42 footprints of the PBN network (to be completed)
This is not the maximum list of footprints when creating a PBN with domains, hosting, various services, and technical implementation.
Creating a PBN is an attempt to anonymize the owner of several sites so that the sites look like they belong to different people and are not related. Well, the weakest point in anonymity and security is always between the monitor screen and the back of the chair.
These are idealistic recommendations when creating PBN grids - what should and should not be done so as not to leave traces (the so-called footprints). We need to understand that the ideal is almost unattainable and our task is simply to get closer to it. A footprint is a footprint on several sites that gives out a single owner of a pbn network. To begin with, all the sites on your network already have something in common - they all link to the same site. But these may be sites of different owners, or they may be PBN.
I've compiled my list of footprints that I recommend avoiding to make your sites look as diverse as possible and reduce the chances of burning down the entire network.
I'm not Google and I don't know everything, but then the choice is yours. Everything that is written below is 100% my subjective opinion.
Introduction
Imagine yourself in Google's place and your task is to find related satellites to prevent manipulation of the search results. Google is not just a search engine, it is a huge database (big data), and although I am convinced that manual manipulations are possible and applied there, nevertheless, in 99.99% of cases, the search result is an algorithm (well, there are just a lot of niches and you can get tired of correcting with your hands). So, the algorithm just looks for matches and assigns a certain coefficient of donor connectivity based on them. Of course, 2 out of 100 donor sites on 1 Wordpress template is not a reason to consider them related, but if there are 5 or 10 of them, and there are only 20 donors, this is already suspicious. What if they have the same owner in the whois domain? And if there are the same contacts on 2 donors, I would already apply a reduction factor to the weight of links from these sites. But this is me, and this is Google. Now present all the data about each donor in a very large table. Finding common points is not so difficult with all the data. This is exactly what you need to understand when creating a PBN. Well, now about the footprints. Let's go!
Domain footprints
Footprint No. 1: Domains from one or two registrars
Agree, it's strange when even 50% (even 20%!) all links to the site consist of 1-2 registrars' domains. There are thousands of them in the world, and 1-2 domains link to the site? This is not natural and raises suspicions even if these are the largest registrars in your country.
Tip: get more different registrars from different countries and regions.
Footprint No. 2: Domains that are registered on one day or several days
So you decided to make a PBN for the project and started buying drops or creating new ones. And it would be better if there was a complete discrepancy in the registration dates, rather than strange things like... all donors were registered in a week. Or even for 2 months. But what about the other 10 months of the year? Big data will see it all.
Tip: smoothly, but without fanaticism (like the arithmetic mean), spread the dates of donor registration throughout the year.
Footprint No. 3: Domains that are registered for 1 or 2 persons (including with data concealment) in whois
Are you sure Google doesn't have any data from ICANN? I'm not sure. ICANN is a non-profit organization based in the United States and it collects data on all registered domains in all existing domain zones. Not only that anyone can view the domain's whois, but also the owners' data. And it's important for Google to know that domain owners are different. Therefore, I believe that Google has this data. After all, it's not a terrible secret, and there are domain zones where you can't hide the domain owner from whois at all.
Alternatively, you can register a domain for a fictitious person or another person, but only if the registrar requests data verification... the domain will immediately become non-yours.
Tip: ideally, it's 10 out of 10 different owners of 10 domains. Everything else will be visible in big data.
Footprint No. 4: Donor domains from 1 domain zone
There are more than 250 million registered domains in the world, and 60% are in the .com zone. But this does not mean that your link profile should be 60% from .com. Unlike Google, you and I don't know how many live sites there are in the world, for example, in Italian. How many .com, .info or .net, and how much .it. Of course, in the country of your main project, most of the donors will be from that country, but you always need to dilute international and thematic ones. The main thing is not to get hung up.
Tip: domain zones should be different, but focus on the local area of the region of the promoted site.
Footprint No. 5: Domains with similar names
Let's say you're promoting hosting (your main project) and buying domains (for PBN): aaahost.com , aabhost.com , aachost.com ...I think everything is clear here. It doesn't come naturally from the word “at all.”
