Barry Schwartz says, “Here’s another nugget of information learned from the A conversation with Google’s Gary Illyes (part 1) podcast at Marketing Land, our sister site: Penguin is coined a “web spam” algorithm, but it indeed focuses mostly on “link spam.” Google has continually told webmasters that this is a web spam algorithm, but every webmaster and SEO focuses mostly around links. Google’s Gary Illyes said their focus is right, that they should be mostly concerned with the links when tackling Penguin issues.

Gary Illyes made a point to clarify that it isn’t just the link, but rather the “source site” the link is coming from. Google said Penguin is based on “the source site, not on the target site.” You want your links to come from quality sources, as opposed to a low-quality source.

One example Gary revealed was his looking at a negative SEO case submitted to him, and he said the majority of the links were on “empty profile pages, forum profile pages.” When he looked at those links, the new Penguin algorithm was already “discounting” those links, devaluing those links.

“The good thing is that it is discounting the links, basically ignoring the links instead of the demoting,” Gary Illyes added”.

Google Penguin looks mostly at your link source, says Google

Search Engine Land

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