Google Bans TNX Link Buyers - It Happened To Me
By Matt Jones on Oct 23, 2007 in Blog Marketing
I previously wrote a paid review of TNX. I was given free TNX points and so I set up a campaign with total of 101 low quality links pointing to 2 different pages on Blogging Fingers.
I “froze” the campaign there with the intention of using the rest of my free points to renew the links in following months, as well as being on the safe and not going overboard buying too many links.
The 2 pages that I bought links for were already ranked on page 1 of the Google SERPS for their main keyword phrase; my aim was to push them up to the very top spot. They were:
How Those Pages Were Banned And Un-banned
- The day after the links were acquired they showed up in Google Webmaster Tools.
- No changes in SERPS ranking occurred up or down for a few days despite the links appearing.
- After approximately 1 week both pages disappeared from the SERPS altogether.
- I waited over a week to see if they would reappear.
- After no sign of my 2 high referring pages I deleted the TNX campaign, removing all links previously acquired in it.
- 2 days later the “Niche Blogging” page reappeared back on page 1 of the Google SERPS and even higher on page 1 than before all of this.
- Another 2 days later and the “Web Hosting Packages” page reappeared as well on page 1 (sometimes it fluctuates down to page 2).
Conclusion
I can really see no other factors influencing the rankings of these pages other than the TNX campaign. It is a shame because I had high hopes for TNX but based on those events I cannot recommend them and I must warn you not to use them.
If you have set up a TNX campaign and want to get your money back you can sell your TNX points back to TNX for cash.
Has anyone had a similar experience?
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Wow, I only had links to my frontpage, so didn’t really notice any differences. And nothing is really showing up in my Google Webmaster Tools - what am I looking for there really?
Anyway provisionally, I’ve deleted the 300 odd links that TNX managed to get me. Apparently, I owed them like 120 points as well!
In Google Webmaster Tools - You go to the site in question (duh). Then Links - then Pages with external links - then find the page that you bought the links for and you should be able to click on them and take you to the page they are from, some of which should be the TNX links.
[…] Update: Since writing this review I must warn against TNX. Read what happened about how Google banned because of TNX me here. […]
Thanks for letting us know. Actually, TNX haven’t approved my blog yet (after like 1 week?) so I haven’t tested them yet. However, I’ll proceed with caution after hearing your story.
[…] at Blogging Fingers claims that Google Bans TNX Link Buyers. And he presents a pretty good case for it. I think I’ll wait to see if anyone else has a […]
Thanks for the words of caution…
Hi, Matt,
It’s just Google’s “too many links at once” automatic filter… When over 100 new links pointing to one page appear in several days, all with
the same anchors (which is unnatural) - Google will likely notice you and the pages you were promoting may disappear from SERPs for 1 month
(after that they will return even higher). This automated filter is intended to keep you away from buying links, but it’s very easy to avoid
the filter!
Your case doesn’t mean, that Google bans TNX buyers (there is no may Google can identify TNX links). It only means that there IS a risk when
buying links without following our recommendations: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=488057
We just give you a convenient tool to place many of direct links, it is up to you to choose when to stop placing new links and how to make
anchors look more natural (variety is the key), which links to delete.
Previously our advertisers didn’t have a generator to make anchors look natural. Until now! Just look at the new Step-2 of Creating campaign:
you can now generate hundreds of different anchors with a click of a button.
We suggest that you now try to buy links following our recommendations and then publish a follow-up review. If you don’t do that - then… the
main purpose of Google’s automated “too many links at once” filter - to scare you from buying links - is accomplished
Have you ever thought of WHY Google wants to scare you from buying links? Because it works great, when done with care, of course!
That may well be true, but it is important to remember I only spent $1-$2 worth of TNX points to get those 101 links. If I were spending a real amount of money on it there would have to be many 1000s of different anchor texts.
I like your argument that I mustn’t let Google win
I’ll see how it goes as to doing another experiment using more varied anchor texts, I expect I will but it won’t be finished for another 3 weeks at least.
