Google Disavow wrong Sample URLs
-
Sometime last year we were penalized for unnatural links by Google. We followed a couple of good posts on MOZ on how to go about correcting all of this (Excel Showing work, Google Docs, Ahrefs, semrush, etc...) and submitted a reconsideration request as well as a list of urls using Disavow Tool.
So today, about 20 days later, we get a reply from Google stating that we still have some links that are outside their quality guidelines with 3 examples. Problem is, none of the 3 examples they listed have our website on them. I even did a View Source and checked all our inbound link reports for these websites. All of the 3 examples are Lawyer / Legal Advise websites and ours has nothing to do with this.
Any ideas on how to reply and ask them to double check? Maybe they mixed up with another account they were working on at the same time.
-
Have you tried browsing the site with the googlebot user agent? Could those sites have been hacked, and only show the spam if they think you're Google? I've seen that hack before, though don't know if any of those links have ever been in a sample bad link report from Google.
-
Google isn't good at continuing to check to see if links are live after they add them to your link profile. It's likely a link used to be there to your site, then was removed, but Google didn't update your link profile or bother to look to see if the link was there.
I ran into this exact issue about six months ago. It was solved within a couple weeks by updating the disavow report with those examples they listed, plus some others I found after going through the link profile with a stricter mindset on quality.
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
-
Www. or naked url?
Hi everyone, I am about to start a new WordPress site and debating whether to use www or naked URL for the URL structure. Using naked URL makes sense from a branding and minimalistic perspective but I am reading that using naked URL might have some technical deficiencies. Specifically, cookie issues and DNS can't be cname. Are these technical deficiencies still valid when using naked url? Would appreciate any feedback on this! Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nsereke1 -
Google is indexing the wrong page
Hello, I have a site I am optimizing and I cant seem to get a particular listing onto the first page due to the fact google is indexing the wrong page. I have the following scenario. I have a client with multiple locations. To target the locations I set them up with URLs like this /<cityname>-wedding-planner.</cityname> The home page / is optimized for their port saint lucie location. the page /palm-city-wedding-planner is optimized for the palm city location. the page /stuart-wedding-planner is optimized for the stuart location. Google picks up the first two and indexes them properly, BUT the stuart location page doesnt get picked up at all, instead google lists / which is not optimized at all for stuart. How do I "let google know" to index the stuart landing page for the "stuart wedding planner" term? MOZ also shows the / page as being indexed for the stuart wedding planner term as well but I assume this is just a result of what its finding when it performs its searches.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mediagiant0 -
Video SEO for Google
I was wondering what the prime factors were to make something rank for a video on Google. Does anyone have any suggestions? I think that length may be important, but I don't know what the ideal run time is. Hypothetically for local SEO, would I be better off doing a tag like "Mercedes Buffalo NY" or do individual tags of "Mercedes" and "Buffalo" Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oomdomarketing0 -
Numbers (2432423) in URL
Hello All Mozers, Quick question on URL. I know URL is important and should include keywords and all that but my question is does including numbers (not date or page numbers but numbers for internal use) in the URL affect SEO? For example, www.domain.com/screw-driver,12,1,23345.htm Is that any better or worse than www.domain.com/screw-driver.htm? I understand that this is not user friendly but in SEO stand point does it hurt ranking? What's your opinion on this? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TommyTan0 -
Spaces in URL line
Hi Gurus, I recently made the mistake of putting a space into a URL line between two words that make up my primary key word. Think www.example.com/Jelly Donuts/mmmNice.php instead of www.example.com/JellyDonuts/mmmNice.php This mistake now needed fixing to www.example.com/Jelly Donuts/mmmNice.php to pass W3, but has been in place for a while but most articles/documents under 'Jelly Donuts' are not ranking well (which is probably the obvious outcome of the mistake). I am wondering whether the best solution from an SEO ranking viewpoint is to: 1. Change the article directory immediately to www.example.com/JellyDonuts/mmmNice.php and rel=canonical each article to the new correct URL. Take out the 'trash' using robots.txt or to 301 www.example.com/Jelly Donut to the www.example.com/JellyDonut directory? or perhaps something else? Thanks in advance for your help with this sticky (but tasty) conundrum, Brad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BM70 -
URL rewrites
We have a problem whereby a number of our urls are adressable from different urls - I'm told because of a quirk of developing in .net. e.g. mysite/FundComparison mysite/Fund-comparison mysite/fund-comparison We asked our supplier who hosts this section of our site to do some url rewrites so that the duplicates would 301 to the correct url. They're on IIS 6.0 and are not ready to upgrade to IIS 7.0 (my recommendation, which makes it easier for them to do the rewrite using the rewrite module). They said it would take 6-8 weeks to implement a web controller to do this. "The bulk of the time for this implementation is in the build of the engine + the addition of all the possible permutations of the URL to redirect to the proper URL." This sounds absolutely insane to me. I would have thought it could be done in a matter of hours. What do people think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchPM0 -
Google Penguin Penalty
Howdy Guys,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottBaxterWW
We have been battling our way the Google penguin penalty and have just received our 3 knocked back reconsideration request. I posted a find on here the other day about a simple change of page title made our site jump back up... In the meantime I've built 1 hight quality link back to our site and we have moved again from #50 to #46.Have Google ever removed a penalty without telling you?Should we ask for another reconsideration request?Thanks,
Scott0 -
Google Places Alternatives
Hello, I have been looking into Google places alternatives. Any suggestions? On a related note. I am based in the UK and looking to add a UK business to Bing Local but having read this thread ( - http://www.bing.com/community/maps/f/12264/t/653672.aspx -) I don't think it's possible. Anyone had any luck or experience? Cheers dj
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0