Unnatural inbound links message from Google Webmaster Tools!
-
Hi Everyone,
I just got this message from GWT(image below)
This is probably a penguin Penalty. What is clear is I have to find the best and most efficient way to tackle this issue. We will probably lose tons of traffic in the next couple of weeks so I would like to get the best suggestions and maybe a guideline on how to do this in the most effective way!
Thank you!
-
Hi Taysir,
Going on Google's wording, that blog post is correct - you do come across instances of people claiming disavowal has worked well when they've disavowed links they weren't responsible for building. The problem is convincing Google that you weren't responsible ("_If we determine that the links to your site are no longer in violation of our guidelines, we’ll revoke the manual action" - _there's a possibility that you can claim until you are blue in the face that you were not behind the links Google dislikes, and they still refuse to lift a penalty).
I would go for a reconsideration request first if I were you, as the blog post recommends. I also consider disavowal a last resort when link removal fails - it was foreseeable that people would disavow without doing any other work (and I'm sure Google saw that coming too). For context, at my former agency we would spend months removing every bad link we could find for new clients before filing for reconsideration or using disavowal. One came to us with over 7,000 bad links in early 2013; we removed and removed and finally had the penalty lifted later in the year (it was worth it - it was a high-value domain otherwise).
Explain everything you have done or tried to do in the reconsideration request. Be honest but as concise as possible, and cite your actions with things like spreadsheets of sites researched / contacted / failed to respond.
In short, that blog post is also how we dealt with disavowal at my old agency. I'm sure it works for some people who disavow things they weren't responsible for, but the misuse I have seen of the tool is also really high. One person told me once they had disavowed one link in their backlink profile "to test impact." Ah... that's not what it's for.
-
Hi Guys,
First off thank you guys for responding.
After further analysis, I got hit by the Impact links penalty( which affects links that point to your domain) . So far it's been 3 weeks and I have seen a slight drop in organic traffic( about 10%) where few particular query lost rankings.
My concern is that I was able to detect some real shady links (link network) around 200 which I never created such as: http://gasolinereinbows.tumblr.com/. Because those represents the worst links ever, I tried to find contact info of these websites and of course no information was found. So at this point I am thinking to disavow them but this article http://www.e2msolutions.com/blog/google-penalized-dont-disavow-your-links/ says I shouldn't especially for the Impact links type of penalty. So I don't know what to do? Any thoughts on how should I tackle this?
Thank you!
-
Gary and Marty have some great points here. Every recovery is somewhat different and I have recently seen sites recover a portion of their rankings quite quickly, but the link issue wasn't bad to begin with. Depending on how bad your backlink profile is, you could be left waiting / working a very long time.
Documentation of what you've done to fix the situation is one of the primary things you need to do. Google doesn't take reconsideration requests very seriously if that intricate documentation isn't included, so Gary's advice on that is absolutely key.
Perseverance, patience and not losing hope is also pretty key in making it through this process if your situation is pretty bad - definitely use tools like OSE, Ahrefs, Majestic SEO and the link download within Webmaster Tools to get a full look at your backlink profile. I like to use multiple data sources too - ensures you're seeing the full picture.
Cheers,
Jane
-
Before you go down the long and painful road to recovery you must be informed of the recovery process.
I speak directly with Google employees on this matter weekly.
1: Most top contributors on Google forums are misinformed and will spout incorrect information to you as fact.2: Your first Reconsideration request will likely fail even if there is nothing wrong. Google does this to make you look even deeper and clear things up that might be borderline OK.
3. You REALLY MUST show Google a report of works done, list every dofollow link and list its contact information and and action taken. No reply, removed, 5th try, pending, not contact info, etc.. Also good to list the type of link. Directory, blog post, comment, article etc... this shows that you have done some real work.
4. IMPORTANT: Once you get a revoke YOU WILL NOT RECOVER FOR A LONG TIME. It can and likely WILL take up to and in many cases OVER 1 year to see some recovery of your site. This is why to this date we have seen little in the way of recoveries. The disavow tool needs to get to work and then once most links have been re-indexed the algorithm must then be updated with the new information. THEN at this point you must then wait for a Penguin refresh currently running every 6 months. That's just twice a year!
