I dont think there is much truth to it. None of the KWs Ive been targeting have been hurt in the SERPS - just improved. My PR is at 6 compared to 4 when I first started with the coop way back in the day. I see no evidence that the COOP is having troubles with google.
I hope that this is true myself, but why have I been hearing otherwise? Is there any technical threads out there with conversation about how G is treating the Ad Network?
Forget the hysteria of if it could affect the coop. Comments on the article? Are people seeing this? Is it true.
I can offer my experience with this - probably others would say it hasn't happened to them so it is only one data point. I have site my first which is new. I slowly build links to it and it was doing okay and eventually broke out of the sandbox. I then agressively added links over a 2 to 3 month span for 2 or 3 keywords. Then one day it totally fell off the map still indexed in google but rankings were gone. I have another site that is a few years old. Almost similar fashion in terms of building links as the new site over similar period of time but it is still doing very well in google. Who knows if this means anything?! Anyone else with a new site seeing this?
It does have some effect. The thing is if you read the document it shows that it checks when a link disapears to you. Meaning that it sort of thinks that your content is of no interest and the website stopped linking to you because of that. It really makes sence, very neat system.