3 years ago I swore by PBN links until a site I built got totally deindexed

Back in 2021 I had a network of 12 expired domains all pointing to my affiliate site and it worked great for about 8 months until Google nuked every single one in a core update. Now I only build manual outreach links from real blogs, has anyone else had a whole backlink strategy just vanish overnight?

2 comments

2 Comments

jadew631mo ago

Have you ever looked at the timing of your link building to see if Google was already flagging your site before the deindex? The thing that got me thinking is most people focus on the link source quality but dont check their own site health metrics leading up to the hit. I lost a site back in 2020 and when I dug into Search Console data I saw manual action warnings weeks BEFORE the actual penalty. Google might have been giving you signs in obscure reports that you missed because you were too focused on the backlinks themselves. Those expired domains probably carried hidden penalties from their previous owners that were ticking time bombs. Check your old site's crawl stats and see if there was a drop in indexation before the big crash.

sandra_anderson21mo ago

Totally agree, @jadew63 is right about checking those crawl stats, I had the same thing happen with a site using old forum links that went silent for weeks before the crash.