guidelines.

Ditto. and directories still work.

Directories still work to some degree but I have read that they're being mostly phased out by search engine marketers all around the country and they aren't given as much value as they were a year ago.

"REW would not have been penalized just for having a directory and just for their setting up a contextual links program - it would be because of the effect the links to REW were having on the serps."

Doug, I agree with your basic logic here, but Google will sometimes act on signs of manipulative intent.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/information-about-buying-and-selling.html

You'll notice in the comments where the owner of Aviva Directory has a back and forth with Matt Cutts as to why his directory was penalized:

"Simple question Matt (I expect a simple answer) Why did you penalized AliveDirectory.com ? Have you ever browsed that directory? Ten times more quality than Yahoo directory!"

MLP, I browsed for a couple minutes and noticed that at http://www.alivedirectory.com/submit.php
they appear to require a reciprocal link with every submission. I haven't seen that many directories that *require* you to link to them when you submit a url.

That's one strike right there for manipulative policy/using the "wrong" directory script.

More interesting stuff continues below:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.c...183124413747933

I also see the kwikgoblin.com directory and the web10.ws directory listed as resources on avivadirectory.com. Is it correct to assume that you own those directories too? I suppose my question would be how many directories you run. Are there any other directories you run?

A big site REW attracts scrutiny. At that point, not clearly stating that paying for a featured listing does not guarantee a link can be enough for a Google reviewer to decide a site is selling links.

Interesting comments for sure.

I am not familiar with the directories being discussed but I do know that Google was (and still is) on a rampage a while back devaluing and delisting virtually all directories that were just general directories - directories covering multiple topics. Such directories are all looked upon as having no value and as link schemes - whether they are stand-alone sites or part of a larger site. So, Google can always refer to linking as the reason for devaluing a directory. The world does not need any more general directories as far as Google is concerned - the public already has Google's after all.

This issue they are discussing would have arisen because of that rampage. I don't believe they were being singled out.

Directories that dealt just with one subject - with Realtors for example were not included in this (unless a multi state type directory on an individual Realtors site as per REW's and AA'a previous penalty) and REW would not have been scrutinized just because they have a Realtor directory - unless they were targeting non real estate categories (I don't know if they were as I do not pay that much attention to REW). Interesting to note though that Google does not consider "relocation" and "mortgages" and "vacation rentals" as being related to real estate - so I personally would not have such categories in my Realtor directory.

My two cents

As someone who had an AA site when the reciprocal linking penalty was imposed by Yahoo and saw that none of the 30,000 AA sites showed up on Yahoo for well over a year....

And as one who had my site go from ranking about #30 for Atlanta Real Estate to #900 when Google's had job was applied to AA's sites for reciprocal linking, finally to be reinstated after I removed my recips and filed a reinclusion request... I think you can think whatever you want about whether or not you can be penalized for Reciprocal linking, all it takes is a competitor filing a spam report and you can learn the hard way. Don't believe it! Good luck with that...

The point is it's a manually applied penalty that is generally the result of competitors blowing the whistle. When you are not prominent it won't happen.

People who make blanket statements about what Google does and doesn't do are guessing. I think you will be penalized in a hand review if you buy links...I might be wrong! I think it goes to the basic principal of not trying to manipulate the results.

Sure, it may be guessing because no one knows for sure unless they work for the search engine. One can make some reasonable assumptions based on many years of watching the search engines though.

Yahoo has been penalizing template sites ever since they (template sites) were invented. AA was just one in a long line of template site providers to be penalized.(I first wrote about this issue back in January 2003 and the issue was alive long before that).

With Yahoo, what happens is that template site providers cross link their sites - often unknown to the agents who have the sites - and this causes the sites to rank well. The template site producer advertises themselves as search engine wizards which attracts more agents. Soon search results for real estate in a given area will be full of sites by the same provider - which all look the same to any searcher. Yahoo does not want their top 10 to be full of the same basic results from the same provider and they remove them all from the index.

Enter the next template provider who thinks he is the first to come up with the idea of linking sites together - repeat as above. This has happened over and over again for the last decade.

AA also had great success in Google with the same strategy which probably prompted the same response as Yahoo's - I doubt it was as simple as a competitor complaining. There would have been no spam report required in AA's case. It would have been a hand job though - you are correct.

REW was probably just added on to the penalty to send a message because they were pretty overt in what they were doing and were a good target to use to send a message that would be heard.

Google has said over and over again that they do not generally act manually on spam reports - only in rare cases. They use spam reports to help develop filters that will exclude spammers from the serps. Since they had no filter for linking, they opted to penalize a couple of large template companies who were gross offenders to scare the rest of us into compliance.

The average individual Realtor website that is not produced by a template provider will not find that their site disappears totally from the serps for linking. Their link pages may be excluded from the index and so may their partners' pages which may cause the site to drop in rank over time - but the big disappearing act for linking is really a strategy employed against the bigger providers and not individual websites.

The same would apply to hand reviews for buying links. If AA or REW set a strategy for all their customers that included buying links - there would eventually be a penalty promted by a manual review because of the success of multiple websites junking up the serps.

A Realtor buying links on their own has little to fear though as there is no filter to catch such an activity and Google has better things to do than act manually on small-potatoes spam reports where it is almost impossible to ascertain if a link was bought or not anyway. As mentioned before, they say they use the reports for figuring out how to develop filters.

Plus, if there was a penalty for buying links, my competitors could buy a bunch of links for my domain and get me penalized.

Yes, and Matt says basically what has been said earlier - that they use the reports to improve their filters and algorithms - and of course they reserve the right to penalize manually if necessary - i.e for spammy, deceptive, off-topic links (which are penalized whether they are paid or not)

"these outside reports are a great way to measure (and then improve) the precision and recall of our existing algorithms on independent data. Next, the reports help build datasets for future algorithms. So the data helps us build the next generation of algorithms to improve quality. It also lets us work on new tools and techniques to improve how we detect paid links. Finally, we can investigate and take direct action on many reports that we receive."

Matt is the master of FUD but then G trained him well so it is expected.

Look at all these opinions you get. But directories are on the way out try social bookmarking.

Trading links with friends is the best.

I agree that social bookmarking looks like it is the wave of the future. Of all the different strategies online, submitting websites into directories seems to be the least effective, although it won't get you penalized like buying a lot of links at one time will.

If you want general directories try this. I think real estate specific directories are better. But you wont find to many, try this one. Also look into using Roboform to submit your info into directories. You will save so much time. Good luck.

(Has over 500 SEO friendly directories)
http://info.vilesilencer.com/