5. Once you see a recovery you may well still have algorithm issues for the remaining unnatural links. If you imagine that a new site starts at 0 points, your revoked site will be starting at -X points, this is a hard place to start your new climb back to success.Google has recommend on many cases to simply ditch your old domain and start a fresh. A very poor response to the issue but its an honest one. Can you really survive a year of not ranking AFTER you have managed to go through the process of a reconsideration request?
If you decide that all of this is worth it then I would look at a service like link detox, they have some cutting edge tools that will help, but its not cheap and offers no guarantees.
There are many great guides out there on ways to do it. i have done it by hand with 15,000 links, its not fun and can be a royal pain in the ### but at least you know what work has been done and how accurate it is.
Also Matt Cutts once said attack your links with a Machete, meaning don't try and save some of your BEST links to see if you can get away with it. This only delays the process and could be the reaosn you miss out on a 6 month algo refresh. Are those links worth your business not ranking for another 6 months?
If you need any FREE advice let me know.
All the best with your choices and recovery process.
-
Thanks for your answer Marty!
-
Hello! Well this is one of the last messages you want to receive in regards to your website.
Google indicated they have applied a manual action to your site (Google Penguin is an algorithmic action, not manual). Within the email they gave you a basic set of marching orders on what you're going to have to do, although they don't make it seem as onerous as it really is. We have had quite a number of clients come to us with link-related problems and I will tell you it is a pain.
Your best bet for removing the bad links is to use an automated tool to help you identify the worst links. Some tools also include a way to gather contact info and keep track of link statuses for you, etc. which is convenient, particularly when you're looking at the number of links your site has.
To make sure you get a full list of links, consider downloading lists from several backlink providers (Open Site Explorer is one), de-dupe your list and use that as your master list. Any links you can't get removed you will want to add to a disavow list and upload to GWT (although my opinion is this doesn't really do anything to benefit you other than show Google you're trying).
When you file your reconsideration request, unless you've been extremely thorough you can expect them to reject it outright. I repeat, you have to get that link profile cleaned up!
Google has indicated in some instances, it may be better to start over with a different domain (not necessarily my opinion in your case, just making you aware).
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
-
Links on Brand Banners
Hi, For one of our ecommerce clients, we have brand banners on each brand page that links to their most popular product lines. Some of the banners just have a column of links, and some are paragraphs with copy and anchor text. Example below: Brand Line 1 Brand Line 2 Example 2: For the utmost in quality, performance and comfort, purchase Brand Line 1 . Brand Line 2 offers the perfect ease of use for beginners while not compromising on quality. Obviously these are just examples, and there are several links (more than 2) per brand, but I was wondering if this harms SEO in any way because of keyword stuffing? It makes sense to have the brand name in the link, otherwise the name of the lines might not make much sense (an example of this is one of the lines is called 849.. so without the brand name that doesn't mean much and looks weird) Do you think it would be better to have the links in just columns in the first example, or in paragraph format?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AliMac260 -
How to dismantle a link building scheme?
My team performs SEO only in the real estate space. While doing some research recently we came across a semi-elaborate link building scheme by one of our competitors. This SEO firm built a dummy real estate resource site with lots of general content, nofollow links to brands (e.g. NYT, Fannie Mae etc.) for validation and links for high-valued keywords pointing to their clients' sites. Basically the whole site is a clever front to help their clients rank. Still, it seems to be working for them (at least for now), which I'm guessing is due to lack of strong competition and the site being quite old. Oh, and they also charge to become "affiliates" on the site, i.e. paid links disguised as non-paid. I reported the scheme via the Search Console. Anything else we could do? Have any of you had experience dealing with this kind of link scheming before? Any guidance is appreciated. Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | willthefrench0 -
Potential spam issue - back links
Hi - we have a client whom we work with for SEO. During a review we noticed in Webmaster Tools, there was an IP address with over 30,000 links to our clients site. The IP address is 92.60.0.123. From looking up the IP address details, it looks like it is based in Europe - but we are unable to establish what it is, where the links are and who created it. We are concerned it could be a potential spammer trying to cause an issue with the SEO campaign. Is there any way of finding out any more details apart from the basic information about the location of the IP address? Also - if we submit a disavow via webmaster tools, we are unsure what issue it will have on the clients site if we do not know what it is and the type of links it is creating. Any ideas? Thanks for your help! Phil.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Globalgraphics0 -
How to ignore spam links to page?