Tip: as many different domain names as possible.
Footprints of hosting services
Footprint No. 6: NS site
If all the donors to your project have NS Cloudflare or another service, this is strange. But if they are also the same (i.e. in 1 account), this is a fiasco!
Tip: NS, like everything else, should be diverse.
Footprint No. 7: Hosting sites on one, two or more servers
Even if there are several IP addresses on each server, it's still not natural. It's visually strange when donors have similar addresses, or IP addresses in a row, or from the same network, or from a 1-2-3 hosting provider.
Tip: A natural profile is a complete mix of IP addresses, subnets, hosters, and countries.
Footprint No. 8: All sites are hosted on one or more hosting services (especially if the hosting services are designed for PBN)
So you made 10-20 satellites and placed them on 2-3 hosting sites. Google and Yandex collect all the data together and see ... that it's completely unnatural. The result is either nullification of your efforts or sanctions from search engines.
All PBN hosting is already a problem. Google just sees these hosting sites, knows their IP addresses (this is public data) and understands everything.
Tip: do not use hosting services for PBN, where this is the main focus. Only if this is a small part of their business, then there will be many different sites on their IP addresses and this is a normal working option. Host your satellites on different hosting providers.
Footprint No. 9: PBN services that host your network of sites on CDN
This is my favorite footprint.
Many sellers of PBN sites assign their product statuses in this way: “pure IP”, "different IP"… In fact, they give a 100% guarantee that the CDN service will never give anyone the real IP address of your sites. Unfortunately, all data in this world is for sale, especially in free rates. And sometimes the database is hacked and then sold on the darknet. Or in another way: for example, by filing a legal complaint against a website with Cloudflare on behalf of a public organization or company, you can request and easily find out the real hoster of the website and even the real IP address. And here is Google, for which it is important to fight the creators of the grids and cannot get a real IP address? Do you really believe that? And this is not a complaint about CDN services. CDN is used to speed up the delivery of content, not to hide your sites from all real IP addresses. This is a side effect of the technology we use (reverse proxy server). They (CDN services) do not promise to hide the real IP address of the site from everyone.
Well, such PBN services themselves usually keep all your sites on 1-2 real IP addresses and tell you that Cloudflare will keep your real IP address sacred and Google will not find out about it.
Plus, the question arises, which websites are your sites on? Make sure that the sites are not on the same ones, so that they are at least set up in different accounts.
By the way, we also keep all sites on 1 IP address and use a reverse proxy server to hide the real address, but we are not CDN, and that's what we sell (hiding the real IP address to create visibility of various locations of your satellites), rather than speeding up site loading in different parts of the world, DDOS protection, etc.
If you believe that CDNs will never give away the real IP addresses of your sites to anyone, what prevents you from creating several Cloudflare accounts and putting some of your satellites there for free?
Tip: CDN can and should be used, but not 100% or even 50%+ of the real addresses (which you put in the CDN service panel by creating A-records) should be given differently, from different subnets, from different hosters.
Services
Footprint No. 10: Domains or site URLs are placed together in any Google docks or other online documents, as well as in messengers or emails
It's more like paranoia, but we use Excel. Although if you delve into the topic, it is absolutely logical - you cannot place a list of your satellites in one place, especially if these are network documents.
Tip: offline steering.
Footprint No. 11: Adding sites to a single Google Search Console or Google Analytics account
As well as any other identical codes on different sites. It may seem idiotic, but... sometimes they do it that way.
Tip: do not use Google services for satellites and do not put the same codes on different sites.
Footprint No. 12: Adding sites to one account of any services
Everything is sold on the Internet, and sometimes (regularly?) databases of various services pop up. Therefore, every time you add several sites in a list to a service or check the positions of all your satellites in one account, this is no longer good.
Tip: never link your different PBN sites anywhere online.
Footprint No. 13: PBN automation services are used (bluechipbacklinks, expireddomains, etc.)
