Manual Spam Action Revoked... Finally!
-
Just got this:
Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www. for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Previously the webspam team had taken manual action on your site because we believed it violated ourquality 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.
Of course, there may be other issues with your site that could affect its ranking without a manual action by the webspam team. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If your site continues to have trouble in our search results, please see this article for help with diagnosing the issue.
Thank you for helping us to maintain the quality of our search results.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
-
Hi Stephane, I'm wondering if you've seen any rebound at all since the penalty was revoked back in May?
-
Well think of it: If you keep your old site, you'll have to clean it up first and then start building links again almost like it's a new site. And nothing guarantees that it will be ever successfull as it once was. Chances are, it will never be.
If you start a new website, you'll also have to build links again but you won't have to clean it up first. You'll also get to monitor your link building campaign so that you can keep your link profile clean.
So no matter if you keep your old website or build a new one, you'll have to build links and that will take the same amount of time.
My advice to you is to start building a new website and keep cleaning up the old one for a while but try to minimize the lost as much as possible. If the old site ever gets back on track 100% before the new one gains traction, just redirect the new site to the old one. If the new one gains traction and starts getting profitable, kill the old site or whatever but don't redirect it to the new one to avoid passing bad link juice.
I think it's best to play it safe.
-
Wow. These are very unfortunate news...!
Can you please PM me the old site.
I'm on the same dilemma... I got the approval but nothing happened.We already spent so much time on it that if in fact we had done what you suggest we could have been way better off. But it is an old site so we hope for the best.
I do know that I need to fix many other things but still...Thanks
-
To sum up things, the site has pretty much gone to hell since so I'm abandoning it.
Don't waste time an energy recovering from a penalty, it's faster (and more profitable) to build a new website from scratch.
-
Hi Stephane,
You are now 2.5 months over. Are you back up? Is it truly over?
On that note, how long did it take you from the penalization to the RR approved?
During the penalization, did you have pages de-indexed?
Thanks
-
Great work, I don't think you're so lucky, perhaps a bit but it appears you did what was necessary to clear your link profile many would shy from as it's laborious and difficult. But not impossible.
Excellent feedback from you, so many thanks. I've gotta go through the process for a client very shortly.
-
I should also add that when submitting the reconsideration requests, I explained everything that's been done, from the SEO services / softwares used to build the links to everything you did to clean it up.
I included the full list of back links in a Google Docs spreadsheet as well as the list of disavowed links. I also printed all the emails I sent in PDF format and uploaded that as well to Google Drive. I shared both documents and included them in the reconsideration request.
Don't forget: the Google team will not open documents from anywhere else than Google Drive.
-
It took me about 50 to 60 hours to go through approximately 6,800 links. What a f*cking pain.
Here's how I did it if ever it helps someone:
1. I gathered all the back links from the following sources:
- Google Webmaster Tools (Sample Links + Latest Links)
- Link Detox (http://www.linkresearchtools.com/)
- ahrefs.com: Make sure to include sitewide links and nofollow links too (you can't be too careful)
- opensiteexplorer.org
2. I merged all the backlinks into one single Excel spreadsheet and removed the duplicates.
3. I uploaded the backlink list in CSV format into Link Detox (http://www.linkresearchtools.com/). It verifies if the links are still there and gives you back lots of details about each link like text anchors and the destination url.
4. You will be able to export 3 reports from Link Detox: Healthy Links, Suspicious Links and Toxic Links. Merge all 3 in one single spreadsheet.
5. I identified the obvious links first by sorting the Link Detox spreadsheet by anchor text. You can easily spot the exact match anchors.
6. Next, sort the spreadsheet by destination URL. You know the URLs to the pages you've spammed
7. Finally go manually through all what's left. Have fun!
8. When you're done putting all the bad links in another spreadsheet, rerun the Link Detox report by uploading the full link list as well as the list of links to disavow. This will allow you to see what's left and if you forgot anything.
I identified about 1,500 bad links from nearly 1,000 unique domains and emailed each of them when possible (about 300 - 400 emails sent).
It took two reconsideration requests before the penalty was finally taken off. The first time, I only used the links found in GWT and Link Detox. The second time around, I used ahrefs.com and opensiteexplorer.org also. I found about 100 more links the second time.
-
How long did it take you to do this?
How many RR's did you submit as well?
-
Congrats Man. You are one the few lucky guys who has done this.
-
Feels good, doesn't it!
I have two reconsideration requests in the queue right now waiting for a response. I keep refreshing WMT all day long to see if "Message(1)" is going to appear.
