I’ve just been looking around at some of the more obvious link schemes, and while some people won’t like this, my goodness Google is hitting some of the worst culprits very accurately. That idiotic cardroom supply triangle scheme that I got spammed twenty or thirty times for seems a month or two away from collapsing.
Unfortunately it also looks like a couple sites that I thought were clean went over to the dark side and now are being tarred by an association with crap link families. They have started hanging out with a “bad crowd” and I can’t afford to hang out with them anymore.
Even those of you who have been checking partners the past few days, I’d encourage you to take a deeper look, because their seems to be two levels of response: mild penalty, and death.
I do personally think this is a great thing, even though there will inevitably be sites hurt that shouldn’t. Good linking seems to be being rewarded while obvious bogus linking is being punished. What happens in the huge area in between is an open question.