Forbes.com, the extremely popular magazine website, has been notified by Google that it has been penalized for selling links on its website.
Denis Pinsky, the Digital Marketing Manager at Forbes.com, posted a Google Webmaster Help thread with the notification warning. As some of you know, Google now emails site owners when they participate in unnatural links, and Forbes.com just received their email from Google.
The email read:
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Dear site owner or webmaster of https://www.forbes.com/,We’ve detected that some or all of your pages use techniques outside our quality guidelines, available here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials?hl=en&visit_id=638553555874026374-2916061995&rd=1.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links on your site pointing to other sites that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. For more information about our linking guidelines, visit https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies?hl=en&visit_id=638553555665422408-3874972853&rd=1#link-spam.
We encourage you to change your site to meet our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please visit https://accounts.google.com/v3/signin/identifier?continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fwebmasters%2Ftools%2Freconsideration%3Fhl%3Den&followup=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fwebmasters%2Ftools%2Freconsideration%3Fhl%3Den&hl=en&ifkv=AS5LTARP12UgyUCGhrQUcOfAjNqNy4CJz3jCku8H_-qRUgUzaH5ENcQpMstrRwBXS_6ydbfonHzSXA&passive=1209600&service=sitemaps&flowName=GlifWebSignIn&flowEntry=ServiceLogin&dsh=S1577356373%3A1719758768381483&ddm=0 to submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.
If you have any questions about resolving this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum: .
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Google told Forbes that they have “artificial or unnatural links on your site pointing to other sites that could be intended to manipulate PageRank” on their website. In other words, they are selling links, which is against Google’s guidelines.
Pinsky asked, in a public forum, “Can someone help figure out what links are in violation?”
Just to let you know, this is not the first time Forbes.com has been penalized by Google for selling links. Forbes wrote about the first time in 2007 in an article named Google Scares The Search Crowd.
On Thursday, website administrators for significant sites, including Washingtonpost.com, Techcrunch, Engadget (as well as Forbes.com), found that their “PageRank”—a number that typically reflects a site’s ranking in Google—had been affected.
Forbes is no stranger to how Google works. I am a bit surprised that Forbes’s top SEO would post this in a public forum—I assume he has no clue where the paid links are. I looked and didn’t find anything within 60 seconds of looking. Do you see the paid links?
Starting Monday, Forbes began to delete the links from their site.
