Matt Cutts On Google 60 Penalties And Bad Linking Practices

Matt Cutts recently responded to a Google Groups discussion about the Google -60 penalty. The penalty sometimes pushes down websites 60 positions back in the result pages. This penalty usually surfaces for a site due to its bad linking practices.

Paid links are considered a questionable tactic and they can harm a site's rankings, more often when these links are identified and Google takes along that juice, which can be considered a penalty.

After "ShyBoy puts" forward his issue, He's informed that his backlinks looked "unusual" and is questioned, whether he has been collecting links in an unusual manner.

"ShyBoy, have you been collecting backlinks in any unusual ways? It looks like you may have, and I would pay special attention to that. For example, if you had been attempting to get PageRank via paid links on various templates, then when that PageRank stops flowing (e.g. If Google improves its detection in various ways), the fact that you have less PageRank can also mean that a site won't rank as well. If that applies to you, my advice would be to pay special attention to that issue, in addition to the other good advice you've already gotten. Matt"

While there's no specific mention of a Google-60 penalty, bad linking practices have been addressed.

Later, Matt tells him how to remedy the situation. He asks him to go to those links and to fix them by removing them, followed by submitting a reconsideration request with Google. In fact he's even supplied the url to find those links so that they can be dealt with.

Google, it seems has lots of penalties in place (-6, -30, -250, and more)to punish those not adhering to fair practices for getting links.

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