Google Finally Catches Up With John Chow Linkback Promotion

June 30th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

Well, it looks like John Chow has added Google to the list of companies he’s pushed too far with his experiments. John was running a linkback promotion where in return for sites linking to his site and including the anchor text ‘Make Money Online’ he would link to those sites. In total about 400 sites linked to John with the correct text, which helped push John’s site onto the first page of results for ‘Make Money Online’.

Well, Google have just struck back and John’s site is no longer on the first page for the term. It also seems that Google have applied an additional penalty to John’s site, as his site doesn’t even appear on the first page of results for his own name anymore. I’m betting that across the board John’s google links have been downgraded.

John doesn’t seem too worried about this as Google isn’t one of his big traffic sources. But, if it was this site, getting penalised by Google would be a disaster. About 70% of my traffic comes from Google, which is why I always try to stay on Google’s good side. The same goes for Google Adsense, which in the past accounted for all of my revenue, although this month it has dipped below 50% for the first time.

Clearly there’s nothing wrong with working on generating links, but if you plan to hit the levels that John Chow did then you really should make sure you can cope with the damage if it all backfires on you.

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About the Author

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Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University, and currently runs the Portal and online operations for one of the largest ISPs in the UK. He also writes for Windows 7 News.

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There Are 24 Responses So Far. »

  1. #1

    Comment by horisly on 30 June 2007:

    i had noticed that from DP forum.

    and,30% of my site traffic come from google.
    so i will stay on the google side.

  2. #2

    Comment by Nirmal on 30 June 2007:

    I just did a Google search for John Chow, his site is not there in the first page. This looks like Google has really penalized him.
    We cant go against Google as its one of the major traffic site.
    Lets see what John Chow does now. :-)

  3. #3

    Comment by Mike on 30 June 2007:

    Good. I’m glad they’ve caught up with him. I unsubscribed from his nauseating site when he started charging people for removing the nofollow tag from their comments.

  4. #4

    Pingback by Google Finally Catches Up With John Chow Linkback Promotion | The Review Blog on 30 June 2007:

    [...] Taken From the Article by Averton from The [...]

  5. #5

    Comment by Ravi Singh on 30 June 2007:

    Hi Averton i hope that you don’t mind that i have taken your article

  6. #6

    Comment by Zath on 30 June 2007:

    Well it must be nice not to be too concerned about your Google traffic, but I’m sure he’ll still be raking in the cash regardless, he’s obviously pretty good at what he does.

  7. #7

    Comment by Yael on 30 June 2007:

    No doubt he went too far in the linking schemes

  8. #8

    Comment by Everton on 30 June 2007:

    @Ravi

    I don’t mind at all, but it’s ‘Everton’ ;-)

  9. #9

    Comment by Ravi Singh on 30 June 2007:

    Ya Sorry … My mistake
    Really Sorry .

  10. #10

    Comment by 3gp on 30 June 2007:

    jhon chow has learned the lesson hard way i think he need to hire some SEO to sort out things. Recent update in google algo or you can update in terms of quality links and penelization towards paid links many people in the industry are hit hard.

    If you income is 50% below can you tell me the do you have the same CTR? eCPM is low?

  11. #11

    Comment by Everton on 1 July 2007:

    @3gp

    My eCPM was the same in June. Adsense falling below 50% was a factor of my traffic falling, and other schemes doing better. I’ve just published my June report so you can read more there.

  12. #12

    Comment by 3gp on 1 July 2007:

    I will read it and will let you know.

  13. #13

    Comment by Patrick Altoft on 1 July 2007:

    I think it was the fact he sells links to unrelated sites that killed him.

    Text Link Ads stopped ranking for their own name as well.

  14. #14

    Comment by Everton on 1 July 2007:

    hmmm something is definitely going on at google. text link ads aren’t even appearing for ‘text-link-ads‘

  15. #15

    Comment by Anon on 1 July 2007:

    What you think about new algorithm? It’s correct or bad?

  16. #16

    Comment by Schewster on 2 July 2007:

    He was a little overboard with it me thinks. Basically calling for a google bomb of sorts.

    Something similar I noticed along the same lines, I was going to those text-L-Ads guys site and searching on google for their name, they are not there any more. Used to always be there for me to click on. I can always click their paid listing, but after searching on the page, they’re way down at spot 54. Yous think those guys are in problems of sort?

  17. #17

    Comment by Everton on 2 July 2007:

    somebody else mentioned that TLA seem to have been banished by Google-things like that don’t happen by chance. I’m trying to think of what TLA could have done to be singled out by Google, as all the othe text link services are still there….

  18. #18

    Comment by Mike on 2 July 2007:

    Exactly. I think it’s because so many people like me have been saying for ages that TLA is a better revenue earner that AdCents.

    Google give off the impression that the crack down on paid links is all about improving the quality of the SERPs. That’s crap. It’s all about removing as many competitors to their advertising program as possible…

  19. #19

    Comment by rob on 5 July 2007:

    It had to happen, you cant brag out loud about manipulating these people and expect to get away with it, especially in the search blogosphere

  20. #20

    Pingback by SEO - Backlink Anchor Text Optimization | Monetize Your Blog on 10 January 2008:

    [...] John Chow’s backlink promotion penalty experience has taught us all a lesson. The theory is that Google caught up with John because in his promotion he asked everyone to use the same backlink text - make money online. [...]

  21. #21

    Comment by Pete on 26 January 2008:

    Google can penalize John Chow all they want, he seems to be doing well with traffic anyway. He’s shared a lot of good web marketing advice on his blog, and I’m definitely a fan.

  22. #22

    Comment by Everton on 27 January 2008:

    @Pete

    I actually disagree. John’s traffic seems to be very constant from month to month, which suggests to me that a lot of his traffic is direct from his loyal readers, rather than from search engines.

  23. #23

    Comment by Pete on 27 January 2008:

    @Everton : That is a good observation; I’ve only been a reader of his site since Nov/Dec 2007, so I didn’t quite catch that yet. Nevertheless, I only wish my website has that kind of loyal readership!

    Hey by the way, you guys are doing a great job with Connected Internet. You’ve sure earned me as a loyal reader of yours :)

  24. #24

    Comment by make money on 23 May 2008:

    That’s good for John Chow for boasting about his money making blog. Hopefully one day everything from the blog got ripped off the surface of the internet loll. Then the era of John Chow is over ha ha

    Read make money’s latest blog post….Ximmy - Payment Proof>>>

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