Manual Penalty Removed - Recovery Times...
-
Howdy Mozzers,
For anyone who has had experience of a manual penalty i'd appreciate your feedback.
How long did it take to recover from a Manual Penalty?
Of course every situation is different and its only been 8 days so perhaps it's to soon.
Below is the email we received, I highlighted "believed" they didn't state we had. We highlighted a bunch of back links we didn't like however most of these remain in our profile in GWT so not sure what was really the problem.
"Previously the webspam team had taken manual action on your site because we believed it violated our quality guidelines. After reviewing your reconsideration request, we have revoked this manual action. It may take some time before our indexing and ranking systems are updated to reflect the new status of your site."
Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.
-
That was the original email - Google has detected evidence of unnatural link building.
We're still not entirely sure what caused the issue. I assume it was in our last reconsideration request but at that point we were just hoping.
-
Unfortunately there is no warning given at all for sites hit by Penguin. Hopefully yours is just a manual unnatural links penalty!
-
Hi Marie,
Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully it won't be months as we have already been suffering since May.
If there are underlying algorithmic issues related to Penguin...we would have a notice right?
Thanks for the feedback, greatly appreciated.
-
Forehead slapping moment, I know of this. Just for some reason hadn't thought to give it a go!
Thanks you. I'll keep you posted on the outcome.
Ps. if you don't want more people to know, perhaps take it off the public domain! Ha
-
I've seen some sites come back within a day or two of a manual penalty being removed. But, for others it can take a couple of weeks or even a few months. The difference is the degree of "spamminess" that you had before the penalty. If you had some really nasty blackhat stuff going on then you're more likely to have a longer penalty.
However, as others have mentioned, you could also have a Penguin issue on top of the warning in which case you won't get the full extent of your recovery until another Penguin refresh runs.
-
Hello Robert,
I will give you a method here that may assist you on the reindex side:
In GWMT go to Health> Fetch as Googlebot
In the url space following the initial domain, put an offending page and then click Fetch
It usually takes less than 5 seconds and you will see "success" with a green check mark followed by a button for Submit to Index. (Given the situation, I highly urge you to click it!
Note: If the entire site is affected, you will want to use URL and Linked pages on submission (you only get ten of these per month) and if not, just that url. (You get 500 Fetches a month).
This should help get you indexed more rapidly. PLEASE do not tell anyone as it is a secret!!
Good Luck,
Robert
-
Thanks for the 2c.
Keeping my eyes peeled, fingers crossed and working on the good stuff!
-
Great Video!
As you say, if the manual penalty removal doesn't allow traffic bounce back then I will be looking at any penguin related issues that I need to work on.
At the moment our big focus is on creating high quality unique content for high quality sites. Whilst focussing on all the on page/on site content in our control to make sure everything is up to scratch.
I'll keep you posted.
-
You just have to be patient here, I have seen sites bounce back in days and others take weeks. If the penalty is revoked, it should bounce back though so just try to hold fire.
The one caveat here is that there have been a whole bunch of updates and I am working with a few sites that seemingly have a manual penalty along with a bunch of panda and penguin issues. We have resolved some of the panda issues and made some improvements, we can still see a bunch of penguin type issues that we are waiting for a data refresh on and we are waiting for a response on the manual thing.
Point being, that you may not bounce back to where you were and it's possible you may have snowballed a few more problems along the way.
So, keep an eye on analytics, wait too see if you have a bounce back and then dig into your site to see if you have penguin or panda issues holding you back as well.
This is worth a quick watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES01L4xjSXE&feature=player_embedded
Marcus
-
Great news!
As they said, give it a month or two and you'll start seeing your rankings improve.
They probably apply these penalties in bulk and then manually review when reconsideration requests come through. Whoever analysed your profile saw nothing majorly wrong so lifted the ban.
My 2c worth.
