I have been Hit with UNWANTED Links and I need to know how to remove them?
-
I have been looking at Google Webmasters Tools and saw that suddenly I have this huge amount of links form an unknown source “SiteLoki” never heard of it? Didn’t want it! Need to get rid of it!
My Website www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com experienced a sudden and dramatic loss of presence on Google about three weeks ago. I first thought it was something to do with the new Google Algorithm.I also contacted Google to be re-evaluated. They replied:
Reconsideration request for http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/: No manual spam actions foundMay 10, 2012 Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. - - - - - -
We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team.
Google Search Quality TeamI have ran all kinds of web crawl tests, Google webmaster, talked with SEO “Experts” and still can not figure out what is happening. I decided to use a couple of SEOmoz tools to try to help me explain what is happening. I figured that if I could take a very specific and unique KeyPhrase and run it on a specific page that I might be able to better explain what is happening. Basically, We appear to be no longer searchable by key words or phrases on google?
There was another post regarding canonical tag issues; resolved, I removed all canonical tags for now.Today I discovered the links and I suspect that having even
1 link for this website will penalize you in Google.Here are some Webmaster Tools pages for reference:
I also noted that the image for the link is from an old site hosted on www.Globat.com. I don't know what that significance might be. I left them in January.
Thanks in advance for any help and advice you can offer,
Ray
Webmaster-Tools-Query_Your-Photo-On-Canvas.jpg Webmaster-Tools-Query_Photo-On-Canvas.jpg Webmaster-Tools-Query_Photos-On-Canvas.jpg Webmaster-Tools-Links_siteloki.jpg Webmaster-Tools-Links_siteloki_links.jpg
-
Yeah, unfortunately somebody bought paid links, which was probably were you were getting most of your traffic from for awhile, until it stopped working.
To be honest, attracta doesn't seem like the type of company to do that, but you never know.
I'd like to say that by removing those links your rankings will automatically recover, but that may not be the case. At best, it may lead to partial recovery. In cases like these, some webmasters are even walking away from their URLs entirely and starting over with the same site at another address.
Regardless, the only way to really remove the links is to write each of the webmasters in question, and ask for removal. Sometimes this has to be repeated over and over again and even then you only see about a 20% success rate.
Over time, some of these links will disappear by themselves.
Really, the best thing you can do now is start building new links. In many ways you're starting from the beginning, since your previous success was built on something that wouldn't last.
(that said, if you do have major errors in your SEOmoz PRO campaign, I highly advise you to fix them)
-
Thank you for your reply. To my knowledge I have not paid
for any links. I did sign up with www.attracta.com
and even asked the question regarding paid
links and was assured that they only submitted our sitemap and provided our
business information including hours of operation to search engines and other
sites like yelp, yellow pages, attracta’s directory and that sort of thing. They said they do not use paid links. Now I’m
not sure?After several posts on several forums you have given the
most useful and logical reply. Now what I need is some help or guidance on a
recovery. How do I remove these unwanted links. I thought that the first step
was to set up an account with SEOmoz to analyze the problem and then hopefully
get help on resolving the issue. It is hard to see any light at the end of the
tunnel at this point. We are a small business that depends on the website for
30-40% of our sales. This is life or death to us!So any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again for your reply,
-
Hi Ray,
First of all, I'm sorry to hear about your huge drop in traffic. it totally sucks. There's a lot of that going around these days, but it doesn't make you feel any better when it happens to you.
First things first, I wouldn't be too worried about the links from SiteLoki. It looks like an auto-generated site that probably links to millions of URLs, and Google is pretty good about discounting these types of links. It's not uncommon for most link profiles to contain something similar.
Here's the problem... paid link networks. A few weeks ago Google started deindexing link networks by the dozens, the most high profile being BMR. (http://searchengineland.com/google-eliminates-another-link-network-116513)
I pulled up your site's link profile on OSE and picked a number of URLs at random. Here's what I found:
- Link 1 - Not Paid, Indexed - http://www.examiner.com/article/retirement-means-time-to-think-futuristic-for-local-art-photographer
- Link 2 - Looks Paid - http://coolartdude.com/how-to-get-your-photo-on-canvas/
- Link 3 - Looks Paid - Also hidden text - http://goldcardreview.info/421712603coolche.php
- Link 4 - Looks Paid - http://waterproofcameraworld.com/blog/2011/03/31/photos-printed-on-canvas-a-unique-gift/
- Link 5 - Looks Paid - http://www.giftsandgadgetsnews.com/keep-fresh-and-live-pictures-with-canvas-prints-from-digital-photos/
So out of 5 random links, 4 of them look spammy and paid, and often have very similar or repeating anchor text. My best guess as to what happened to you is that several weeks ago, Google discounted much of your backlink profile that was based on these links.
What can you do? First of all, if you are still paying for links, stop now. It might help to try and clean up/remove as many bad links as you can. Read Dr. Pete's post on Penguin.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/penguins-pandas-and-panic-at-the-zoo
In the end, you probably need to take a different approach with your link building, and begin to build good, white hat links over time.
