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
-
Interest in optimise Google Crawl
Hello, I have an ecommerce site with all pages crawled and indexed by Google. But I have some pages with multiple urls like : www.sitename.com/product-name.html and www.sitename.com/category/product-name.html There is a canonical on all these pages linking to the simplest url (so Google index only one page). So the multiple pages are not indexed, but Google still comes crawling them. My question is : Did I have any interest in avoiding Google to crawl these pages or not ? My point is that Google crawl around 1500 pages a day on my site, but there are only 800 real pages and they are all indexed on Google. There is no particular issue, so is it interesting to make it change ? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onibi290 -
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 -
Buying a domain banned by google
Hi , I came across a super domain for my business but found out that it was a great domain with 100s of link backs but is now banned by Google search engine meaning Google does not index content from that domain. Since the domains linkbacks are from my domin does it make sense to but that domain and redirect those link backs to another (301) and hope that the new domain gets some juice ... I know it is sounding crazy and may not be the best thing to do ethically but still wanted to check if its possible to get some juice.. Rgds Avinash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Avinashmb0 -
Does Google read texts when display=none?
Hi, In our e-commerce site on category pages we have pagination (i.e toshiba laptops page 1, page 2 etc.). We implement it with rel='next' and 'prev' etc. On the first page of each category we display a header with lots of text information. This header is removed on the following pages using display='none'. I wondered if since it is only a css display game google might still read it and consider duplicated content. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Google alerts for products and categories?
I get daily Google alerts for our site and a competitor's site. I have noticed that I am getting multiple alerts a day from Google about products and product categories on the competitor's site. Every now and then there's an actual alert for a linking blog post or something else. How is Google noticing new product on this site but has never done the same for ours? Is there some kind of strategy involved here that I don't know about? The site is http://bit.ly/Q0o2ob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTheScot0 -
Setting Up Google Analytics for domains with 301
I have a client with a google analytics account that is a mess. domaina.com domainb.com 302's to domaina.com domainc.com 302's to domaina.com domaind.com 302's to domaina.com I thought the client was doing 301s on all these domains to the primary domain. I have logged into there analytics account and found data is being tracked on the other domains i.e domainb,c,d.com etc. How is it possible that google analytics is tracking data on these domains when no analytics code has been created and the urls are redirecting to domaina.com? Also there are not sites on these domains so for webmaster tools should I enable domain verification through a cname on the dns? Also I can I best setup a way to track traffic coming from say domainb.com? Whats the best step by step guide to use to set this up.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Google+ Pages on Google SERP
Do you think that a Google+ Page (not profile) could appear on the Google SERP as a Rich Snippet Author? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | overalia0 -
Google indexing issue?
Hey Guys, After a lot of hard work, we finally fixed the problem on our site that didn't seem to show Meta Descriptions in Google, as well as "noindex, follow" on tags. Here's my question: In our source code, I am seeing both Meta descriptions on pages, and posts, as well as noindex, follow on tag pages, however, they are still showing the old results and tags are also still showing in Google search after about 36 hours. Is it just a matter of time now or is something else wrong?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ttb0