Of course, the point here is not to not use them at all, but rather to use the same tool to select the entire PBN. This overlaps with the previous point, but there are services designed to work on PBN.
Tip: donors should be as unrelated as possible.
Footprint No. 14: Google Chrome
Imagine your satellite grid of, for example, 20 sites. The traffic on each of the satellites is approximately ... 0. Well, or very little. But suddenly someone with 1 IP in the Google Chrome browser visits all the donor sites of a particular project.
Tip: use a different browser, or better yet, use several different ones
Technical implementation
Footprint No. 15: Identical/similar sites, identical/similar design
Each site consists of dozens of blocks: header, footer, contact blocks…
And changing 1-2 blocks doesn't change much. After all, search engines see the code and compare it.
Tip: make completely different websites from the very beginning.
Footprint No. 16: Everywhere Wordpress or html or joomla or...
It's unnatural when even 50% of the profile is from 1 CMS, even the most popular in the world.
Tip: different platforms, cms.
Footprint No. 17: One Wordpress template for all sites
Again, think about how natural a profile from 1-2-3 templates looks.
It doesn't happen that way. And there are hundreds of free themes - choose different ones.
Tip: completely different templates from different cms.
Footprint No. 18: The same set of Wordpress plugins for all sites
It is important to understand that each plugin is just a piece of code and is easy to find on different sites.
Tip: different plugins = different code. Do not install the same plug-ins on all satellites.
Footprint No. 19: Satellites restored from the Archive
I'm not going to convince you that you shouldn't do this at all, because it works. But personally, I don't like drops and recoveries - the explanations are here.
But in this paragraph, we are talking about the fact that the entire link profile cannot consist of restored sites. It also needs to be mixed here. After all, Google remembers everything - all sites, their content, when the site stopped working and when it was restored again. Agree, when the reference profile consists of 50% restored drops, this is a sign of the mfn grid. Who else needs drops that suddenly all link to the promoted site?
Tip: a variety of donors from different sources.
Footprint No. 20: A network of sites was made/designed by the same progers/developers/typesetters
People repeat the same actions and the same mistakes. If a developer or designer likes a certain section of contacts, they will repeat it from site to site.
Tip: Different creators have different tastes, different habits, and different mistakes.
Footprint No. 21: The same site structure
Naturally, even a quarter of donors may not have the same site structure.
Tip: there are different types of websites with different structures.
Footprint No. 22: There is one type of communication and contact form everywhere
20 sites with the same feedback form is normal. But if all these 20 sites link to the 21st? And if this form sends requests to non-existent mail everywhere... or nothing happens when sending the form.… This is already suspicious.
Tip: different types of websites with different (even alien, but real) contacts.
Footprint No. 23: Identical automatic responses in the email feedback form
The feedback form is a script with automatic responses. It would seem that there is such a thing? All chats start as standard. But the only question is what percentage of donors have such forms of communication and how many of them respond in a template.
Tip: any block is a trace, randomize everything, including the answers in the chat.
Footprint No. 24: Contacts have the same email address, social network, and phone number
It's stupid, of course, but... it happens. Identical contacts are too much.
Tip: contacts should be real and different.
Footprint No. 25: Different names of Wordpress admin accounts, databases, profiles
It's just like in paragraph 17 - people repeat the same actions and the same mistakes. And they call admin panels, databases, and profiles the same way.
Tip: create a table and give each site everything different.
Footprint No. 26: The same htaccess with protection from all 500+ bots
That's another thing I don't like. Blocking bots is already suspicious in itself - who are you and from whom and what are you hiding? This is usually done to hide their way of promotion from competitors so that they cannot understand why the site is ranked highly, because there don't seem to be any links. But blocking identical bots on donors is bingo! It's absolutely not natural.
For those who particularly believe that this is necessary, I suggest another option: run your site through all sorts of social bookmarks or some other databases and ... add all these links to disallow links. And it will save you from sanctions because reset their weight and competitors will get tired of rummaging through your reference mass. Moreover, you will show the search engine that you are struggling with linkwashers and you do not need links from them.
