Blogspot domains - giving me a manual action
-
So some agency did horrendous article submissions on mass in 08/09.
Since I have been tidying this up by manually getting the domains removed in our back-link profile. Some however i just cannot get rid of. Recent penguin update obviously penalised me for this, so i disavowed the rest i could not remove and did a reconsideration request.
The reply from Google was still that it violates guidelines and it used 3 blogspot domains (which no crawler i used had previously found) as examples. Now there is NOONE at Google to contact about this and the sites are abandoned, so they just sit there doing damage. I will ofcourse add these to the disavow but can i disavow the whole of blogspot.com ?
What if all are in the disavow but they still use it against us in the reconsideration request and i cannot remove them as noone to contact at Google?
Really appreciate the help, thanks, 2 years of hell tidying up bad agency work!
-
Hi Paul,
You can disavow the entire blogspot domain, but you may have some good links in there from legitimate blogs on blogspot. I would start first with looking at the links provided to you in webmaster tools. Download the list, filter for blogspot subdomains, and then manually review each of these subdomains. Anything you think in there that should be removed, try finding a contact email of the person who set up the subdomain - if you find it, great and contact them for cleanup. If not, just add it to the disavow list.
I would also do this for other potential spammy large sites that allow you to set up sites on a subdomain, like wordpress.com. I would look closely at those subdomains and decide what you want to cleanup and disavow.
Good luck,
Mark
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
-
Lost ranking after domain switch
I recently migrated from https://whitefusemedia.com to https://whitefuse.com. The website URL structure and content remained the same and I followed all the best practice guidance regarding checks on the new domain and appropriate 301 redirects. I have seen traffic drop by about 50% and the traffic that is still coming through is mainly coming through links still listed by Google under the old domain (https://whitefusemedia.com). Is this normal? Should I expect to see this bounce back, or is there anything I can do now to regain the rankings?
Technical SEO | | wfm-uk0 -
How to get the most value out of an additional domain?
Hi, My company domain is wire.com. We recently also acquired wire.chat domain What's the best way to get value out of that additional domain? Wire is a messaging platform so "chat" is relevant but "wire chat" is not really a high volume term We don't have a whole lot of content, certainly no resources to build out additional valuable website Is simply redirecting traffic the only sensible to thing given the above restriction? Any technical issues to be mindful of? Thanks, Siim
Technical SEO | | Siim-at-Wire0 -
Old domain still being crawled despite 301s to new domain
Hi there, We switched from the domain X.com to Y.com in late 2013 and for the most part, the transition was successful. We were able to 301 most of our content over without too much trouble. But when when I do a site:X.com in Google, I still see about 6240 URLs of X listed. But if you click on a link, you get 301d to Y. Maybe Google has not re-crawled those X pages to know of the 301 to Y, right? The home page of X.com is shown in the site:X.com results. But if I look at the cached version, the cached description will say :This is Google's cache of Y.com. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on July 31, 2014." So, Google has freshly crawled the page. It does know of the 301 to Y and is showing that page's content. But the X.com home page still shows up on site:X.com. How is the domain for X showing rather than Y when even Google's cache is showing the page content and URL for Y? There are some other similar examples. For instance, you would see a deep URL for X, but just looking at the <title>in the SERP, you can see it has crawled the Y equivalent. Clicking on the link gives you a 301 to the Y equivalent. The cached version of the deep URL to X also shows the content of Y.</p> <p>Any suggestions on how to fix this or if it's a problem. I'm concerned that some SEO equity is still being sequestered in the old domain.</p> <p>Thanks,</p> <p>Stephen</p></title>
Technical SEO | | fernandoRiveraZ1 -
URL redirecting domains
Hi Is there anything wrong/dangerous forwarding a clutch of domains to a sub page (landing page) on a different domain ? Say Brand X buys Brand Z and wants to close down Brand Z site but have Brand Z domain fwd to a landing page (explaining the company acquisition) on Brand X site. In addition Brand Z had a few related but unused domains forwarding to Brand Z doman & now also wants those fwd'd to the new landing page on brand X Since the reasons for doing this forwarding are legitimate company reasons relating to an acquisition i would have thought it should be ok but can anyone think of a reason why could be bad since i remember in the old days peeps used to redirect domains for seo reasons so worried fwd'ing a load of domains could cause some sort of negative flag with big G ? Also do domain redirects transfer the authority/juice from the old site/domain to the new destination page (new landing page on brand x site) similar to how a 301 redirect works ? Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Which domain should i set up a blog on?
I have a client who uses a .com for there website in Australia. Were now building an external blog which will be on a subdomain. We recently discovered they also own the Australian version of there domain name. Should we build there blog on: blog.currentdomain.com 2) blog.newdomain.com.au Thanks
Technical SEO | | acs1110 -
Multiple domain SEO strategy
Hi Mozzers I'm an AM at a web dev. We're building a new site for a client who sells paint to different markets: Paint for boats Paint for construction industry Paint for, well you get the idea! Would we be better off setting up separate domains - boatpaintxxx.com, housepaintxxx.com, etc - and treat each as a searate microsites for standalone SEO activity or have them as individual pages/sub doms from a single domain - paints4all.com or something? From what i've read today, including the excellent Beginners Guide - I'm guessing there's no definitive answer! Feedback appreciated! Thanks.
Technical SEO | | rikmon0 -
Sudden ranking drop, no manual action
Sort of a strange situation I'm having and I wanted to see if I could get some thoughts. Here's what has happened... Monday morning, I realized that my website, which had been showing up at the bottom of page 2 for a specific result, had now been demoted to the bottom of page 6 (roughly a 40 spot demotion). No other keyword searches were affected. I immediately figured that this was some sort of keyword-specific penalty that I had incurred. I had done a bit of link building over the weekend (two or three directory type sites and a bio link from a site I contribute to). I also changed some anchor text on another site to match my homepage's title tag (which just so happened to be the exact phrase match I had dropped in) - I assumed this was what got me. I was slowly beginning to climb up the rankings and just got a bit impatient/overzealous. Changed the anchor text back to what it originally was and submitted a reconsideration request on Tuesday. This morning, I get the automated response in Webmaster Tools that no manual action had been taken. So my question is, would this drop have been an automated deal? If that's the case, then it's going to be mighty hard to pinpoint what I did wrong, since there's no way to know when I did whatever it was to cause the drop. Any ideas/thoughts/suggestions to regain my modest original placement?
Technical SEO | | sandlappercreative0 -
Problem with indexed files before domain was purchased
Hello everybody, We bought this domain a few months back and we're trying to figure out how to get rid of indexed pages that (i assume) existed before we bought this domain - the domain was registered in 2001 and had a few owners. I attached 3 files from my webmasters tools, can anyone tell me how to get rid of those "pages" and more important: aren't this kind of "pages" result of some kind of "sabotage"? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this. Thank you, Alex Picture-5.png Picture-6.png Picture-7.png
Technical SEO | | pwpaneuro0