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
-
What does google think about legit link exchanges where one is follow and one is no follow?
Hi Experts! Here is my Question for you. I am doing a link exchange in a legit way to increase sales for my site and my associate's site. My associate just wants a sales increase and no link juice. He has a very low DA so I want to give him a no follow link. Is it suspicious of fishy that I give a no follow link and receive a followed link in return? Please let me know how to proceed, I don't want to take any changes. Can you tell me the best way to proceed with this link exchange? Thanks
Link Building | | Ruchy0 -
Do any presentation sites, Slideshare, Google Slides, HaikuDeck offer great SEO links?
I do a lot of public speaking and normally upload my slides somewhere so people can access later. With most sites I can upload to Slideshare or similar, then embed into my own site. I do it for audience convenience, but it would be swell to get an SEO bump.
Link Building | | julie-getonthemap0 -
Relaunching a site that has had thousands of posts linking to the same 20 articles. How to properly setup internal linking?
I'm in the process of relaunching a music news site (www.prefixmag.com) that once did quite well in search (over a million monthly search visits in its prime). The site got crushed by Panda, etc. and we stopped updating it. I'm starting to do more research but one thing that I noticed was we have modules in the right rail (desktop) that are found on all of our article pages that point to the same posts. (Edit: Added attachment. The links in the right rail under Editor Picks, Features, News, Media, etc. are found on every page of the site). In other words, we have thousands of posts that all link to the same 20 or so articles. Should we not do this if we're not trying to emphasize these posts in Google? Assuming this is the case, what is the proper way to do internal linking? Do we simply setup a sitemap and link to it? I'm hoping to have the thousands of articles we've published over the years have a chance to rank in search again. Also, we have a number of posts that are thin in content should those pages not be submitted in the sitemap? Thanks in advance! 2KmX0
Link Building | | leggo0 -
Reciprocal links now cancel out any benefit say Google. But what about if one of them is nofollow?
As a web agency we have some of our client sites linking back to us from their footer to show who built the site as is common practice in our industry. This seems to work fine for us generating both referral traffic and we think some help with rankings. Google recently said that reciprocal links do cancel each other out of any benefit which gives us a dilemma for when we want to link to a website as a case study on our own website. Normally we use nofollow on the link but is that enough? I'd rather have the inbound link benefit than provide a link to the website!
Link Building | | RedAntSolutions0 -
What are the pros and cons of using a link builder? Can link building be outsourced?
Hi, I have great content on my website which I would like to build external links to from other websites. I am told this will increase my domain authority and ultimately help search engine ranking positions. I have very limited time in my hands and now thinking of outsourcing the link building component to a specialist. Is this a good way of doing it? Could you recommend professional link builders?
Link Building | | Saunders18650 -
Can these unnatural links from a site that was hacked hurt me?
After reading the article http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012 I decided to do some investigating to see if I to have suffered from link penalties. After using site explorer I found a ton of over optimized unnatural links from jnjbtw.com and other pharmacy sites. See screen shot: My site is a website about kayak fishing we clearly have nothing to do with pharmacy, doctors or drugs. I know similar questions have been asked before about spam sites linking to you and if they affect you or not but this is about how overly optimized the links that are going to my site are. Would this flag penguin to add a penalty to my website? Any idea how jnjbtw.com has all these links to my site were they hacked?
Link Building | | mr_w0 -
Using an SEO Agency to build one-way links for you via link exchange
There are a number of SEO agencies which offer link building as part of their SEO offerings. I believe they build one-way links to the client site, by offering another link in exchange to the liking site. So, if the client site is "C", and link is being requested from site "A", the site "A" owner is offered a link from site "B" in return. Is this a good and/or recommended practice?
Link Building | | thinkvidya0 -
Linking from Blogs
Hi I like to link from blogs on similar keywords on a regular basis but I am thinking about changing tactics as it can appear monotonous and un natural. What are peoples experiences in linking from blogs ?
Link Building | | onlinemediadirect0