Tip: don't engage in nonsense that only leaves traces on your site grid.
Content
Footprint No.27: The content on all sites was written by the same copywriter
Again, paragraph 17 - people repeat the same actions and the same mistakes. Copywriters are no exception, they write in the same style.
Tip: different content sources.
Footprint No. 28: Content on the entire PBN grid, translated from one site to all sites on the network
The content sources must be different. Otherwise, big date will see it, make no mistake. Google knows all the languages and also sees where and what was translated (by Google translator?).
Tip: different content sources.
Footprint No.29: The content on all PBN sites is generated through YouTube subtitles
The content sources must be different. Otherwise, big date will see it, make no mistake.
Tip: different content sources.
Footprint #30: Old content is bad!
If you take a drop and restore a site from the archive (this is not my way, but your business), you often leave the old content. It needs to be either updated and supplemented or changed to a new one. Remember, Google sees everything and it loves new, fresh and relevant content.
The Council: you need to tinker with old content from drops so that the effect is not a flash, and sometimes so that there is an effect at all. We need to work on the content.
PBN Promotion
Footprint No.31: Identical GSA / CEO-autopilot / Crum / other runs have been made for all donors
Such donors will have an identical reference profile.
Tip: promote the satellites in different ways.
Footprint No. 32: The entire PBN is crowdfunded from a single database
Such donors will have an identical reference profile.
Tip: promote the satellites in different ways.
Footprint No.33: All sites were given DR in the same way
Such donors will have an identical reference profile.
Tip: promote the satellites in different ways.
Footprint No. 34: All grid sites are linked
In general, one of the easiest ways to burn down your satellite network is to link it.
Tip: satellites should not refer to each other.
Footprint No. 35: All sites appeared and started moving at the same time
This paragraph is somewhat similar to paragraph 2, only here the date of the start of the site and the start date of the promotion, and not the date of domain registration.
Tip: smoothly, but without fanaticism (like the arithmetic mean), spread the launch dates of the donor sites and the start of their promotion throughout the year.
Links
Footprint No.36: All satellite links are in text/pictures
If all your links are monotonous, it's not natural.
Tip: make different links to the promoted project.
Footprint No. 37: All or part of the sites link to the same satellite network
When, for example, your 20 donor sites link to 5 of the same sites each, this is not strange, it clearly indicates connections.
Tip: Links from donors should not be the same.
Footprint #38: The link leads to only one money site
An online link is fine, but if your site links only to a promoted project... it's weird.
Tip: add another link to the site or several to reputable resources (Google itself, Youtube, Wikipedia...). Yes, this is a loss of link weight, but diluting recipients and proximity to authorities will only benefit your link.
Payment
Footprint No. 39: Payments for different domains and hosting are made with one card / PayPal
It's not how much about 1 invoice or the card you pay with, although it's about that too (especially if you pay with a card connected to GooglePay). It's more likely that you will do this in a browser that will remember the card and remember the payment for it on 10-20 hosting sites and/or registrars. And as a result, some Internet service knows that many similar services were paid for with 1 card.
PayPal is like GooglePay for me, like Apple Pay - I have long disbelieved in the safety of the data of these tech giants. They collect tons of data about everything for no reason.
Tip: use everything different, and never payments from the giants of the industry.
Paranoia
Footprint #40: Visiting multiple PBN sites from the same IP and MAC address
Especially if you do this from the Google Chrome browser or on any website.
the code is from Google and beyond.
Tip: use different entry points and different browsers to visit satellites.
Footprint No.41: Visiting websites from a single Google account
This is generally dumb, but... see the previous paragraph. It's like applying to Google - I ask you to consider these sites of mine linked.
Tip: use different entry points and different browsers to visit satellites.
Footprint No. 42: Using any search engine service increases the risk significantly
Remember, when working with PBN sites, never use any search engine service that you are, in fact, deceiving with your network of sites.
Tip: no Google services.
I think I've written everything. Sometimes it's messy, sometimes the points overlap or are similar. But as it is.
When making another network of sites, I reread the list myself every time. And I advise you.