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Satisfying the shareholders at any cost really helps to simplify the decision making process considerably. Ever since the Google Wave debacle a few years back, it seems that everything I've seen new and innovative from Google has been less 'cool for techie' and more 'good idea to make more profit'.
It seems we can count the Adwords API as yet another project headed to join the scrapheap in the Google Labs junkyard. Useful for some but not profitable enough to keep around.
As a paid subscriber to both SEOMoz and SEMRush, my thought is one company buys the other. I get a discount, you get some really nice Adwords Keyword data.
I have seen this particular warning on a website with over 9,000 inbound links and 2,000 inbound linking domains. When going through various link reports what I noticed were a lot of SPAM sites pointing to the website that the owner had no control over.
Here's my take - I think this is just a warning and certainly nothing to lose a ton of sleep over. Google must certainly know that there's no way you or I can be in complete control of inbound links. If Google worked that way it would be all too easy to crush your competition. If a competitor gets pissed that you just took them over on Page1, Rank 1 what's to stop them from loading up black hat SEO tools and going to town on your domain?
My advice is to continue building ethical links that conform to Google's guidelines. If you are already doing this, there's no way you can control the other links in most cases so ignore the warning. I think Google just wants you to be aware of it so that if you ARE building the bad links yourself you stop doing it and wasting time/money on it.
As soon as I get mine Dmitry I'll invite you. What is your gmail address? PM me.
I have written what I hope you will find to be a helpful guide to adding +1 to a website. There are some links there with some in-depth Google +1 information that can help.
I was thinking of the same exact page to post in reply when I scrolled down to find that you'd already posted it. 
This is dead on.
I absolutely can't wait for search engines to stop placing so much emphasis on domain keywords. I can't tell you how many times I get the dead fish stare from a client when they learn that their business name that they've had for 25 years is NOT the best domain name for their business website.
It does happen often, I've seen clients of mine suddenly hit with thousands of fake inbound links from garbage sites, Chinese sites, etc. I'm a relatively small fish so if it's happened to me I'm certain it happens on a much larger scale. I can't see how any one particular company could be singled out and blamed. There is the burden of proof, and without an actual credit card transaction or some other form of evidence how could anyone make that claim and have it stick? There are literally dozens of companies on the internet right now where, for $25, they will go out and spam the internet using software/bots to any link/text that you request. I'm sure there's no verification that you're the actual owner of the website when this is taking place. Since anyone can do it to anyone else, it's best to stay on top of what's going on for your clients but don't worry about it too much. Any time I have seen this happen I've always notified the client with a brief status update that something is going on. From the standpoint, mostly, of making sure that the owner of the company or an employee is doing something stupid without my knowledge.
Link from within the text of the lens. Place the text link as high as possible, ideally in the first text box.
We have noticed some strange rankings for a while that do not make any type of logical sense from an SEO standpoint. After an SEO review, it is found that these sites rank for top terms in very competitive markets for no clear reason.
To demonstrate, here is research for one of the categories where this is taking place.
Rank #1: www.datafast.net/phoenix-computer-repair.html
Rank #2: www.mobiletechsupport.com
Rank #4: www.mypctechs.com
The first thing we run is a linkscape visualization and comparison report. Compare site #1 to #4 or site #2 to #4. In all instances, site #1 and site #2 are completely dominated by site #4.
Visualizer stats, with higher ranking site #1 on the left. Lower ranking site #4 on right:
| Overall Score | 29% | 53% |
| Page mozRank | 3.72 37% | 5.66 57% |
| Page mozTrust | 5.41 54% | 6.09 61% |
| External mozRank | 3.38 34% | 5.62 56% |
| Subdomain mozRank | 3.91 39% | 5.70 57% |
| Domains Linking | 11 12% | 74 29% |
| External Links | 10 0% | 17461 60% |
Next, running a linkscape report to evaluate inbound links for site #1 shows a collection of cheap profile spam links. There actually appear to be no high quality inbound links:
TARGET: www.datafast.net/phoenix-computer-repair.html
TITLE: View the profile of Phoenix12****Anchor Text: Computer Repair Phoenix
TARGET: www.datafast.net/phoenix-computer-repair.html
TITLE: View the profile of Phoenix59****Anchor Text: Computer Repair Phoenix
TARGET: www.datafast.net/phoenix-computer-repair.html
TITLE: View the profile of Phoenix59
Full evaluation of the top site #1 shows there's not much relevant content on the pages to warrant rank 1. Just a few bare pages with very little text. Site #2 does have a lot of on-page information, but still not enough useful information to justify rank #2 in this market.
Is this some kind of black-hat SEO that is exploiting an unpublished weakness in Google? If so, what method is being used? Spammy profile links? The current site ranked #1 has been reported to Google as SPAM 3 times in the past. Every time it disappears from the top ranking for a few weeks, but is back again a short time later.
It does happen often, I've seen clients of mine suddenly hit with thousands of fake inbound links from garbage sites, Chinese sites, etc. I'm a relatively small fish so if it's happened to me I'm certain it happens on a much larger scale. I can't see how any one particular company could be singled out and blamed. There is the burden of proof, and without an actual credit card transaction or some other form of evidence how could anyone make that claim and have it stick? There are literally dozens of companies on the internet right now where, for $25, they will go out and spam the internet using software/bots to any link/text that you request. I'm sure there's no verification that you're the actual owner of the website when this is taking place. Since anyone can do it to anyone else, it's best to stay on top of what's going on for your clients but don't worry about it too much. Any time I have seen this happen I've always notified the client with a brief status update that something is going on. From the standpoint, mostly, of making sure that the owner of the company or an employee is doing something stupid without my knowledge.
I have seen this particular warning on a website with over 9,000 inbound links and 2,000 inbound linking domains. When going through various link reports what I noticed were a lot of SPAM sites pointing to the website that the owner had no control over.
Here's my take - I think this is just a warning and certainly nothing to lose a ton of sleep over. Google must certainly know that there's no way you or I can be in complete control of inbound links. If Google worked that way it would be all too easy to crush your competition. If a competitor gets pissed that you just took them over on Page1, Rank 1 what's to stop them from loading up black hat SEO tools and going to town on your domain?
My advice is to continue building ethical links that conform to Google's guidelines. If you are already doing this, there's no way you can control the other links in most cases so ignore the warning. I think Google just wants you to be aware of it so that if you ARE building the bad links yourself you stop doing it and wasting time/money on it.
As a paid subscriber to both SEOMoz and SEMRush, my thought is one company buys the other. I get a discount, you get some really nice Adwords Keyword data.