First attempt at manual penalty removal fails - all example links provided by Google not in Majestic, GWT, Ahrefs, LinkDetox, or OSE.
-
Hello all,
I am trying to recover a site from a manual penalty. I already submitted once. Here's what we did. We took the link profile from webmaster tools, majestic seo, ahrefs, link detox, and ose. We manually looked at every link to exclude good links. Then used a tool to run the removal campaign. Submitted a disavow file and reconsideration request.
Google came back with a denial. When I looked at the three example links that Google provided, they were definitely spammy (forum profile and comment spam). But none of them were in any of the original csv downloads from GWT, Ahrefs, Majestic, OSE, or LinkDetox.
What can I do?
Thanks in advance for any help.
-
One of the example links provided isn't even in the index apparently.
I've had that happen to me before. I usually explain in my reconsideration request that this example is no longer in the index. But, I also try my best to see if I can find similar indexed links that I have not dealt with. Usually there are others there.
For your search, don't use the link: operator. Google's link operator does not work well. The rest of your search should work well, but if your keyword phrase is a popular one then you'll have to be more creative. Have they used the same username in profiles? That would be something to search for.
-
Okay, interesting. One of the example links provided isn't even in the index apparently. Also, I am trying the following search, but I think I am doing something wrong because I am getting zero results back.
inurl:member -site:clientsite.com + "keyword phrase" + link:clientsite.com
I am trying to find pages link to my client's site, that are not on my client's site, that have member in the url, that use keyword somewhere.
What am I doing wrong?
-
I find that this is really common for sites that have utilized low quality forum and spam comment links. Google will often come back with example links that are in the index but nowhere to be found in any of the backlink checkers. I usually find though that with some creative thinking you can find more of these links to try to remove and disavow.
Look for patterns in your forum links. For one of our clients, the forum links given to us by Google were all Russian forum profiles all on a phpBB platform (I believe...can't remember all of the details right now.) We did some Google searches like the following:
inurl:user/profile "keyword"
inurl:user/profile "username"
"powered by phpbb" + "keyword" <--This only works if you have a relatively unique keyword or username
"powered by phpbb" + "username"
Of course, these are just examples though. You may need to be more creative in the searches that you do.
Similarly, we will often get example links that are press releases and not in our backlink checkers. You can search for text from your press releases in quotes to find more. This also works well if you have used boilerplate author bio text for low quality articles.
I believe that the reason why Google wants you to find these before they remove your penalty is that these links will hurt the site in the Penguin algorithm if not removed. It is unfair that these links are not in WMT, but the work must be done to try to find them.
One other thought is to ask your client if they have a list of known links that were made. This may seem obvious, but I've had a couple of cases where clients were able to contact the offshore linkbuilding firm that made links for them and suddenly we have a list of hundreds of links that we can deal with.
Best of luck!
-
How do you obtain a complete link sample indeed. You really can't. Even the best programs may show only 25-30% of your entire profile at any one time (and in some cases only 15%). According to Google, all you are "supposed" to need is the export from GW Tools, that's clearly not the case.
Unfortunately, if you are only at 52% removal on your existing links that's not nearly high enough. I'd personally recommend trying again to get that number up, on your existing links, but make sure to run a NEW download from GW Tools regularly, they appear to be updating that bi-monthly now so new links are probably already in your account.
Keep working and consider adding www.linkrisk.com into your analysis as well. That's another pretty good source of links and it does a good job of sorting the links into suspect classes for you so also very helpful.
Sorry I can't be of more help.
-
Thanks for responding. I actually did exactly what you suggested the first time around. I pulled from every available source including Majestic, GWT, OSE, LinkDetox, and Ahrefs. I was only able to achieve a 52% removal. But I ran it for a month and contacted some webmasters up to 9 times. I did disavow at the domain level and linked to both the disavow and link pruning sheets within your the request.
And again, the link examples that came back were not in ANY of the tools and sources used. So my question is, how do I obtain a more complete link sample.
-
Ouch, I just lost my entire response to you so unfortunately, this one won't be as detailed.
What you described is common. Google doesn't provide a full backlink view of your links and I've personally experienced what you've experienced, receiving sample links that are not referenced at all in the Google link download I originally worked from. To combat this, use multiple sources: Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer, Google Download, Ahrefs, etc. I then take these links and import ALL of them into the Link Detox tool over at www.linkresearchtools.com. The tool does a fantastic job of auto-sorting the duplicates for you. Do this so you work with a larger sample going forward.
Unfortunately, now that you've been denied Google won't even consider looking at another recon submission for at least another 3-5 weeks. Take that time to run a more complete link sample then refine your analysis around the sample link classes and anchor texts they provided. Finally, the standard for Unnatural Link Manual Action removal campaigns is high: think 70%. So try your best to remove as much as you can. What you can't, make sure to DISAVOW at the domain level and link to both your Disavow File AND your Link Pruning Sheets within your next Reconsideration Request.
Good luck and if you remember nothing from this answer remember this going forward:
Golden Rule of Link Building: "Any link on which YOU can control the placement and or anchor text rich nature, is an UNNATURAL LINK."
I hope this was helpful.
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
-
Same URL-Structure & the same number of URLs indexed on two different websites - can it lead to a Google penalty?
