Google’s spam team still operational, slap Aviva for dodgy link-building
There’s been speculation recently as to whether Google actually pay attention to dodgy link-building tactics. eConsultancy carried a fairly damning article that implied the Google spam team weren’t paying attention – and judging by the articles, it was true…
A bit of recent digging revealed that maybe the spam team have just been held up whilst sifting through the weird link-building campaign that Aviva have been embarking on. Admittedly, this could also be the ‘Caffeine’ update coming into effect, but the evidence is a bit…damning, frankly.
Last week, Aviva were ranked #2 in Google’s natural SERPs for ‘Life insurance’ – a coveted and popular search term, up there with ‘car insurance’ and the like – second only to Money Super Market (who, let’s face it, will probably be dominant for insurance-based search terms until hell freezes over).
As of today, though, Aviva are not even on the first page.
The reason? A quick check through Yahoo Site Explorer reveals inbound links from noted and respected life insurance authority sites such as:
- http://www.zen.org.au/reiki.html (an Australian Reiki site)
- http://www.goddess.com.au/Playshops/ (an essential oils site)
- http://www.carpetsofkashmir.com/silk-carpets.html (’nuff sed)
- http://www.sharkfreemarinas.com/LC/catch-release.shtml (my personal favourite: “Tags for sharks are as important as life cover for humans”)
- http://www.setox.eu/projects.html (the Slovak Toxicology Society)
- http://www.bujinkancornwall.co.uk/training/kihon-happo
Nice work! A quick squint through those pages reveals links dropped into the content that’s is (in my personal opinion) quite clearly there purely for search engine gaming. Perhaps there’s hope for spam detection yet…?
Nice piece and an interesting learn. Thanks George!