Google sending warnings about Artificial or Unnatural links in Google Webmaster Central
-
Has anyone seen warnings about Artificial or Unnatural links notice show up in their Google Webmaster central yet? I just looked at each of our clients and had not but after reading the Search Engine Land article at http://searchengineland.com/google-warning-more-about-bad-link-networks-117079 I was wondering what your thoughts were regarding this topic?
We are not purchasing links for our clients sites but definitely going out their and building links. Article concerned me that I may run into issues for my link building clients. Thoughts?
-
Similar story here, got lots of sites, got warning ion 2 I least expected, was using some article blogs a while back, but only as part of a wider link profile. No penalty from warning, am hoping it's just a wake up call. Wish things were clearer, google needs to be more transparent.Fixing anything they don't like is also ridiculously difficult.
-
I have access to dozens of legitimate websites and knowledge of their SEO. One of the sites received the notice from Goggle, but had no rankings drop. Another site had sudden rankings drop for permutations of a keyword (went from averaging position 8 to averaging position 23).
I looked into what made these sites / keywords unique.
We did not knowingly use any blog networks. (and if we had links from them, it would have been low quantity)
We had many anchor text links. The quantity was similar or less than other website which received no penalties or warnings.
The website that received the warning did have some pure spam PR backlinks, but they were removed 7 months ago.
What seemed to make the website which received the warning unique was the high percentage of anchor text links to natural social and forum links. The website had less than 1,000 links total. Other websites with 2,000 to 10,000 links (and a similar to slightly larger quantity of anchor text links) received no warning,
What seemed unique about the site that received a drop for one set of keywords was that the site was having ranking problems with that keyword and a push was made to make more inbound links with that keyword. (we talking 10's of links, not hundreds or thousands.)
These sites have competition with 10,000 to 50,000 inbound links I would call "unnatural" we haven't seen those website dropping in rank.
It seems to me that google was very upfront when they state "over optimization". It is relational to your total link profile.
-
I have access to dozens of legitimate websites and knowledge of their SEO. One of the sites received the notice from Goggle, but had no rankings drop. Another site had sudden rankings drop for permutations of a keyword (went from averaging position 8 to averaging position 23).
I looked into what made these sites / keywords unique.
We did not knowingly use any blog networks. (and if we had links from them, it would have been low quantity)
We had many anchor text links. The quantity was similar or less than other website which received no penalties or warnings.
The website that received the warning did have some pure spam PR backlinks, but they were removed 7 months ago.
What seemed to make the website which received the warning unique was the high percentage of anchor text links to natural social and forum links. The website had less than 1,000 links total. Other websites with 2,000 to 10,000 links (and a similar to slightly larger quantity of anchor text links) received no warning,
What seemed unique about the site that received a drop for one set of keywords was that the site was having ranking problems with that keyword and a push was made to make more inbound links with that keyword. (we talking 10's of links, not hundreds or thousands.)
These sites have competition with 10,000 to 50,000 inbound links I would call "unnatural" we haven't seen those website dropping in rank.
It seems to me that google was very upfront when they state "over optimization". It is relational to your total link profile.
-
I had three show up for one of our test sites. All came on 3/29. All said the same thing.
Funny thing is, while it said that we had to request re-inclusion into the index, the site remains well ranked on other terms.
This makes us think that the infractions are for getting exact match anchor text links (they were the ones that got the messages). Compared to the other organic links we earned (variations of the anchor text in the links).
So, this latest wave of penalties applies to keywords, not the site, which is a step in the right direction.
We are already anticipating what the next penalized type of link will be, and we are already actively testing.
-
Having artificial or unnatural links isn't strictly limited to purchasing links. Are you doing anything else that might not be considered above board by Google? I'd start there and examine your clients' backlink profiles and make adjustments if needed.
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
-
Better to place linked-back article or post article and seek multiple links?
Which option is better for SEO purposes: 1. Author article for trade journal in return for link back to my home page. 2. Post article on my site and solicit links from multiple sites. Assume links all have moderate authority.