Regardless, I hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
Also and I suspect related are the 406 Permanent 301 redirects that showed up on a crawl analysis on SEOmoz.
See Below:
-
Thanks for the reply ...
The first think that I did was to look at links using SEOmoz and I didn't and still don't see the links from "Siteloki" Then i read this blog from SEOmoz
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-minute-missing-page-audit
Then I look deeper in Webmasters Tools and found the 6,000 plus links from "siteloki"
All of these links refer to the website as it was prior to a rebuild that launched in mid January. This is also what is accounting (I think for all of the 404 errors).
I am beginning to think that this was a Hack Job!
-
Hi Ray,
This doesn't sound good..
I'm not that familiar with sitemap.xml protocols but have you checked in webmaster tools that understands your sitemap correctly? Also there might be some info in crawl dates and crawl errors in your webmaster tools.
I can't imagine you've been banned from google because of just one link.
Greets,
Sven Witteveen
Expand Online
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
-
Worried About Broken Links
In Wordpress, I'm using a plugin called Broken Link Checker to check for broken links. Should I be worried about/spend time fixing outbound links that result in: 403 Forbidden -Server Not Found -Timeout -500 Internal Server Error -etc. Thanks for your help! Mike
Technical SEO | | naturalsociety3 -
Links disappeared
Hi, I am a wedding photographer based in Liverpool. I have been trying to do my own SEO for the last 6 months. I have been hovering around the top of page two for the main search terms for the past few years. I used an SEO company before christmas who got a lot of spammy links which resulted in my site dropping to page 4 of the SERPS. With the help of this forum I managed to locate them and disavow those links, and have tried to do it myself. I have managed to gain a few "featured weddings" on national wedding blogs and wrote a few articles for another wedding blog and also some forum comments. I have also got a few links for example from a wedding band in exchange for some photographs. I have got onto page 1 about 4 times, the best result was at position 6 on page 1 but every time I have slowly dropped out again. I have methodically (once a month) checked for any of the spammy links and updated the disavow list. My competitors have at best old forum comments and the like and on checking their websites with open site explorer are not actively link building at all. I have just checked my Webmaster tools and google is only recognising 51 links. (none of my good wedding blog links are there) I have an external links csv from the 28th June with 602 links on it. I changed my website around May of this year but it is still on the same domain name www.dwliverpoolphotography.co.uk. Can anybody help? Best wishes. David.
Technical SEO | | WallerD0 -
Removed URLs
Hi all, We have recently removed 200+ articles from our blog. However, those links are still being shown on Google weeks after their removal. In there a way to speed up the process? What effect will this have on our SEO ranking?
Technical SEO | | businessowner0 -
Removing indexed website
I had a .in TLD version of my .com website floated for about 15 days, which was a duplicate copy of .com website. I did not wish to use the .in further for SEO duplication reasons and had let the .in domain expire on 26th April. But still now when I search from my website the .in version also shows up in results and even in google webmaster it shows the the website with maximum (190) number of links to my .com website. I am sure this is hurting the ranking of my .com website. How can the .in website be removed from googles indexing and search results. Given that is has expired also. thanks
Technical SEO | | geekwik0 -
How to fix broken links?
Hi, I use WordPress CMS with Yoast SEO plugin. I have just found out that my 403 errors increased dramatically. It seems that all my tags below of each post are being broken for some reason. When i click on the tags i get the following massage: **403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules. ** I assume it has something to do with the configuration within Yoast SEO plugin. Dose anyone know how should i fix that? Thanks, Raviv evsGujA
Technical SEO | | Indiatravelz0 -
Self-referencing links
I personally think that self-referencing links are silly. It's blatantly easy for Google to tell and my instinct says that the link juice for this would simply evaporate rather than passing back to itself. Does anyone have information backing me up from an authoritative source? I can't find any info about this linked to Matt Cutts, Rand or any of those I look up to.
Technical SEO | | IPROdigital0 -
Hit by the penguin update
Hi, My site @ www.mortgageadvicecenter.co.uk has been hit by the penguin update. I cannot be found at all in google for certain keywords such as mortgage advice where we ranked page 2. We still rank for certain keywords. I really don't know why we have been penalised and what to do. I have plenty of brand links and nothing out of the ordinary link distribution. This obviously affects our bottem line so do you have any idea's or time scales? Any help would be appreciated, Thanks Ryan
Technical SEO | | pensionadvice0 -
Competition links make no sense
Hello everybody, I used the open site explorer to check where my competitor has links and try to put mine there too. However I am extremely confused with the results. Eg the first link to my competitor coming from a domain with authority 91, is a download file. The other one is a link from ups, the courier service. When I click on it I get an access denied.The other one comes from samsung and when I click on it, I download an swf file. Next one, fcc.gov and it downloads a wp file. If I keep clicking on these links, in the end I am going to get a virus or something and learn nothing about what my competitor does. Any one have a clue how they managed to get linked like that?
Technical SEO | | polyniki0