J-Entry, an SEO link building service operated by Line Business Partner, was taken offline in July 2014, most probably due to Googles recent changes and penalties for websites of this kind. Previously, this website was selling links for all kinds of industries and promised a placing on one of its 46 partner websites, which also included high PR sites such as livedoor or AU Portal.

The link building website stopped taking on new site submissions in the first half of 2013 and changed all links to ‘no-follow’ in order to comply with the Google Webmaster Guidelines and avoid any potential penalties experienced by other major directories in Japan recently.

In the screenshot below from back in 2012 you can see the advantages J-Entry was promising its clients when using its services illustrated with two example keywords and their previous surge in rankings on Google and Yahoo.

<src=”/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/jentry1-570×165.png” alt=”jentry1-570×165″ width=”570″ height=”165″ /> March, 2012

Prices were between USD 400 up to USD 1,400 and it was a one-off payment for ‘semi-permanent’ links on the partner websites.

<src=”/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/jentry2-570×195.png” alt=”jentry2-570×195″ width=”570″ height=”195″ /> Pricing in March, 2012

Those prices constantly went up as you can see in the same table in November 2012.

<src=”/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/jentry3-570×169.png” alt=”jentry3-570×169″ width=”570″ height=”169″ /> Pricing in November, 2012

However, after Google starting to penalize more and more link building websites, J-Entry implemented the ‘no-follow’ attribute to all its links in 2013 and stopped taking on any new submissions (green box in screenshot below) after summer 2013.

<src=”/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/jentry4-570×340.png” alt=”jentry4-570×340″ width=”570″ height=”340″ /> Screenshot in September 2013

Naturally, by cancelling all further submissions, the business model became unprofitable and Line decided to eventually withdraw and shut down the website in July 2014. When trying to access the website under http://jentry.jlisting.jp an error message such as in the screenshot below will appear.

J-Entry is just one of many paid SEO link building/directory websites in Japan which either stopped their services or were penalized by Google. It won’t be the last one for sure and this trend will hopefully make the Japanese SEO landscape a fair SEO playing field in future.