Is this Penguin or Manual Penalty?
-
I have a client that's traffic dropped off on April 10th. They did get a message in GWT on March 21st. The April 10th date leads me to believe that it is a manual penalty and couldn't be penguin since penguin was released on April 24th.
I guess either way backlinks need to be cleaned up though.
-
I will further add, it is common for webmasters to report competition whom are actively engaged in or can be perceived to have participated in black hat tricks. If the report holds credence then, Google can and will "sometimes" manually ding the account. A GWT warning is one indication of that having had happen.
In your case it could be further complications have arose due to the subsequent Penguin algorithm update.
-
What was the message?
Just because penguin was rolled out on a specific date does not mean you couldn't get a warning early/later on, They want us to think it was released on the 24th, but was it really.......
You are right too, backlinks certainly need to be cleaned up if they are spammy.
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
-
Why is it still effective to manually create backlinks?
Hi I'm the manager of a training site
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jamalinani
My question is why buying backlinks is still effective
Except Google has stated that it will penalize sites that buy backlinks0 -
Penalty because of logo banner in sidebar of external website?
Dear mozzers, One of our pages is not ranking (well). I wrote another question about this here on Moz. I just discovered that there is an external website that has a banner to our page in the sidebar. The banner is on every 134+ pages of that site. It is in a banner slider and only show for a few seconds every now and then. The link is not "nofollow". It seems that our page dropped from Google slightly after this banner was added. However I am completely sure about this. The link is over here in the banner carousel/slider in the sidebar: http://www.wierszowisko.com/ My questions are: Could this banner log cause a penalty for our page? If so what can we do to undo this? Ask the webmaster to remove the link? Disavow on Google? How does this exactly work?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rdudkiewicz1 -
How Do You Know or Find Out if You've been hit by a Google Penalty?
Hi Moz Community, How do you find out if you have been hit with a Google Penalty? Thanks, Gary
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gdavey0 -
Should I Even Bother Trying To Recover This Site After Google Penguin?
Hello all, I would like to get your opinion on whether I should invest time and money to improve a website which was hit by Google Penguin in April 2014. (I know, April 2014 was nearly 2 years ago. However, this site has not been a top priority for us and we have just left until now). The site is www.salmonrecipes.net Basically, we aggregated over 700 salmon recipes from major supermarkets, famous chefs, and others (all with their permission) and made them available on this site. It was a good site at the time but it is showing its age now. For a few years we were occasionally #1 on Google in the US for "salmon recipes", but normally we would be between #2 and #4. We made money from the site almost entirely through Adsense. We never made a huge amount, but it paid our office rent every month, which was handy. We also built up an email database of several thousand followers, but we've not really used this much. (Yet). In the year from 25th April 2011 to 24th April 2012 the site attracted just over 500k visits. After the rankings dropped due to Google Penguin, traffic dropped by 77% in the year from 25th April 2011 to 24th April 2012. Rankings and traffic have not recovered at all, and are only getting worse. I am happy to accept that we deserved our rankings to fall during the Google Penguin re-shuffle. I stupidly commissioned an offshore company to build lots of links which, in hindsight, were basically just spam, and totally without any real value. However they assured me it was safe and I trusted them, despite my own nagging reservations. Anyway, I have full details of all the links they created, and therefore I could remove many of these 'relatively' easily. (Of course, removing hundreds of links would take a lot of time). My questions ... 1. How can I evaluate the probability of this site 'recovering' from Google Penguin. I am willing to invest time/money on link removal and new (ethical) SEO work if there is a reasonable chance of regaining a position in the top 5 on Google (US) for "salmon recipes" and various long-tail terms. But I am keen to avoid spending time/money on this if it is unlikely we will recover. How can I figure out my chances? 2. Generally, I accept that this model of site is in decline. Relying on Google to drive traffic to a site, and on Google to produce revenue via its Adsense scheme, is risky and not entirely sensible. Also, Google seems to provide more and more 'answers' itself, rather than sending people to e.g. a website listing recipes. Given this, is it worth investing any money in this at all? 3. Can you recommend anyone who specialises in this kind of recovery work. (As I said, I have a comprehensive list of all the links that were built, etc). OK, that is all for now. I am really looking forward to whatever opinions you may have about this. I'll provide more info if required. Huge thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | smaavie
David0 -
Is anyone witnessed complete or partial recovery from Penguin 2.1 yet?
Hello Everyone, I am analyzing and working on recovery of some sites that were hit by Penguin 2.1 on 4th Oct, 2013. I have done almost all fixes including Anchor Variations Social Sharing Local Links Diversity in Back-links but still not witnessed any real recovery. Is anyone witnessed Partial or Complete Recovery From Penguin 2.1? Thanks for your feedback in advance! Regards
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Asjad0 -
How can I tell if my site was penalized from the most recent penguin update?
Hey all, I want to be able to see if my website was penalized from the most recent penguin update because we have several hundred websites built and at the bottom of each on it says something along the lines Website by, Web Design by, Hosting by and links back to our homepage. Could this possibly be penalizing us since these links have similar anchor text and on sites that have nothing to do with our services? Thanks, Ryan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
Manual Penalty Removed - Recovery Times...
Howdy Mozzers, For anyone who has had experience of a manual penalty i'd appreciate your feedback. How long did it take to recover from a Manual Penalty? Of course every situation is different and its only been 8 days so perhaps it's to soon. Below is the email we received, I highlighted "believed" they didn't state we had. We highlighted a bunch of back links we didn't like however most of these remain in our profile in GWT so not sure what was really the problem. "Previously the webspam team had taken manual action on your site because we believed it violated our quality guidelines. After reviewing your reconsideration request, we have revoked this manual action. It may take some time before our indexing and ranking systems are updated to reflect the new status of your site." Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
Penguin Update and Infographic Link Bait
Is it still ok to use infographics for link bait now that the penguin update has rolled out? Are there any techniques that should be avoided when promoting an infographic? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eddiejsd1