Pure spam Manual Action by Google
-
Hello Everyone,
We have a website http://www.webstarttoday.com. Recently, we have received manual action from Google says "Pages on this site appear to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking, scraping content from other websites, and/or repeated or egregious violations of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines." . Google has given an example http://smoothblog.webstarttoday.com/. The nature of the business of http://www.webstarttoday.com is to creating sub-domains (website builder). Anyone can register and create sub-domains.
My questions are:
- What are the best practices in case if someone is creating sub-domain for webstarttoday.com?
- How can I revoke my website from this penalty?
- What should i do with other hundreds of sub-domains those are already created by third party like http://smoothblog.webstarttoday.com? .
- Why these type of issues don't come with WordPress or weebly. ?
Regards,
Ruchi
-
That's great news that you got the penalty revoked.
It can often take a few days for the manual spam actions viewer to show that there is no longer a penalty. Also, keep an eye on the manual spam actions viewer. I've seen a number of sites lately that got a pure spam penalty revoked and then a few days or weeks later got either a thin content penalty or an unnatural links penalty. Hopefully that's not the case for you though!
-
It could be that the message is only disappearing tomorrow.
The message from Google however doesn't say that the penalty is revoked but that it has been revoked or adjusted. It's possible that the penalty is now only applied to the specific subdomain rather than the site as a whole. Is it still the original message which is shown under Manual actions?
Would update the terms & conditions anyway - so that you can react quick if you see other actions appearing. Try to scan the subdomains from time to time to make sure that they are not violating the Google guidelines.
Regards,
Dirk
-
Thanks Dirk,
You have nicely give all answers of my questions. I will take care of your points while creating the sub-domains. Also, I received this message from Google after filing the reconsideration request:
Dear Webmaster of http://www.webstarttoday.com/
We have processed the reconsideration request from a site owner for http://www.webstarttoday.com/. The site has been reviewed for violations of our quality guidelines. Any manual spam actions applied to the site have been revoked or adjusted where appropriate.
As per the message my website should had revoked from the penalty but the penalty is still showing, under "Manual action".
Thanks,
Ruchi
-
Thanks for your quick repose. Much appreciated.
-
^ VERY nice, Dirk!
-
Hi,
Try to answer your questions point by point:
1. You could add to your terms & conditions that sites created need to follow Google webmasterguidelines - and if they are not followed you can delete the subdomain.
2. Revoke the penalty is only possible by cleaning the site and removing the contested content. It depends on your current terms & conditions if you have the possibility to force the one who is managing this blog to clean the site.
3. Idem as above - if your terms & conditions didn't stipulate that messing with Google guidelines is forbidden, there is not much you can do at this point.
4. Wordpress is hosting the blogs on wordpress.com - the main site is wordpress.org. Weebly has terms & conditions that forbid Spam/SEO sites (probably Wordpress.com has this as well - but it's stated very clearly on the Weebly.com)
Update terms & conditions if necessary - send warning to offending blog users & delete them if necessary.
Hope this helps,
Dirk
-
Hi there
1. Here are a couple of resources: Moz and HotDesign 2. Pure Spam: What Are Google Penalties & What to Do to Recover from Search Engine Watch and this Q+A thread from Moz
3. I would go through your subdomains - find the ones that are blatant spam or thin with content and remove them. I would then make sure that they are blocked in your robots.txt.
4. I would say because Wordpress is the top used CMS in the world and a lot of reputable websites use it.I would really work on the spam features for your product - looking for IPs that continually create websites, thin content, cloaking, off topic websites, link farms, etc. It's your duty as a CMS to watch how your users use the product. Not only will it keep your product's reputation clean, it will also show that you are taking steps to run a product with integrity.
Hope this all helps - good luck!
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
-
Is my content being fully read by Google?
Hi mozzers, I wanted to ask you a quick question regarding Google's crawlability of webpages. We just launched a series of content pieces but I believe there's an issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TyEl
Based on what I am seeing when I inspect the URL it looks like Google is only able to see a few titles and internal links. For instance, when I inspect one of the URLs on GSC this is the screenshot I am seeing: image.pngWhen I perform the "cache:" I barely see any content**:** image.pngVS one of our blog post image.png Would you agree with me there's a problem here? Is this related to the heavy use of JS? If so somehow I wasn't able to detect this on any of the crawling tools? Thanks!0 -
Does google ignore ? in url?
