The Google Japan Webmaster Blog announced that they have penalized a link network there for trying to manipulate Google search results rankings.

Google translate tried to translate the blog post – not too well from the looks of it:

The blog post added:

It has been some time since Google publicly claimed to go after a link network. They’ve done so in Germany and large agencies in Germany and penalized networks in Germany, Italy and Spain in the past. They’ve targeted Poland and many other countries in the past and many other link networks both in the US and worldwide. but it has been a while since we had one of these.

Those in Japan, check your Google Search Console message center.

金谷 武明 Takeaki Kanaya from Google announced this on Twitter saying:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

H/T SEM Post.