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
-
Significant "Average Position" dips in Search Console each time I post on Google My Business
Hi everyone, Several weeks ago I noticed that each Wednesday my site's Average Position in Search Console dipped significantly. Immediately I identified that this was the day my colleague published and back-linked a blog post, and so we spent the next few weeks testing and monitoring everything we did. We discovered that it was ONLY when we created a Google My Business post that the Average Position dipped, and on the 1st July we tested it one more time. The results were the same (please see attached image). I am 100% confident that Google My Business is the cause of the issue, but can't identify why. The image I upload belongs to me, the text isn't spammy or stuffed with keywords, the Learn More links to my own website, and I never receive any warnings from Google about the content. I would love to hear the community's thoughts on this and how I can stop the issue from continuing. I should note, that my Google My Business insights are generally positive i.e. no dips in search results etc. My URL is https://www.photographybymatthewjames.com/ Thanks in advance Matthew C0000OTrpfmNWx8g
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PhotoMattJames0 -
Link Building / Link Removal
Hey, I'm in the process of learning SEO, or attempting to, for my company and am chipping away at the process ever so slowly! How can I tell if a site that links to my company's site, www.1099pro.com, has a negative effect on my page/domain authority? Also, if a page doesn't show up in the search rankings at all for it's keywords when it really should (i.e it has the exact keywords and page/domain authority far surpasses even the top results) how can I tell if Google has removed the page from its listing and why? Thanks SEO Gurus
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Stew2220 -
Changing url to recover from algorythmic penalty
Hello, If I think that a website was hit algorithmically, I would like to buy a new domain name and publish all the content from the first website there. I will take the first site down and this one would be the only one this content. Will Google see that it's the same content than a penalized website posted before and will penalize the new domain name even though it has 0 links pointing to it? Regards.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | EndeR-0 -
Recovering from Pinguin Penalty
We have big issue with a website who has been hardly penalized by Pinguin on october 4th. After a lot of try to remove bad links and sending two disavow files, none of our actions has improved our situation. We're wondering if this solution might be good : changing the domaine name Keeping the same content Not using Webmaster tools and redirect 301 and wait until the site will be fully indexed Build new links Please tell us your opinion and solution. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | webit400 -
Which SEO companies offer Penalty analysis?
I'm having a hard time finding a (good) SEO company which specializes itself in Penalty analysis? Any recommendations? I only found Bruce Clay, but they charge 8,000$ :)...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wellnesswooz0 -
Identifying why my site has a penalty
Hi, My site has been hit with a google penalty of some sort, but it doesn't coincide with a penguin or panda update. I have attached a graph of my visits that demonstrates this. I have been working on my SEO since the latter part of last year and have been seeing good results, then all of a sudden my search referrals dropped by 70%. Can anyone advise on what it could be? Thanks! Will XBvZq2e
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | madegood0 -
Webmaster Tools Showing Bad Links Removed Over 60 Days Ago
Hello, One of my clients received the notorious message from Google about unnatural links late last March. We've removed several hundred (if not thousands) of links, and resubmitted several times for reconsideration, only to continue with responses that state that we still have unnatural links. Looking through the "links to your site" in google webmaster tools, there are several hundred sites / pages listed, from which we removed our link over 60 days ago. If you click each link to view the site / page, they contain nothing, viewable or hidden, regarding our website / address. I was wondering if this (outdated / inaccurate) list is the same as the one their employees use to analyze the current status of bad links, and if so how long it will take to reflect up-to-date information. In other words, even though we've removed the bad links, how long do we need to wait until we can expect a clean resubmission for reconsideration. Any help / advice would be greatly appreciated -
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Bromtec0 -
Is this Penguin or Manual Penalty?
I have a client that's traffic dropped off on April 10th. They did get a message in GWT on March 21st. The April 10th date leads me to believe that it is a manual penalty and couldn't be penguin since penguin was released on April 24th. I guess either way backlinks need to be cleaned up though.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin0