Google's Matt Cutts announced on Twitter at 2:30am this morning that over the past few months, Google has taken action on seven link networks in Japan.
Matt said, "over last few months they've taken action on seven link networks!" He said this makes him "incredibly proud" because this levels the playing field in Japan.
Here is Matt's tweet:
Incredibly proud of Japanese webspam team. Over last few months they've taken action on seven link networks! Makes playing field more level.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) April 8, 2014
There is no specific date as to when these link networks were targeted and penalized, so it would be hard to tell if your site was impacted by this or an algorithm. That being said, most of my readers here likely do not try to rank for Japanese related content (except a few maybe).
So let's see who Google targeted over links in the past few months:
- Google Penalized Link Networks In Spain, Italy & Germany
- Google To Slap Link Networks In Italy & Spain
- Google Targets Poland In Latest Link Network Penalty
- Google Boots Large German Agency & Clients For Link Schemes
- Google's Matt Cutts: We're Taking Action Against Buzzea, The French Link Network
- Google's Matt Cutts Calls Out Nailing Another Link Network
- Google Penalizes Another Link Network: SAPE Links
- Google Crushes Ghost Rank 2.0, A Russian Link Network
- Backlinks.com: The Next Link Network Penalized By Google
- Google's Matt Cutts: Text Link Ads Link Sellers Targeted
- Google Penalizes Blog Networks, Did SEOs Use It To Hurt Competitors?
- Beware: Google To Squash Another Link Network Very Soon
Forum discussion at Twitter.