Hey guys. I've got a question about the url structure on two different websites with a similar topic (bith are job search websites). Although we are going to publish different content (texts) on these two websites and they will differ visually, the url structure (except for the domain name) remains exactly the same, as does the number of indexed landingpages on both pages. For example, www.yyy.com/jobs/mobile-developer & www.zzz.com/jobs/mobile-developer. In your opinion, can this lead to a Google penalty? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vde130 -
GWT app and link emulation
Hi, I have a gwt site - https://www.whatiswhere.com. I have tab control which emulates the menu. I am planning to put <a>links instead of text into tab labels to create internal links. I am thinking to add java script to stop onclick event of</a> <a>otherwise i will get to the new session of GWT site. What I want is to just change the tab but at the same time have a link for the crawler. Would my approach work? Will it be equivalent to non-follow link? Will it improve the ranking comparing to 'no link at all' case?</a> <a>Thanks, Andrei.</a>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Anazar_20010 -
6 .htaccess Rewrites: Remove index.html, Remove .html, Force non-www, Force Trailing Slash
i've to give some information about my website Environment 1. i have static webpage in the root. 2. Wordpress installed in sub-dictionary www.domain.com/blog/ 3. I have two .htaccess , one in the root and one in the wordpress
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NeatIT
folder. i want to www to non on all URLs Remove index.html from url Remove all .html extension / Re-direct 301 to url
without .html extension Add trailing slash to the static webpages / Re-direct 301 from non-trailing slash Force trailing slash to the Wordpress Webpages / Re-direct 301 from non-trailing slash Some examples domain.tld/index.html >> domain.tld/ domain.tld/file.html >> domain.tld/file/ domain.tld/file.html/ >> domain.tld/file/ domain.tld/wordpress/post-name >> domain.tld/wordpress/post-name/ My code in ROOT htaccess is <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase / #removing trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ $1 [R=301,L] #www to non
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(([a-z0-9_]+.)?domain.com)$ [NC]
RewriteRule .? http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] #html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L] #index redirect
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://domain.com/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} .html
RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ /$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule> The above code do 1. redirect www to non-www
2. Remove trailing slash at the end (if exists)
3. Remove index.html
4. Remove all .html
5. Redirect 301 to filename but doesn't add trailing slash at the end0 -
Google displaying SERP link in Japanese
A chamber of commerce site near me has Google displaying their link in japanese characters when they search for them by name. If you google Eastern monmouth chamber of commerce, you will see this. The site is emacc.org. Can anyone tell me what might cause this or how to resolve?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremyskillings0 -
How to remove seemingly untouchable link spam
Hey Mozzers, I have been struggling with this issue, and I am hoping someone can help. I have a number of bad/spammy links to my site. We have never engaged in "bad SEO", but an old subdomain received a number of spammy blog comments, and everything seemed to escalate from there. We have removed a subdomain that received all of the bad links from our DNS settings (about a year ago), but these links are still there when using Ahrefs or MajesticSEO. I don't think we have been penalized for these links, but I would just like to clean them up because, well, it's the right thing to do. How does one do this when these sites seem so untouchable. Either they are from China, Russia, Denmark, abandoned in 2009, etc. If I look for someone to contact, I can't seem to find anyone to even email. Suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | evan890 -
Unnatural Links Removal - are GWMT links enough?
Hi, When working on unnatural links penalty, is removing and disavowing links shown on the GWMT enough or should the list be broaden to include OSE and Majestic etc.? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
How Can Low Quality Links Be Removed?
Let's say that in looking in OSE that you find an overall low quality link profile. Let's say that some of those links were acquired by using article marketing systems like UAW or SEO Link Vine, which were hard hit in Penguin. Let's also say that some keywords were targeted within blog networks that passed a lot of page rank to targeted pages. Let's say that at one point in time an offshore link building team was used and they posted low quality blog comments on pages with hundreds of outbound links. Let's say as a result of the drop in SERPS that you've finally been convinced that there must be a better way and in the process join SEO Moz - and now you want to clean up the low quality link profile. How does one go about removing links on such a diverse number of sites? Are there best practices for how to remove links you longer want pointed to your site? Or is it simply best to go on about the work of building a lot of quality links and let the past be in the past? Thanks for your input Mozzers...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sdennison0 -
Have we suffered a Google penalty?
Hello, In January, we started a new blog to supplement our core ecommerce website. The URL of the website is www.footballshirtblog.co.uk and the idea behind it was that we would write articles related to our industry to build a community which would ultimately boost our sales. We would add several posts per day, a mix between shorter news stories of around 150 words and more detailed content pages of around 500 words. Everything was going well, we were making slow but sure progress on the main generic keywords but were receiving several thousand visitors a day, mostly finding the posts themselves on Google. The surge on traffic meant we needed to move server, which we did around 6 weeks ago. When we did this, we had a few teething problems with file permissions, etc, which meant we were tempoarily able to add new posts. As our developers were tied up with other issues, this continued for a 7-10 day period, with no new content being added. In this period, the site completely dropped from Google, losing all it's rankings and traffic, to the extent it now doesn't even rank for it's own name. This is very frustrating as we have put a huge amount of work and content into developing this site. We have added a few posts since, but not a huge amount as it is frustrating to do it with no return and the concern that the site has been banned forever. I cannot think of any logical reason why this penalty has occured as we haven't been link spamming, etc. Does anyone have any feedback or suggestions as to how we can get back on track? Regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss1984
David0