700,000+ Google Webmaster Messages Sent - unnatural linking Profile. What to do?
-
Google has confirmed they have sent out of over 700,000 messages through its google webmaster interface in February. Thats more than what they sent in all of 2011.
Where does this leave us?
What have we done wrong?
What works going forward?
Im sure many business's will be left in a very bad position over this update, people will lose their jobs.
I always considered myself to be very careful with my link building as I am totally reliant on search for my business.
I think something so big requires a better explanation from google. Has SEOmoz any more info on such a big update? This really needs input from the big SEO heads.
-
Oh I see, did you get your site reconsidered ? So far you've probably made an effort of sending tens of thousands of emails probably.
-
It differs. We have had multiple emails going backward and forward. In some cases within a day or two. The last one took well over a week and a half.
Hope this helps
-
Sorry, was away for the weekend.
"There are still many inorganic links pointing to your site. Here are some examples:
http://bayside-wire-designs.com/Links.php (anchor text: Unique Collection of Celtic Wedding Rings) http://bestrings.blogspot.com/2011/08/celtic-peridot-rings.html (anchor text: Celtic Peridot Ring - Celtic Rings)"
direct from the horse's mouth.
First one is what I would consider a reciprocal link. And google seems to agree. We have requested removal/.
2nd one. Scraped content, and cant really see how they can "blame" us for that one. We will still ask for removal, but do not count of having much luck with it.
Another thing I noticed while going through the link profile.
The amount of scraped content is insane. We are talking thousands of sites/links.I really really hope we are not told to contact those sites as well as it would prove imposible in most cases.
-
How long did it take for Google to reply?
-
Oh we did indeed..
Exported the link profile, put all contact details for the spammy sites. Contacted them once, then waited a week. Checked again, then contacted where the links had not been removed. Waited another week. Then checked again.
After which we updated spreedsheet, uploaded to google docs and contacted google again.
You have to be seen to be making an effort.
-
Over SEO means the following:
-
Building a huge amount of links with a similar anchor text.
-
Over optimizing titles so they are like "Money Loans | Buy loans | Loans Texas" ect, titles need to be more natural
-
Using non ethical link strategies
-
Using a high percentage of the same keyword on page, key word spamming.
Overall you just need to be wise with your SEO efforts and be more natural with the SEO process.
-
-
I have heard similar stories, I would note the links you can not remove in the re consideration request, I would provide as much information as possible in the reconsideration request to be honest. I would name every link that you can not have remove and say you have tried your best to have it taken down.
-
Where does this leave us?
- If you have received the warning you need to go over your link profile in Google Webmaster tools, you need to remove any paid links, you need to request to remove any very low quality links or blog network links.
What have we done wrong?
- You have use paid links, over use of anchor text on links, blog networks for links, low quality links in huge numbers.
What works going forward?
- Remove all bad links then put forward a re consideration request with Google, it can take up to 4 weeks for a reply to be had.
-
I find it interesting that 700K+ messages were sent out. That is a lot of sites registered with GWT who may (or certainly may not) be engaging in questionable link strategies
-
We had the same issue for one of our sites. We manually went through 5000+ links categorising them as
Spammy (mostly articles, link farms etc)
Low quality (reprocial links etc we built from 2004-2007 etc)
Scrapped content (content taken from our site and used on other site not related to us)
Okay/Organic (what it says on the tin)We contacted every single on the Spammy list and ask for our links/articles to be removed. Waited a few weeks then checked again and update our list.
We then contacted google again with the list hoping for the penalty to be lifted.
Their reply was.. "There are still many inorganic links pointing to your site. Here are some examples:"
followed by a list of some of the reprocial links.So back to going through the 1000+ Low quality links and see if we can get them removed.
Bit of a nightmare when those were links we did 5-7 years ago.Only good thing is we still have some keywords performing well, and that our competitors are in the same boat.
-
Yes, the Majority of them is coming from Link Networks, this is what i have noticed in search for answers.
What do you recommend on then? Like Matt Cutts also announced that they were going to level the playing field and penalize websites that are over SEO'd. Whats does over SEO mean.
I ask these questions because I am now completely reviewing my SEO strategy. I want to build a long term business. But, If im going out trying to get links all day everyday, am I SEOing too much then, where do you draw the line?
-
I think it's high time for every one to realize this. Unfortunately, there's no shortcut to success. The quick/manipulative link building works. Yes, you can buy links and essentially trickle through the SERPS and get into top positions. But then you are risking your website/domain/trust for long term. Think about times to come and weigh in the reward vs risk. From what I have seen, heard, a majority of this is coming from people using BuildMyRank.com Link Network. There might be others, because Google said these 700,000 messages include the manual and automatic warnings/penalties.
-
To be honest, I dont think you should. You should be proactive and review all your link building you have done to date.
