HELP - got the following message - Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links
-
Hi All,
While trying to grow we used several freelancers and small companies for guest blogging, article submissions etc.
We lost about 90% of traffic from our peek at December.
We don't know if it is related but we got the following message last week:
"Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to www.domain.com"Is it related (getting this message after two months of losing traffic)?
What to do????
(P.S
We fired most of the companies we used months ago since we noticed they used bad methods. We didn't believe it can hurt us - just thought it would be useless...)Please Help...
-
Hi there,
A lot of people have been receiving these warnings for blog network use and other low-quality/paid links. I wrote about it on the blog recently. My advice is to do your best to remove the links that are clearly low-quality - Google is telling you directly to clean things up, and may hit you with a penalty if things don't get better.
-
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2008/07/requesting-reconsideration-using-google.html
I did see a interview with a google staffer, who said thet they have never come accross a case when a compeditor had did such a thing, but most claim it so.
I would assume it ws one of the people you hired.
-
The thing is that we didn't hire "professionals" until we were very highly ranked and were "busy" of work and had to outsource it. We tried several companies and freelancers and within a couple of months stayed only with the best one but it seems that the damage was done.
I always thought that what they did can't hurt me but rather won't do any good.
Otherwise, what prevents me from hire these guys to "promote" my competitors?
Who knows, maybe someone did it to me?Do you know what is the proper way to ask for reconsideration?
Thanks
-
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.
-
Bingo!!
I think it certainly is, but sorry i have no idea how to go about fixing this as you cant just remove them.
To be honest, it is a good thing for those that had to compete with you honestly.
I cant be too harsh on you, as they temptation to get easy links is great, but so are the risks.
You could try asking for reconsideration, if you are flagged, but there is no way Goolge is going to give you your link juice back.
-
Hi!
It may very well be a direct correlation of your previously mentioned link building methods. You mentioned guest blogging - this is one of the best ways to build links if done to reputable sites, so that might not be the cause..
Could you go into more detail on some of the other techniques they used? How many links, how long of a period they were build, and perhaps a live example of something they did? We should be able to tell based off of that info.
Thanks,
Casey
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Weird Site is linking to our site and links appears to be broken
I have got a lot of weird links indexed from this page: http://kzs.uere.info/files/images/dining-table-and-2-upholstered-chairs.html When clicking the link it shows 404. Also, the spam score is huge. What do you guys suggest to do with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Miniorek
Could it be done by somebody to get our rankings down or domain penalized? Best Regards
Mike & Alex0 -
What is the best SEO tool to check internal linking structure
HI, Is there any tool to check how a website's internal linking structure has been linked. Some times few important pages may not linked very well and some links will be over linked. This will surge rankings...like if more links are pointing to one page? Is there any tool to check this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
How do I add https version of site to Bing webmaster tools?
I could add my site to Google Webmaster tools with no problems, but when I try to add it in Bing webmaster tools it just redirects me to what I already have. Everything is staying the same but the switch from http to https. Anyone else experienced this? This is what I just received back from Bing and it doesn't seem right- I understand that you switched to the https version of your site and you're now trying to use the Site Move tool. However, in order to do this, you must verify the https version of your site first. You cannot do this because it just redirects you to the dashboard. We thank you for reporting this to us. We've investigated on this matter and can see that you're already put a redirect from the http to the https version of your site. We also checked the /BingSiteAuth.xml file and this also redirects to the https version. At this point, we suggest that you remove the current website (http version) that is verified through Bing Webmaster Tool and add your https domain. When done, use the Site Move tool. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite1 -
Does Google make continued attempts to crawl an old page one it has followed a 301 to the new page?
I am curious about this for a couple of reasons. We have all dealt with a site who switched platforms and didn't plan properly and now have 1,000's of crawl errors. Many of the developers I have talked to have stated very clearly that the HTacccess file should not be used for 1,000's of singe redirects. I figured If I only needed them in their temporarily it wouldn't be an issue. I am curious if once Google follows a 301 from an old page to a new page, will they stop crawling the old page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RossFruin0 -
Is it better "nofollow" or "follow" links to external social pages?
Hello, I have four outbound links from my site home page taking users to join us on our social Network pages (Twitter, FB, YT and Google+). if you look at my site home page, you can find those 4 links as 4 large buttons on the right column of the page: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/ Here is my question: do you think it is better for me to add the rel="nofollow" directive to those 4 links or allow Google to follow? From a PR prospective, I am sure that would be better to apply the nofollow tag, but I would like Google to understand that we have a presence on those 4 social channels and to make clearly a correlation between our official website and our official social channels (and then to let Google understand that our social channels are legitimate and related to us), but I am afraid the nofollow directive could prevent that. What's the best move in this case? What do you suggest to do? Maybe the nofollow is irrelevant to allow Google to correlate our website to our legitimate social channels, but I am not sure about that. Any suggestions are very welcome. Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau9 -
How to get around Google Removal tool not removing redirected and 404 pages? Or if you don't know the anchor text?
Hello! I can’t get squat for an answer in GWT forums. Should have brought this problem here first… The Google Removal Tool doesn't work when the original page you're trying to get recached redirects to another site. Google still reads the site as being okay, so there is no way for me to get the cache reset since I don't what text was previously on the page. For example: This: | http://0creditbalancetransfer.com/article375451_influencial_search_results_for_.htm | Redirects to this: http://abacusmortgageloans.com/GuaranteedPersonaLoanCKBK.htm?hop=duc01996 I don't even know what was on the first page. And when it redirects, I have no way of telling Google to recache the page. It's almost as if the site got deindexed, and they put in a redirect. Then there is crap like this: http://aniga.x90x.net/index.php?q=Recuperacion+Discos+Fujitsu+www.articulo.org/articulo/182/recuperacion_de_disco_duro_recuperar_datos_discos_duros_ii.html No links to my site are on there, yet Google's indexed links say that the page is linking to me. It isn't, but because I don't know HOW the page changed text-wise, I can't get the page recached. The tool also doesn't work when a page 404s. Google still reads the page as being active, but it isn't. What are my options? I literally have hundreds of such URLs. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeanGodier0 -
Access denied errors in webmaster tools
I notice today Ihave 2 access denied errors. I checked the help which says: Googlebot couldn’t access a URL on your site because your site requires users to log in to view all or some of your content. (Tip: You can get around this by removing this requirement for user-agent Googlebot.) Therefore I think it may be because I have added a login page for users and googlebot can't access it. I'm using wordpress and presume I need to amend the robots.txt to remove the requirement for google to log in but how do I do that? Unless I'm misunderstanding the problem altogether!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Rel= Author : Google suggests that we include this. Can i link to my FB profile
There have been several reference on how Google is trying to build author profiles so that it can effectively measure the authors authority based on the Rel=Author. I quite liked this idea , but my site is a user generated content website. So how can i leverage this ? . One thing which i was thinking was if its a good idea to link to the customers Facebook profile , plan to collect this during sign up.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShoutOut0