Google Penguin Penalty
-
Howdy Guys,
We have been battling our way the Google penguin penalty and have just received our 3 knocked back reconsideration request.I posted a find on here the other day about a simple change of page title made our site jump back up...
In the meantime I've built 1 hight quality link back to our site and we have moved again from #50 to #46.Have Google ever removed a penalty without telling you?Should we ask for another reconsideration request?Thanks,
Scott -
Sry guys - must have posted while others were writing. Even if you didn't get the original email - if Google is saying you have unnatural links, then you need to deal with that problem. Submitting recon makes no difference if you dont get rid of the bad links
You will almost certainly need to take action by linkmining your website, identifying 'unnatural' links or links from blatantly bad neighborhoods, submit requests for removal from the webmasters, and so on. Document all of your work and then add that information in with your reconsideration request. If you do not put the work in you will not get a positive response.
-
Hi Scott -
Eyepaq has it right in that you need to understand if you are under a manual penalty or an algorithmic penalty to know exactly what course of action to take.
Manual Penalty - You'll get an email in WMT if you are under penalty, This will be due to bad links. You will need to clean up your links, and then open that email and click on the 'reconsideration request' link.
Algorithmic - You'll usually see a sudden drop in positioning, in some cases it will affect a string of your best keyword variations while other low lying fruit as it were still rank well. For this penalty, check anchor text % first, then go through the other penguin stuff (you can find tons of info in the SEOMoz blog). There is a form online you can use if you "feel your website was unfairly demoted" but I am no longer sure of its efficacy.
Position 46 > 50 or vice versa. This really means nothing at all so don't take it as an indicator. Google is always messing around so 4 positions out of 50 is insignificant. For example, your site used to be top 10, but when it moved to 50, about 40 websites moved "up" a spot. Consistent movement from week to week is a better indicator.
-
By "knocked back" - I mean we have submitted a reconsideration request and they have said we still have unnatural links...
** But then this is not penguin - it's something different - even if is still related with links.
As far as I know there is a policy now and they are sending out notification via WMT for this type of filters. For you not getting one it either means it was applied a long time ago when they didn't send out all notifications for all filters applied or you've skiped the message somehow
Or it's not a manual action - it's algo based.
Questions:
-
did you manage to identify bad links pointing to your site ? If so, are those "bad" links pointing to home page or deep, to inner pages ? (important as far as solution to deal with those)
-
did you include in the reconsideration request you've sent out so far the action taked in order to cut those bad links out ? Did you actually do something to remove any of those links or cut those links out by 404-ing the target page (if home page was not the target).
Again, your issue is not Penguin related but the bellow resource might also help:
http://www.webpronews.com/google-penguin-update-reconsideration-request-tips-from-google-2012-04
-
-
I think if you look hard enough you will find bad links to every site, as you never got an original message i would assume its an algorithmic penalty.
And yes by changing page content and varying your anchor text on new links can make a big difference, Google are clever in a way they word their messages and you will never know if its manual action taken unless they specifically say so.
-
Hi Eyepaq,
Thanks for the reply.
By "knocked back" - I mean we have submitted a reconsideration request and they have said we still have unnatural links...
1 thing I remember is that we never received a message with WMT we actually filed for a reconsideration request and then recieved a message back saying we had bad links, could this be slightly different?
Thanks,
Scott
-
Hi,
If you are 100% sure it's Penguin related then the reconsideration request won't help as Penguin is not a manual action.
There is a form online that you can use posted by Matt Cutts - did you mean that as "sending a reconsideration request".
if not, the answer was you are still violating the rules or that you don't have any manual action against your site ?
What do you mean by "knocked back" ?
Have Google ever removed a penalty without telling you?
** Yes - all the time. Algorithmic penalties are applied and lifted with no message sent.
Lately manual actions (penalties) are noted in your WMT account but even those (manual actions) expire after a time - if you didn't fix it those will be reapplied but the lift off won't be sent as a notice.
Should we ask for another reconsideration request?
