i hope youre not fucking around cause i went and deleted it.

A real shake up at Google right now with all sorts of sites moving all over the place. I have had sites go from number 1 to 16 and now back to 6. This site a fully custom scripted with a solid back link structure. I think Google is finding new way to find paid back links and banning sites selling them and penalizing sites that paid for them.

Sad to say, today I just dropped from page 1 and 2 to beyond page 10 for almost all my keywords (except the keywords in domain name) Something is real screwed up. I renamed the linkex directory and renamed the references to their name. I don't know if it was linkex or trading with thunder-ball sites (did about 20 trades) but tomorrow IM going to remove all external links and linkex altogether. This just ruined 1 years worth of SEO

This is so foul, google is so f*cking paranoid man.

:2 cents:

Same thing happened to me.

Only the domain name stayed.

howtogetibilltopaywhattheyoweyou.com nahhhhhh no shit, it's happening right now (well happened as google did their update). I've lost lots and lots of SE traffic. Man the shit is hitting the fan as of me.
Hey asshole up above, ok , ok i'll be a good boy god CHRIST move to someone else will ya :helpme

I'm still waiting on google to update to see if i've gain the places i had after removing linkex.

Again, i'll keep you posted guys. Unless you work on the same niches than me :1orglaugh:321GFY

false news

I think so, too, but in general, removing footprints is a must with scripts that do something google doesn't like. YACG is a good example: I have sites running it for 3 years now, try the standard install with footprints, it won't last a month.

Unfortunately, just renaming a directory and adding something to your robots.txt is far from enough to fool google. Again, I don't say Linkex has a problem NOW, but I wouldn't want to be on the list of people who are running around with a sign that reads "Hit me, hit me hard" anyway.

I think people have missed the core reasons why these listings are dropping. Think about it.

SmartThumbs
You've got a bunch of Thumb TGPs, skimming to *hosted* galleries, and trade links out elsewhere on the page. There's little content on the page, little text, and tons of outgoing links. I'm sure that's got plenty to do with it.

Google didn't look at Smart Thumbs and say "hey, lets ban this" they changed their algo and the way people use ST it just caused the sites to drop.


I'm sure LinkEx is similar; Never used it so I can't comment.

Sounds like Smart Thumbs got bounced out of Google. Not Linkex.

:2 cents:

As long as they don't spider certain forums looking for link sellers, the game will still remain the same. Once they start going after tnx.net and other sites and big link selling forums... it's a wrap for many sites...

:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup

LinkEx is different, but it would make sense if google got them in their sights some time in the future, because the whole nature of the link trading game is done to manipulate the serps, which overall is against the wishes of google. they are only one little tool in the broad scope of unnatural linking on the internet though, google has a big job to do

Ok, so after completely removing linkex directory and hyperlink to it, and also removing absolutely all external links, everything is now back to normal. basically 12 hours later, Im guessing when google crawled my site again google has restored all my positions close to where they were before.

I don't know if it was just an update, or the act of me removing the above that removed my google penalty but mannn, what a huge relief. I am never linking to another site again, its just not worth the risk.. What if that site is good today but flagged tomorrow, WAMNNN there goes 2 years of SEO work down the drain.

linkex is great and not banned ;)

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

So it might be penalised because the links are not manually checked by the webmaster for relevance and quality, is that correct?

That's a bit harsh.

I never used it anyway.

this is nonsense. linkex is still in the google index. show me the proof ; otherwise this is more paranoid webmaster garbage..