Penalized for "Unnatural Links" on Webmaster Tools
-
Has anyone ever logged in to Google Webmaster tools and seen a message about them seeing unnatural links (as a warning)
Our homepage lost all its rankings. I will submit a reconsideration request. We don't engage in link buying practices (some directories, thats all.)
Any feedback, please?
Thanks
-
Thanks Robert. Yes, I believe we have a good link profile and work hard at it. This is really a shame. I don't see any reason to really waste more time and not submit a rec request to Google in the next few hours.
I will keep everyone posted and thanks for contributing.
-
I have just had the same issue on 9 of my blogs, deindexed, hardly any outgoing links, no interlinking at all. Google is getting ridiculous, it's the fact you don't know where you stand that's the worst of it.
-
Paul,
I am at a loss on this. The reason being that i don't see anything all that "unnaturaly:"You have some great high quality links to begin with.
Your anchor text is fairly diverse (Shopping cart software is what you do so..., and then the others around it are also fairly well used, etc.)TLD distribution is 74% .com with the rest spread out, about 1% .edu, etc.
Your first 20 linking root domains are ubiquitous, high DA sites.
So, I have a big, big, hmmmmm. IF yours is unnatural, then GoDaddy is the spawn of satan's links.....?????
I would still move slowly on the resubmission give yourself at least 24 hours to really survey all and then go for it with your ducks in a row.
Good luck, please let us know how it goes.
-
Yeah, I agree Paul, it is standard practice, but unfortunately that doesn't mean Google approves it. I haven't heard of Google penalizing shopping cart software footer links, however, I do know that Google has penalized sites who put their link in blog gadgets that they give away. And, really, there's not a lot of difference in the two. And if you've worked with Google much you'll know that Google isn't fair. It may be that you had a manual review and that manual reviewer gave you the ax, while another manual reviewer would not.
-
I am pretty new to SEO (or at least new to being serious about it), so use my advice at your own risk.
My guess is that this stems from situations like this:
Powered by FORTUNE3 • shopping cart software or the other keyword perfect variations of it at the bottom of your customer's sites. Would they have put that there if you didn't pre-code it into the software and charge them money to remove it?
The sites are also all unrelated. You might think they are related because they are your customers, but is ray bans, jeep parts, car covers, and homeowners rights manuals, gun lasers, and all the other sites related to shopping cart software? None of them has any other mention of shopping cart software on their whole site, except for the forced link.
Also, these are effectively paid links, since you put them into the software by default, and you charge people $50 to remove them. Thinking in reverse (sort of), you are paying $50 to them to keep the link. It's a forced, or paid link.
Think of it this way, if you offered to your customers to remove it for free, or gave them a way to do it easily and told them how (even for non-techies, like a check box in the admin panel they use for processing orders), what percentage would remove it.
I used to have a store on Big Commerce. They did the same thing, except I could remove it in the accessible code, and it is one of the first things I did right away. I really did not want to be forced to advertise for them.
Anyway, I am curious to see how this plays out, as I suspect you are not the only shopping cart provider with this situation.
By the way, here is another example of it, and it is sure to catch them too. Go Daddy Spammy Link Building
-
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your input. The fact of the matter is that THAT is standard practice with all shopping cart software companies. You can look through millions of websites and at the bottom you'll see Powered by or Ecommerce by...etc.
Design firms do this, etc. I don't believe that's the issue but that's something we may need to ask in our reconsideration request.
-
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your input. The fact of the matter is that THAT is standard practice with all shopping cart software companies. You can look through millions of websites and at the bottom you'll see Powered by or Ecommerce by...etc.
Design firms do this, etc. I don't believe that's the issue but that's something we may need to ask in our reconsideration request.
-
Pablo might it be the dofollow text links you're placing on your client's websites pointing back to you? Like the one in the footer of this page? http://www.belljewels.com/
-
this is for www.fortune3.com
we're a shopping cart software company so our link building comes from:
-Customer Websites
-Directories (Business.com and other authoritative directories)
-Blogs (our own mostly.)
-Press Releases
I did find www.aolstalker.com linking. ....what do you think?
-
Pablo, Wait. Do not submit for reconsideration yet. If you are missing something, you could create more problems than you solve. So,
Go through the site and see what is going on. If Google is questioning "unnatural links" look at all and see where they may be right. You want to try to fix this before you submit for reconsideration.
Is there any way for you to give us a domain name so that we can see what is there, that would really help with helping you. What % nofollow, how fast have you garnered the links, what directories? What paid directories, any link wheels or reciprocal links that you know of? Etc.
Hope this helps, be patient for a minute, it will help.