Congrats!
-
Congratulations!
I am sure getting the manual penalty revoked involved some hard work. Keep us updated on how long it takes for your search performance to improve.
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 Due to terms of use violation, your account has been suspended by Akismet Anti-Spam Plugin ?
I have seen many, built links but after three days it says "Due to terms of use violation, your account has been suspended by Akismet Anti-Spam Plugin".
Link Building | | kenhaa5
What is the solution?
If anyone knows, tell me.
I am in a lot of problems, why this problem? Below is the screenshot
Screenshot_6.png What is the solution?0 -
How vital is it to get rid of spam links?
We have about 40, between 1-4 flags. Do you see this as a problem? We looked at the disavow feature, but it seems you need to be cautious about using it. Please advise. Thanks!
Link Building | | churchwebsites1 -
14,000 blog comment spam links placed on one domain!!
Trying to clear up a manual link penalty a client has received and I have found the client's site has been blog commenting 14,000 times on just one domain!! I need to do a reconsideration request and show Google that I have cleaned up the mess (the client has 50k backlinks, of which I am not happy with about 75% so far!!) but I cannot expect the website in question to go through 14k pages. What would people advise here. Would you state the sheer number of links on this site in the reconsideration request and use the disavow tool? Doesn't this suggest that I have been lazy and not put the effort into to clearing things up up
Link Building | | GrumpyCarl0 -
When you are manually posting to blogs, how closely related does the content of the blog have to be to the website?
For instance, if the website is for a hotel, would it be acceptable to post on travel blogs?
Link Building | | msmdz0 -
Concerned about quality of backlinks - should I take action?
I regularly work on websites to which previous SEOs have built questionable backlinks. This morning I've just been analysing some backlinks - found 40 odd were coming from 20 odd websites which all had the same gentleman as personal registrant, who happens to be the boss of an SEO company. The SEO company name is mentioned in registrant details too, and often on the websites in question (including weblinks from some of these 20 odd websites to the SEO company). I did note the IP addresses / hosting for these websites did vary though, as did the postal address of the individual in question, perhaps throwing Google off the scent a bit. I should add that these websites are virtually all tourism related/themed, with up to a few dozen backlinks per page - usually articles. It's very clear they are backlinking to keyphrases. Now, this kinda thing<a></a> sets the alarm bells ringing. Firstly, this looks like an infringement of Google Webmaster Guidelines. Secondly, it doesn't sound like a White Hat technique for building links! Am I correct? I guess it might be denied they are partner pages due to the quality of content, perhaps, which isn't as spammy as it might've been. However, I suggest these are at least paid links because there is no other clear way of getting content on these pages, as far as I can see.<a></a><a></a> Should I demand these backlinks are taken down? What level of risk is posed do you think? I don't want this website to suffer a Google penalty at some point, particularly not after I've started work on it. Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.
Link Building | | McTaggart0 -
High Domain Authority Even Though It has spam links to it...?
I own a domain that can provide links to my website, but it seems to have picked up a lot of spammy links - 2000+ linking domains. SeoMoz toolbar still gives it a domain authority of 66. Should I use the domain to link to my site? Or will it have a negative impact?
Link Building | | barnst0 -
Link Spamming or Not? Block Internal Search Results From Indexing?
We are looking at providing our customers with the best experience when performing a site search for a product. Would it be bad SEO practice to have our internal search results show results for all 4 Brands linking to different domains? This would mean multiple outgoing links to other owned sites from the same IP. Is it a best practice to block internal search results using robots.txt?
Link Building | | SEO-Team0 -
I'm aware that spamming tools can lead to ruin..what do you use as a backlink strategy.
But I have had some luck with bookkmaRKING DEMON, and understand the pitfalls of massive submission, but I deal in facts not generalities. If the goal is to mix your links accross the pages in your site, and mix the DA quality, or pr of the links, and have them contextual as well as comments, directories, etc. who cares how it is done as long as it appears natural 1. Linkvana claims to be a posting service for you. you put text in with your link and it posts to relevant sites, the same as you would do manually. For my context links I see this as a better way than begging people to give me a link, or wasting time kissing butt of reporters (kike i did in the past). Anyway there is good and bad with everything. I want to know if anyone knows of anyone who used linkvana and what their experiences is ? And more importantly.... WHAT DOES EVERYONE USE AS A COMPLETE BACK LINK STRATEGY? Thanks
Link Building | | joemas990