Google explained the reasons for new penalties

Google representatives have explained the recent penalties for using artificial backlinks.

Earlier this month the news about new Google penalties for unnatural outbound linking was being widely discussed among SEO experts. It turned out that some webmasters were informed via Google Search Console about the fact that Google had applied manual spam action to their sites.

Having checked the newly penalized sites, analysts came to a conclusion that Google must have decided not to take into account the links from the penalized sites, because they were caught manipulating search results.

The search engine representatives agreed to shed some light on this matter. John Mueller left a few comments in Google support forum explaining that the penalties were mostly aimed at the bloggers, who placed links in their posts in exchange for some free products or services provided by advertisers.

Google issued special guidelines for bloggers who often publish promotional content. There was included a requirement to use the nofollow attribute on the links to online shop items and partner links added to such content. Google does not require bloggers to stop promotional activity, because it clearly provides a lot of information useful for readers. So it is necessary to follow the Google guidelines for publishing promotional reviews in order not be penalized.

This once again leads us to a conclusion that there always are three key participants in online marketing processes: a customer, contractor and a search engine. Contractors should be conscientious and flexible in ever changing circumstances in order to produce the desired outcome in search engine optimization.