This is hardly scientific…
I have a keyword for which i usually come in #2 with about 100 visits a day, and then I drop off to page 2 or 3 for another week or more, than back to number 2. No link buying, just “normal” stuff
We really shouldn´t draw “cause” and “effect” conclusions like this just for the sake of getting some linkbait…
You can hardly call this linkbait.
Your pages may have fluctuated on and off but the 2 pages I am talking about had lots of good links to them and had never fluctuated before (more than moving between page 1 and page 2 of the SERPS). We are talking in terms of 1 - 2 months here.
Read the comment above you. Even TNX agree it was the links I bought from them that did it, but they say it was because too many links with the same anchor text appeared at once.
I also bought some 900 links to 4 pages of my site. They are all well, indexed, showing for the keywords (actually only two of the promoted pages were old and ranking well, the other two being new).
Over the past week, I’ve even noticed a slight increase of the organic traffic. I don’t know if it is related to buying all those links (which were PR 0 almost all of them).
This is a nice article..thanks for sharing this to us.
[…] And last but not least, Matt shares his experience with paid links. […]
[…] I did research on Google and found the following post Google Bans TNX Link Buyers - It Happened To Me. […]
I would not trust this TNX thingy for a minute.
No means of contact on their site. No phone #, no email.
Why are they hiding?
If there is a doubt… than there is no doubt (just real trouble - Robert DeNiro/Ronin)
Also, it is a well known fact for some time, that Google punishes purchased backlinks. Why you guys are so surprised, when you asked for trouble signing up with TNX?
DONT BE GREEDY FOR LINKS, DO IT SLOW MANUALLY
It has been two weeks since I applied for TNX, and they still didn’t reply anything. Even a quick on google for TNX doesn’t return their website on the first page.
Google’s purpose these days seems to be to freak everyone out. I think the thing is… they are only scaring those with a sense of fair play. The crap I’m seeing in the Google search results tells me that that spam BS works as well as ever. Google’s search results are getting worse, not better. They need to stop with the stupid filters… Yahoo gives me better results now.
talks sense, google is fos, the whole front page for things like insurance have links on ethopian blogs etc. yet these busineses operate in western europe.
[…] Google bans tnx link buyers it happened to me […]
I would have to agree that dipping in the rankings for a short period like that is definately not areflection of being banned or penalised… though caution should always be applied
hi
thanks for the warning. they were my first thought of buying links, but afer ur article I decded to keep doing the manual buiness.
enjoy,
diggmee
http://www.mecarz.com
There is no way google will ban you for having links to your site as your competitor can do the same for you, the key is not to link to banned sites and don’t sell links yourself. So use tnx only as an advertiser
1. It takes 2 days for links to appear on websites they were purchased on.
2. After they appear on those site, it takes month for PR0 links to get indexed in Google.
I can’t believe so many people get these text link networks so wrong. If your buying links from any ad network, you will NOT get penalized by Google. How do I know this? Simple. I still use the Text-Link-Ads.com network for my websites and have never been flagged by Google. You see, Google doesn’t flag the websites BUYING links. They penalize the ones SELLING links.
I know you intend well, and thanks for warning. I hope there’s still a chance this co. is good, and I’d perhaps opt for far fewer, but higher quality links.
I’ll look into it more.
I also want to write a tip. I had no idea your other post was a paid review, I felt saddened when I felt it wasn’t disclaimed, especially because I thought all new signups got those free points (something that definitely HAD to be mentioned IMHO). What paid review website do you write those “for”? I wouldn’t want you to be banned from that, too. Review Me, for one, requires a disclosure.
Readers feel they need them, too. Some even prefer affiliate links to be disclosed. (I feel differently personally, but perhaps for the reasons I choose the specific products to post make me feel there’s more innocence in it.)
Just a warning, you’re not on page 1 for those terms anymore. And may I make another personally-opinionated suggestion? Label those top inner links as such, and also provide links to the Google search. When I see links when a blogger discusses search results, that’s what I expect the links to be. I think it’s generally good to know where links go, and I personally like to click on those types of things - whether or not that’s good practice for your PR has nothing to do with this point (and is frankly silly in pure idealism, hehe.)
Thanks for your hard work on all this, btw!
–Ella