Google made strong moves within the last twenty four hours in the guest blogging arena. One of the more well-known guest blogging networks, “MyBlogGuest” was hit with a massive manual penalty rendering them nonexistent on Google’s index. Although this company worked hard to stay on the white side it couldn’t avoid wearing a grey hat.
Anne Smarty the founder and creator of “MyBlogGuest” represented her side of the story on Webcology. She seemed to firmly defend her blog network, insinuating that they worked hard to educate the community of proper practice but unfortunately the community was taken advantage of. This may play a major role in causing the penalty but she also put up resistance towards Google’s nofollow rule which ultimately was the real reason for a penalty.
Anne Smarty has a supportive crew from the SEO community yet there are also many that think that this game was well played by Google. David Harry, also a guest on Webmaster radio, mentioned that if “MyBlogGuest” wanted to avoid the penalty they would have taken actions to fix the issue months ago. When asked about the Mom and Pop sites that are also caught up in the middle of these penalties he said; “Anyone who attempts their own SEO better take the time to understand how internet marketing works as well as the rules that surround it.”
It’s an honest statement from David and an obvious one at that too. The same thing goes for these smaller businesses that hired SEO services – they should have known enough to protect their investment or should have avoided agreeing to play a grey game from the beginning.
We all knew that it wasn’t a matter of “if” these networks will be taken down it was more a matter of “when”. Now that we see Google has moved ahead with a heavy fist we will begin to see more positive results for the ones playing the game by the rules. It’s about time that the internet gains integrity.