Google has taken out another guest blog network. This time it’s PostJoint.
Techtada tweeted about it to Matt Cutts (via Search Engine Land), who responded:
@techtada any link or guest blog network that claims to have "zero footprints" is waving a giant red flag.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) April 18, 2014
Luana Spinetti says it can “thrive outside of Google”.
@mattcutts @techtada PostJoint can still thrive outside of Google and I'm all for that. I really love that service. 🙂
— Luana Spinetti (@luanatf) April 18, 2014
PostJoint is no longer ranking for a search for its own name. What a great user experience and relevant results!
The penalty comes after Google had already penalized MyBlogGuest. When that happened, PostJoint put up a blog post about how it was differerent, in which Saleem Yaqub wrote:
We’ve always put quality first even if this means a smaller user base and lower revenues. We are selective about who we work with, and we moderate everything from user accounts, to links, content and participating sites (on average we decline 70% of sites that apply). We’ve always been concerned about footprints, so from day one we’ve had a unique no browsing approach, where nobody can browse or crawl through our site list or user base. Our technology is built from the ground up with a zero footprints principle in mind. Compare this to MBG which is essentially a modified forum that anyone could join and you’ll start to understand the fundamental differences. We work hard to filter out spam and sites made for SEO. Sometimes activity on PostJoint does include follow links but these are mostly surrounded by good content, good blogs, and good marketers. PostJoint is an independent intermediary, we facilitate the connections and streamline the process, but what the users ultimately do is their own choice.
Apparently Google doesn’t care about all that.
Saleem confirms the penalty in the comments of that post (via Search Engine Watch).
As we’ve seen, Google has legitimate sites afraid of accepting guest blog posts, and some that do accept them afraid to link naturally.
Image via PostJoint