Hi Guys, Have a site which ends ?v=6cc98ba2045f for all its URLs. Example: https://domain.com/products/cashmere/robes/?v=6cc98ba2045f Just wondering does Google ignore what is after the ?. Also any ideas what that is? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarolynSC0 -
Should you bother with an "impact links" manual action
I have a couple sites that have these, and I have done a lot of work to get them removed, but there seems to be very little if any benefit from doing this. In fact, sites were we have done nothing after these penalties seem to be doing better than ones where we have done link removal and the reconsideration request. Google says "I_f you don’t control the links pointing to your site, no action is required on your part. From Google’s perspective, the links already won’t count in ranking. However, if possible, you may wish to remove any artificial links to your site and, if you’re able to get the artificial links removed, submit a reconsideration request__. If we determine that the links to your site are no longer in violation of our guidelines, we’ll revoke the manual action._" I would guess a lot of people with this penalty don't even know they have it, and it sounds like leaving it alone really doesn't hurt your site. If seems to me that just simply ignoring this and building better links and higher quality content should help improve your site rankings vs. worrying about trying to get all these links removed/disavowed. What are your thoughts? Is it worth trying to get this manual action removed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper0 -
Google Fetch Issue
I'm having some problems with what google is fetching and what it isn't, and I'd like to know why. For example, google IS fetching a non-existent page but listing it as an error: http://www.gaport.com/carports but the actual url is http://www.gaport.com/carports.htm. Google is NOT able to fetch http://www.gaport.com/aluminum/storage-buildings-10x12.htm. It says the page doesn't exist (even though it does) and when I click on the not found link in Google fetch it adds %E@%80%8E to the url causing the problem. One theory we have is that this may be some sort of server/hosting problem, but that's only really because we can't figure out what we could have done to cause it. Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and Happy Holidays! Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Is Google mad at me for redirecting...?
Hi, I have an e-commerce website that sells unique items (one of a kind). We have hundreds of items and the items are rapidly sold. Up till now I kept the sold items under our "sold items" section but it started to get back at me as we have more "sold" than non sold and we are having duplication problems (the items are quite similar besides to sizes etc.). What should we do? Should we redirect 100 pages each week? Will Google be upset with that? (for driving it crazy) Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Why is google showing our blog like this?
Why is our blog title saying "the blog" before it in Google? X4vTU.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tatango0 -
Nofollow links in Google Webmaster
I've noticed nofollow links showing up in my Google Webmaster tools "links to your site" list. If they are nofollow why are they showing up here? Do nofollow links still count as a backlink and transfer PR and authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoCoGuru1 -
Title tag showing in Google that we are not setting
Hello, We've noticed that when we do a specific search (print screen attached), that the business name and/or a completely different title is getting indexed into the search engine that we are not setting. Below is an example from the source code of how we're setting the title, this matches the 2nd listing circled in the attached image. The indexed title tag reflects "Animal Business Card Holders - Kyle Design" Any ideas or feedback on how this is happening? <title>Animal Business Card Cases in Pet, Insect and Wildlife Designstitle> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <meta name="description" content="Eye-catching business card holder cases personalized with custom animal designs for humane professionals and pet owners. Custom select a sleek metal finish, bold aluminum or iridescent accent color, size and unique design for the ultimate self-expressing animal gift!" /> <meta name="keywords" content="business card holder unique personalized custom holders silver gold wood metal cards cases sleek aluminum engraved contemporary case animal animals design designs black color accents iridescent pet insect wildlife cat dog dragonfly butterfly lions sea turtles sea otters elephants animal lover animal activist zoologist veterinarian breeder animal whisperer thin deep large credit Asian size engraving personalize gift gifts special monogram customized corporate logo name professional title meaningful sentiment" /> <meta name="copyright" content="Copyright Kyle Design" /> <meta name="author" content="Kyle Design" />
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marketing_zoovy.com
<meta name="generator" content="xyz Commerce System http://www.domain.com/" />
<link rel="canonical" href="xyz link"
<script type="text/javaScript"> Thanks,
Jamie0