Google Penalty - Has It Been Lifted?
-
Hi,
We have been trying to remove a ‘partial’ google penalty for a new client by the way of removing unnatural backlinks over a period of time and then submitting a reconsideration request, and uploading a disavow file etc.
Previously Google listed the partial penalty in the ‘manual actions’ section of webmaster tools, making it possible for us to submit a reconsideration request.
Having just logged in however we get the message ‘no manual webspam actions found’. So there isn’t any way we can submit a reconsideration request.
Does this mean that the penalty has been lifted? Or could it still exist? If the latter is there any other way to submit a reconsideration request?
Many thanks in advance, Lee.
-
Thanks Lee.
-
Well that explains that then Marie! Many thanks
I have read your article (impressive!) and everything now makes sense, we can stop wandering!
I'll share your article on Twitter shortly (@webpresenceUK).. the least we can do.
Thanks again, you really have helped.
Lee.
-
Your penalty probably expired. This has been happening frequently so I wrote about it on Search Engine Watch: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2345875/Did-Your-Manual-Penalty-Disappear-It-Probably-Expired.
You still want to make sure you do a thorough cleanup as these penalties can either return (if you haven't cleaned up) or the problems that got you there can contribute to problems with the Penguin algorithm.
-
Thanks again Karl,
Their backlink profile now looks limited, but natural if the disavowed links are taken away.
We are outreaching to build quality links to address the balance, and participating on social media etc.
It wasn't an alogorithmic penalty as it was listed in the 'manual sections' of WMT's.. and there's no duplicate content.
It's all guess work at the moment, we have no idea if our disavow file has been considered, or if the penalty still exists! Organic traffic has increased slightly but that may just be down to our recent on-page and off-page work.
All the best, Lee.
-
What does your link profile look like without the websites that have been disavowed? Is it quite bare now? When we undertook penalised websites we carried on building high quality links to try and put the balance in our favour, have you done likewise?
It does seem odd how the message is no longer there and they are saying there is no manual action. Have you considered an algorithm penalty maybe? duplicate content? That's a possibility.
-
Many thanks for the response Karl, appreciated!
No such message, no. I thought that google would have sent us this kind of message too, they have in the past.
The last response we received from them was in April saying that the reconsideration request had failed as there were still artificial links pointing to the site. We've spent a lot of time and money trying to get them removed since, but are now unable to send a new reconsideration request.
The only thing I can think of is that Google are eventually taking notice of our disavow file, but that's only a guess.
If anyone else can shed some light on this that would be great, we're just not sure if it's worth spending more resources on the link audit and removal process.. if the penalty has been lifted there isn't much point.
Very confused!
Lee.
-
Google usually gives a message saying they've lifted the penalty, something like "previously the webspam team took action on your website but we've now lifted this..." Did you not get one?
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
-
Missing Google verification
I just went to check my client sites in Google search console and noticed a whole bunch of them no longer 'verified'. They were all previously verified. Why would they suddenly change status to 'not verified'? Does this affect anything (eg. search analytics data flowing through to GA)? Does this mean I have to verify all over again?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Google does not index image sitemap
Hi, we put an image sitemap in the searchconsole/webmastertools http://www.sillasdepaseo.es/sillasdepaseo/sitemap-images.xml it contains only the indexed products and all images on the pages. We also claimed the CDN in the searchconsole http://media.sillasdepaseo.es/ It has been 2 weeks now, Google indexes the pages, but not the images. What can we do? Thanks in advance. Dieter Lang
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Storesco0 -
Product Pages not indexed by Google
We built a website for a jewelry company some years ago, and they've recently asked for a meeting and one of the points on the agenda will be why their products pages have not been indexed. Example: http://rocks.ie/details/Infinity-Ring/7170/ I've taken a look but I can't see anything obvious that is stopping pages like the above from being indexed. It has a an 'index, follow all' tag along with a canonical tag. Am I missing something obvious here or is there any clear reason why product pages are not being indexed at all by Google? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Update I was told 'that each of the product pages on the full site have corresponding page on mobile. They are referred to each other via cannonical / alternate tags...could be an angle as to why product pages are not being indexed.'
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobbieD910 -
Hide Aggregation from Google?
Google isn't a fan of aggregation, but sometimes it is a good way to fill out content when you cannot cover every news story there is. What I'm wondering is if anyone has continued to do any form of aggregation based on a category and hide that url from Google. Example: example.com/industry-news/ -- is where you'd post aggregation stories but you block robots from crawling that. We wouldn't be doing this for search value just value to our readers. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | meistermedia0 -
Google and Product Description Tabs
How does Google process a product page with description tabs? For example, lets say the product page has a tab for Overview, Specifications, What's In the Box and so on. Wouldn't that content be better served in one main product description tab with the tab names used as (htags) or highlighted paragraph separators? Or, does all that content get crawled as a single page regardless of the tabs?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
Google Tag Manager
Has anyone used Google Tag Manager and do you feel it is worth it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChristinaRadisic0 -
Nofollow links in Google Webmaster
I've noticed nofollow links showing up in my Google Webmaster tools "links to your site" list. If they are nofollow why are they showing up here? Do nofollow links still count as a backlink and transfer PR and authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoCoGuru1 -
Check Google ban on domainname
Hello all, If I wanted to know if a domainname has a google ban on it would the following be a good idea to test it. Place an article on the domain page with unique content and then link to the page so its gets indexed and then link to the article from a well indexed page. If it doesn't get indexed there might be a ban on the page, if it does get indexed there is no ban on the page... Or are there other points I should keep in mind while doing this. All help is very welcome. Cheers, Arnout
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hellemans0