Link Building | | Lysarden0 -
I am looking for a software to keep track of the back links or link building
Hi Guys, I am very new hear. I just joined. I have a few websites that I need to manage. I am looking for a software that will allow me to manually add the links that I have been able to acquire. It would also be a bonus if it could search for the links to my site and to see if its still active. Because I have a freelancer working a few hours a week on link building and I need to keep track of the links. I am looking for something simple and good. Any suggestions? By the way, I used Raven Tools many years ago, and it had this feature. But since joining Moz, I don't want to be paying for 2 subscriptions. And I don't know if Raven still has this feature. Your suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you. Ryan
Link Building | | RyanNewman0 -
Need referrals on expert to clean up "unnatural links" and submit reconsideration request
I just received a manual unnatural links penalty. I was shocked because other than maybe five links many years ago, I've not done anything to get links. The site is very powerful in it's own right and buying links is unnecessary. My first thought was a competitor has done the link spamming on my behalf, any my site is very profitable and the competitors are plentiful and ruthless (i.e. steal my content and use it) since we are #1 for our search term. I took a quick look at my links (via webmaster tools) just now and yes, in the last few months there are tons of links from very bad looking sites that are I've never heard of. It's obvious I've been purposefully hit by a competitor. (What's it called when they do this?) Does Google understand at all that this stuff goes on? Do they even care? On the eventual reconsideration request, if I say that I honestly didn't do those links, would they even believe me or even care? I have read several articles on what to do now. But this is so important to my income stream that I don't want to screw anything up trying to fix it, and I want to get it right the first time. Every day is very expensive to me. So, I'd like to get some recommendations on any experts that can handle this professionally and swiftly. Please let me know of anyone trustworthy that won't rip me off, and if you are such a professional yourself, please let me know. Thank you
Link Building | | bizzer0 -
Ecomerce: Would 4 link sections leak too much link juice?
Hello, In my content management for our ecomerce site, I've found that there are sometimes links to sites in our industry that have "helpful links" sections. Several strong sites link directly to these resource sections. There are 4 different topics that fit this trend in our industry. Would it leak too much link juice to make 4 comprehensive link sections and place a link to them on our "Useful Articles" page? Or should I stick to one comprehensive link section? Or perhaps a small link section? Or none at all? Thanks.
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Why does my site only have 4 internal followed links/internal links?
When using Open Site Explorer my site is winning in many categories but lacking in others as compared to competitors. I intend to improve on this but am a little confused by the extremely low number of "internal followed links" and "internal links" at just 4. My competitors have much more than that. Does this mean links to the root domain? Total internal links? I have many internal links so I'm having a hard time figuring this one out. What four internal links are getting noticed? I just went through and changed all the links that went to index.html to link to the root domain at www.njlimocarservice.com as I just found a Q&A that indicates this was better. So as of Wed at 5:45 PM all my links to the homepage went to index.html and not the root which is no longer the case. Not sure if this matters. At the same time I also just put a 301 from index.html to redirect to www.njlimocarservice.com. Any help appreciated! h9QuF.png
Link Building | | kabledesigns0 -
Link Farming
Are link farms still bad? I still am not sure about this question. I know that some people still do link farms. If they are bad, wouldn't a directory be considered a link farm? For instance I can get my site on a .EDU, but it will just be a list of links. Is that bad?
Link Building | | blackrino0 -
.edu links
Hi mozzers, I've had some great success reaching out to many .edu webmasters. Often they are professors and such. My question is, i'm guessing during the summer holiday period, reaching out to these webmasters won't be so fruitful. I'm not in the US and was wondering when the US Summer holidays are for universities over there? Also, does anyone have experience outreaching to these webmasters over the holidays? Peter
Link Building | | PeterM221 -
Google dosent care that much about links lately?
Google dosent care that much about links lately or crawl started beeing more intelegent about it? Do you feel any changes?
Link Building | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0