Best
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
-
Viewing search results for 'We possibly have internal links that link to 404 pages. What is the most efficient way to check our sites internal links?
We possibly have internal links on our site that point to 404 pages as well as links that point to old pages. I need to tidy this up as efficiently as possible and would like some advice on the best way to go about this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Duplicate content across similar computer "models" and how to properly handle it.
I run a website that revolves around a niche rugged computer market. There are several "main" models for each computer that also has several (300-400) "sub" models that only vary by specifications for each model. My problem is I can't really consolidate each model to one product page to avoid duplicate content. To have something like a drop down list would be massive and confusing to the customer when they could just search the model they needed. Also I would say 80-90% of the market searches for a specific model when they go to purchase or in Google. A lot of our customers are city government, fire departments, police departments etc. they get a list of approved models and purchase off that they don't really search by specs or "configure" a model so each model number having a chance to rank is important. Currently we have all models in each sub category rel=canonical back to the main category page for that model. Is there a better way to go about this? Example page you can see how there are several models all product descriptions are the same they only vary by model writing a unique description for each one is an unrealistic possibility for us. Any suggestions on this would be appreciated I keep going back on forth on what the correct solution would be.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | The_Rugged_Store0 -
Social Links through Link Shortners. Does it count?
We use link shortner services like Bitly, Goo.gl, etc. Does the post used while making use of such link shortner services counts as a social signal. Or should we post the complete website url pointing to each page while posting on social sites. Secondly, should we write a new description while posting on Social sites or just copy paste a few lines of original posts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Webmaster Tools Not Indexing New Pages
Hi there Mozzers, Running into a small issue. After a homepage redesign (from a list of blog posts to a product page), it seems that blog posts are buried on the http://OrangeOctop.us/ site. The latest write-up on "how to beat real madrid in FIFA 15", http://orangeoctop.us/against-real-madrid-fifa-15/ , has yet to be indexed. It would normally take about a day naturally for pages to be indexed or instantly with a manual submission. I have gone into webmaster tools and manually submitted the page for crawls multiple times on multiple devices. Still not showing up in the search results. Can anybody advise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | orangeoctop.us0 -
Unnatural links to your site—impacts links
I got message in my Google webmaster tool: Unnatural links to your site—impacts links Does anyone knows the difference between "Unnatural links to your site—impacts links" and "Unnatural links to your site" Thank you Sina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SinaKashani0 -
Webmaster Tools (Urgent)
So yesterday google webmaster tools has over 5,000 links linking to my site. I get in this morniing and now i have 16 links linking to my site and no rankings minus brand terms. I do not believe that I have been penalized but I might have been. After digging further into this it seems that my www.domain.com and domain.com are separated and webmaster tools is tracking www.domain.com and majority of links are to domain.com. Is this possible or am I wishing to see something that is not there. Any help and recommendations would be absolutely appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Asher0 -
Is Google Webmaster tools Accurate?
Is Google webmaster Tools data completely inaccurate, or am I just missing something? I noticed a recent surge in 404 errors detected 3 days ago (3/6/11) from pages that have not existed since November 2011. They are links to tag and author archives from pages initially indexed in August 2011. We switched to a new site in December 2011 and created 301 redirects from categories that no longer exist, to new categories. I am a little perplexed since the Google sitemap test shows no 404 errors, neither does SEO MOZ Crawl test, yet under GWT site diagnostics, these errors, all 125 of them, just showed up. Any thought/insights? We've worked hard to ensure a smooth site migration and now we are concerned. -Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jimmyjohnson0 -
"nocontent" class use for Google Custom Search: SEO Ramifications?
Hi all, Have a client that uses Google Custom Search tool which is crawling, indexing and returning millions of irrelevant results for keywords that are on every page of the site. IT/Web dev. team is considering adding a class attribute to prohibit Google Custom Search from indexing bolierplate content regions. Here's the link to Google's custom search help page: http://support.google.com/customsearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2364585 "...If your pages have regions containing boilerplate content that's not relevant to the main content of the page, you can identify it using the nocontent class attribute. When Google Custom Search sees this tag, we'll ignore any keywords it contains and won't take them into account when calculating ranking for your Custom Search engine. (We'll still follow and crawl any links contained in the text marked nocontent.) To use the nocontent class attribute, include the boilerplate content in a tag (for example, span or div) like this: Google Custom Search also notes:"Using nocontent won't impact your site's performance in Google Web Search, or our crawling of your site, in any way. We'll continue to follow any links in tagged content; we just won't use keywords to calculate ranking for your Custom Search engine."Just want to confirm if anyone can forsee any SEO implications the use of this div could create? Anyone have experience with this?Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MRM-McCANN0