Hey Moz pals, So for some reason someone is building thousands of links to my websites (all spam), likely someone doing negative seo on my site. Anyway, all these links are pointing to 1 sub url on my domain. That url didn't have anything on it so I deleted the page so now it comes up with a 404. Is there a way to reject any link that ever gets built to that old page? I don't want all this spam to hurt my website. What do you suggest?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WongNs0 -
Is there a danger linking to and from one website too many times?
Basically my webdeveloper has suggested that instead of using a subfolder to create an English and Korean version of the site I should create two different websites and then link them both together to provide the page in English, or in Korean, which ever the case may be. My immediate reaction is that search engines may perceive this kind of linking to be manipulative, as you can imagine there will be a lot of links (One for every page). Do you think it is OK to create two webpages and link them together page by page? Or do you think that the site will get penalized by search engines for link farming or link exchanging. Regards, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CoGri0 -
Google Reconsideration Requests no problem... So what do I do next?
Hi all, So I recently filed a Google reconsideration request - but it came back saying "No manual spam actions found" - ok, so that's that. But from what I've read, if we have been hit by Panda for duplicate or thin content, we wouldn't know - in other words, Google does not report it as it is an algorhythm penalty as opposed to a manual one. So what are my options - do I wait until the next Panda update? when can that be? Or do I start over on a fresh domain? Input and views appreciated. thanks,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
Link package review and recommendations
Hello there, I recently spoke to a contractor that offered me the following package, and i have to ask, in this post-penguin world, does it make sense to pursue this kind of linking? Or will it be considered spam. They said it's a manual submission process and they will 'do their best' to ensure that it's under a related category, but can't promise anything in regards to that. What should i be requesting in this post-penguin world? How do i get quality backlinks that won't harm me given the current environment? Any help is greatly appreciated, here is the package info: 1. 900 links submissions = 450 Guaranteed One Way Theme Links - The links are built by manually publishing 5 Original Articles (500 words each) on 125 different article sites (each published article will have 2 back-links to your site). We can use up to 10 keywords and 10 different URLs of your site to build the links.70% of our Article Sites have PR 2 to 6, all with different C classes IPs. 2. 300 links submissions = 150 Guaranteed One Way Theme Links – The links are built by manually publishing 4 Reviews for your site from 4 different accounts (we can use up to 4 URLs of your site to link back) on 150 Social Bookmarking sites, 90% of the sites have PR 2 to 8, all with different C classes IPs. 3. 480 links submissions = 240 Guaranteed One Way Theme Links – The links are built by manually publishing 3 Original Press Releases on 35 Press Release sites(each published press release will have 2 back-links to your site). We can use up to 6 keywords and 6 different URLs of your site to build the links. All our Press Release Sites have PR 2 to 7 all with different C classes IPs. 4. 220 links submissions = 110 Guaranteed One Way blog links – These links are built by publishing 3 Original Blog Article (300 words each) with 2 back links to your site on 20 different free blog sites. These free blog sites are our sites (new sites with PR 0) which we are promoting to get the highest PR for them and your blog back links too.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | symbolphoto0 -
Switching prices for google base
We would like to be able to submit lower prices to google than we do to other sources. How i see it working is that at the end of each url we submit to google base there is a tracking code (source=googlebase). When a user visits the site via one of these urls we would knock 10% of the price of that item and store the item in a cookie to ensure that the price of that item, for that user would stay at the low price for 24 hours. My question is whether google would have a problem with us doing this? The second part of my question is whether they check the full url including the query strings? If theyt just checked the canocial URL they would see a price thats 10% higher than the one we submitted to base - which, of course - would be bad
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | supermarketonline0