Google Penguin Penalty

[ScottBaxterWW]

Howdy Guys,
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,
Scott

[JaredMumford]

Sry guys - must have posted while others were writing. Even if you didn't get the original email - if Google is saying you have unnatural links, then you need to deal with that problem. Submitting recon makes no difference if you dont get rid of the bad links

You will almost certainly need to take action by linkmining your website, identifying 'unnatural' links or links from blatantly bad neighborhoods, submit requests for removal from the webmasters, and so on. Document all of your work and then add that information in with your reconsideration request. If you do not put the work in you will not get a positive response.

[JaredMumford]

Hi Scott -

Eyepaq has it right in that you need to understand if you are under a manual penalty or an algorithmic penalty to know exactly what course of action to take.

Manual Penalty - You'll get an email in WMT if you are under penalty, This will be due to bad links. You will need to clean up your links, and then open that email and click on the 'reconsideration request' link.

Algorithmic - You'll usually see a sudden drop in positioning, in some cases it will affect a string of your best keyword variations while other low lying fruit as it were still rank well. For this penalty, check anchor text % first, then go through the other penguin stuff (you can find tons of info in the SEOMoz blog). There is a form online you can use if you "feel your website was unfairly demoted" but I am no longer sure of its efficacy.

Position 46 > 50 or vice versa. This really means nothing at all so don't take it as an indicator. Google is always messing around so 4 positions out of 50 is insignificant. For example, your site used to be top 10, but when it moved to 50, about 40 websites moved "up" a spot. Consistent movement from week to week is a better indicator.

[eyepaq]

By "knocked back" - I mean we have submitted a reconsideration request and they have said we still have unnatural links...

** But then this is not penguin - it's something different - even if is still related with links.

As far as I know there is a policy now and they are sending out notification via WMT for this type of filters. For you not getting one it either means it was applied a long time ago when they didn't send out all notifications for all filters applied or you've skiped the message somehow

Or it's not a manual action - it's algo based.

Questions:

• did you manage to identify bad links pointing to your site ?  If so, are those "bad" links pointing to home page or deep, to inner pages ? (important as far as solution to deal with those)

• did you include in the reconsideration request you've sent out so far the action taked in order to cut those bad links out ? Did you actually do something to remove any of those links or cut those links out by 404-ing the target page (if home page was not the target).

Again, your issue is not Penguin related but the bellow resource might also help:

http://www.webpronews.com/google-penguin-update-reconsideration-request-tips-from-google-2012-04

[kellymandingo]

I think if you look hard enough you will find bad links to every site, as you never got an original message i would assume its an algorithmic penalty.

And yes by changing page content and varying your anchor text on new links can make a big difference, Google are clever in a way they word their messages and you will never know if its manual action taken unless they specifically say so.

[ScottBaxterWW]

Hi Eyepaq,

Thanks for the reply.

By "knocked back" - I mean we have submitted a reconsideration request and they have said we still have unnatural links...

1 thing I remember is that we never received a message with WMT we actually filed for a reconsideration request and then recieved a message back saying we had bad links, could this be slightly different?

Thanks,

Scott

[eyepaq]

Hi,

If you are 100% sure it's Penguin related then the reconsideration request won't help as Penguin is not a manual action.

There is a form online that you can use posted by Matt Cutts - did you mean that as "sending a reconsideration request".

if not, the answer was you are still violating the rules or that you don't have any manual action against your site ?

What do you mean by "knocked back" ?

Have Google ever removed a penalty without telling you?

** Yes - all the time. Algorithmic penalties are applied and lifted with no message sent.

Lately manual actions (penalties) are noted in your WMT account but even those (manual actions) expire after a time - if you didn't fix it those will be reapplied but the lift off won't be sent as a notice.

Should we ask for another reconsideration request?

** Don't play with those. It matters what kind of response you've received after the first 3.