** Don't play with those. It matters what kind of response you've received after the first 3.
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 possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using Google Search Console?
We have a client that will not grant us access to their Google Search Console (don't ask us why). Is there anyway possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using GSC? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Penguin 2.0 Recovery - Penguin Update Rerun yet or not
I have been hit by the penguin 2.0 update some five months back. I believe that I have an algorythmic penalty applied to my sites. While the work to cleanup etc has been done, there is certainly no recovery. I also notice a lack of recovery stories. In fact I think anyone affected cannot recover because a recalculation has not happened? Does anyone think that a recalculation of the penguin 2.0 penalties has happened? If so why do they think that.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jurnii0 -
Google Places - Advanced Question
Hi All, Ive found multiple threads about previous issues but I haven't found any tailored to my specific question.I know there are a large amount of factors so I wanted to see if any other individuals had ran into this previously. We are currently in a centralized position in a major city. We are discussing moving the main office about 15 miles away into another city, moving us out of the main city where we have been for the past 3 years. The city where we are currently located has a lot more GEO search volume compared to the new city search terms and variants of. If we move will our local rankings drop when someone searches in the city where we were previously? How long would it take for this ranking to fall? Or would we still rank because we are moving a short distance away and have a large amount of citations there? I know we would need to change over all our online directories, on page etc..Any other suggestions on a smooth transition? I know there are many factors that go into this and any past experience, guidance and/or assistance is greatly appreciated. Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PRKEL0 -
Google Penalty or Not?
One of my sites I work with got this message: http://www.mysite: Unnatural inbound linksJune 27, 2013 Google has detected a pattern of artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank are violations of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to mysite.com/. There may be other actions on your site or parts of your site. But, when I got to manual actions it says: Manual Actions No manual webspam actions found. -- So which is it??? I have been doing link removal, but now I am confused if I need to do a reconsideration request or not.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper0 -
Are links that are disavowed with Google Webmaster Tools removed from the Google Webmaster Profile for the domain?
Hi, Two part question - First, are links that you disavow using google webmaster tools ever removed from the webmaster tools account profile ? Second, when you upload a file to disavow links they ask if you'd like to replace the previously uploaded file. Does that mean if you don't replace the file with a new file that contains the previously uploaded urls those urls are no longer considered disavowed? So, should we download the previous disavow file first then append the new disavow urls to the file before uploading or should we just upload a new file that contains only the new disavow urls? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgs0 -
How to remove an entire site from Google?
Hi people, I have a site with around 2.000 urls indexed in google, and 10 subdomains indexed too, which I want to remove entirely, to set up a new web. Which is the best way to do it? Regards!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoExpertos0 -
Keyword penalty?
One of our pages seems to have disappeared from Google SERPs, I did some analysis/research into this to try find out what is going on. Nothing jumps out.. - No noticeable traffic drops, especially on/after the Panda & Penguin updates. - Thorough checks on related keywords – no noticeable drops - Anchor text – brand name & natural anchor texts - 2/3 word phrases Keyword density 3-5% in content - No Google Manual Penalty with Notification in WBTools - Robot.txt checked - Checked sitemap.xml (recently updated) I expect if the page has dropped in SERPs then the traffic would drop also.. Anyone had same experiences or ideas how this page is affected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | notnem0 -
Dropped ranking - Penguin penalty or duplicate content issue?
Just this weekend a page that had been ranking well for a competitive term fell completely out of the rankings. There are two possible causes and I'm trying to figure out which it is, so I can take action. I found out that I had accidentally put a canonical on another page that was for the same page as the one that dropped out of the rankings. If there are two pages with the same canonical tag with different content, will google drop both of them from the index? The other possibility is that this is a result of the recent Penguin update. The page that dropped has a high amount of exact anchor text. As far as I can tell, there were no other pages with any penalties from the Penguin update. One last question: The page completely dropped from the search index. If this were a Penguin issue, would it have dropped out completely,or just been penalized with a drop in position? If this is a result of the conflicting canonical tags, should I just wait for it to reindex, or should I request a reconsideration of the page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gametv0