I have done this on my other websites and deleted links that might cause suspicion.
This is a rolling update they are doing, they have contact 700,000 website in Jan and Feb, SO FAR. I think not being proactive and trying to clean up your linking profile before it gets crawled could save you a lot of rankings
-
Dear site owner or webmaster of xxxxxxxxx,
We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.
If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
I know getting the above was from participating in a service called buildmyrank. A high PR blog network. This was the only sort of thing I did that was somewhat grey hat (or so I thought) the content was always 100% and good. I have hundreds of other links that I worked really hard to get and now its practically all lost.
-
I guess those who didn't receive one can relax a little!
-
Did you receive one of those GW messages?
If yes, what did it say?
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
-
How to make a wrong link profile right
Hello Moz, I want to do SEO a website that is 2 years old and in a different language from English. That website has a very wrong link profile. It has totally about 1500 inbound links and 90% of these inbound links are to home page. Also somewhat of these inbound links are from low quality web sites that have less than 80 inbound links. I think that I can follow 2 strategies to solve this link building problem. First strategy is only link building to internal pages till inbound links to internal pages reach about 80% of total inbound links. Second strategy is disavowing low quality inbound links to homepage and link building to internal pages till again same condition occurs. I think if I only implement link building, I have to produce a large number of content. But if I disavow many inbound links, will I encounter a sharply lose in rankings? If you have a different idea to solve this problem, I will be glad to hear. Also I wonder that if I follow these strategies, how fast I have to implement these? Thanks in advance for your interest.
Link Building | | annettakuchera0 -
Is There Value in Disavowing Links if you there is No Google Penalty?
I have just started using Link Detox to determine if our clients have links/domains pointing to their sites that could be harming them in organic search. In a few cases 7%-9% of links have been flagged as a high priority to be disavowed. I would be interested in your opinion on the following: If your site does not have a Google penalty is there an advantage to disavowing pages that have been flagged as high risk? When I go to those pages they look spammy and have no real value other than an inbound link. If a client acquires another website/company and that website is now 301 redirected to the client's site, would "high risk" inbound links from the acquired company cause a problem for my client? A client has taken down content from their site that was completely unrelated to their current business. Is there a benefit in disavowing those links to the old content that are deemed by Link Detox as being high risk? Thank you, Rosemary
Link Building | | RosemaryB2 -
Linking between properties
I own 3 domains. One is my blog, one is my photography business site, and one is my graphic/web design site. They are all hosted on the same VPS account. I link between each site. Also, since the links are either in the nav, footer or sidebar, all pages from one page link to the homepage of each other. Is this an issue for SEO? Should I not be doing this? Would it be beneficial to use a no follow link instead if I'm to keep them?
Link Building | | studio35design0 -
If i get link pointing to a specific page , will that link add up to the count of linking root domains too ?
If I create a fresh link pointing to specific page on my site, apart from adding a number to "page linking root domains" does it also add up to root domain linking ?
Link Building | | Techbate1 -
Unnatural inbound link warning
Hey guys, One of our clients has just reported that they've received an email from WMT stating they may have "Unnatural Inbound Links". I've done some research and found this link which certainly seemed applicable; http://searchengineland.com/how-to-remove-your-unnatural-inbound-links-130073 As you can imagine, going through all of the client's backlinks may be a time consuming process so I was just wondering what the time frame for these Google warnings is like? Because we've got the email now, does it mean that a bad link was built fairly recently? Or could it have been a number of months ago? Also, what are people's experiences dealing with these type of emails? Is it just a case of sifting through links and then re-submitting to WMT? Thanks
Link Building | | Webrevolve0 -
How long does it take for crawlers to update links? As in number of back links
How long does it take for crawlers to update links? As in number of back links
Link Building | | tom14cat140 -
Google Webmaster Tools - assessing inbound links
Hello, I am terribly confused by Google Webmaster Tools. I am looking at my inbound links, to see which content on the site is strongest. However, the results from GWT under Links to your site, and the results from doing a link: search in Google yield very different results! For example, in GWT, this page on our site apparently 2237 links from 29 different domains. But when I search link:www.nigelsecostore.com/acatalog/Eco_Stapler.html, I get just three results, two of which are from our site. What is the cause of the disparity between the two results, or is it just my (lack of) understanding of what I am seeing in the Links to your site report in GWT? Any help clearing this up gratefully received! Many thanks, Sophy
Link Building | | sophycolbert0 -
Does google extract out keywords from links that use the url as the anchortext?
If someone formats a link like so: http://www.somedomain.com/keyword1-keyword2/keyword3.php Would you still get a similar anchor text benefit to this link as if it was formated like so: somedomain keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 what i mean is, does google extract out keywords from links that use the url as the anchortext?
Link Building | | adriandg0