Have i got a manual action on rankings?
-
Hi guys, so recently Google released the 'manual actions' tab under 'search traffic' in Google webmaster tools.
Recently hit by panda i checked this and got:
"
Unnatural links to your site—impacts links
Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole."
However was this not the message before saying it was not a complete manual ban, just affecting a few bad links?
I was hit badly in the rankings but still have some good terms and traffic is not that bad still from organic non-brand.
I have fixed many of the bad links (horrible articles submissions that went out of control in 2009) - do i do a reconsideratikn request? i have disavowed the bad links that are left 3 weeks ago? so do i wait to see if disavow works or do a reconsideration request?I was sure this was like the message sent out before which meant it wasn't that bad for your site, just a few links ignored?
Any advice much appreciated, thank you.
-
Many thanks all for your responses and advice.
I am going to give it another 2 weeks, but i believe a reconsideration request is in order.
-
I just saw this in the Google Webmaster Tools help section:
If you see this message on the Manual Actions page, it means that Google has detected a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to your site. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
If you don't control the links pointing to your site, no action is required on your part. From Google's perspective, the links already won't count in ranking. However, if possible, you may wish to remove any artificial links to your site and, if you're able to get the artificial links removed, submit a reconsideration request. If we determine that the links to your site are no longer in violation of our guidelines, we’ll revoke the manual action.
This was on the following page: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604772?ctx=MAC
-
I haven't seen that specific message from Google before, so I'm just giving my best guess, but I would say it wouldn't hurt to do a reconsideration request. I don't know if it will do any good since it sounds like Google is just devaluing some links, but the worst Google would do is just respond saying there was no need for the request.
Something to keep in mind, though, is that fixing the link situation isn't going to get the rankings back. The whole point of Penguin was that sites had rankings Google didn't think they deserved, so they sought to deal with the spammy links. Those links get devalued and the site no longer get's the authority boost from them. If a manual penalty has been applied, getting that lifted will help, but it will not put the site back where it was in the rankings.
Think of it this way. If you had 100 authority points, but 40 of them were from spammy links. Google comes in and devalues those spammy links and slaps you with a 40 point penalty. So, now your site has lost the 40 points from the spammy links and another 40 points due to the penalty. The site has 20 points. So, you clean up the links and get the penalty lifted. That still only puts the site back to 60 points, not the 100 points from before. The missing 40 points are just gone because those links have been devalued. The only way to get the site fully back to where it was is to just work to build authority naturally through good content and good service.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
I have already removed 119 domains manually and kept records, theres about 40 left i just cant move. I have kept a record of all of this and i like the idea on your site to upload the details of this to google docs to include on the reconsideration request - thank you for advice.
So basically I feel we got hit because a bad seo agency did article submissions on mass for the same anchor text which got ditributed over and over again, giving us a non-brand term with huge amounts of referring links. I have been working hard to sort that and stop replications from awful scraper type sites also.
I just do not know what is for the best here, i have disavowed 3 weeks ago, perhaps i should give it until end of August and if no luck on rankings I will do a reconsideration request explaining all of this and hope they value us once again.
-
Hi sounds like a rough situation,
I remembered watching this longer Matt Cutts video when we had the same sort of problem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA, and i think he mentions a couple of minutes in about using the disavow links tool which apparently can take a couple weeks, but then mentioning that you have current links you would like to disavow in your reconsideration request text
Hope this helps
James
-
Hi I would recommend using a tool called Remove'em by Virante
http://www.virante.org/Virante is a Company that is endorsed by Moz http://www.removeemThat way when Google gets your the submission request you will simply be able to have a very complete record of every webmaster you attempted to contact whether or not they contacted you back and what occurred. This is crucial Google will not let you out of a penalty by removing links in the manner in which you are speaking that cool actually is to remove links from the search engine view is the way Google shows the web sight to people when it's queried. It is not for actually link removal in the manner were speaking about here to relieve for a penalty. I hope I've been of help.Sincerely, Thomas
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
-
Does traffic coming from Adwords increase overall Domain Authority or Page Rank?
If I'm setting up an Adwords campaign, will setting my homepage as the landing page boost my domain rank? and will the Page Rank of the landing page get boosted because of the high click rate coming from the Adwords campaign?
Reporting & Analytics | | s2bkevin0 -
Lost rankings after disavowing links
About two months ago, I received an unnatural inbound links message from Google. Then I disavowed 58 (the worst ones) and now I can see that right after the date I submitted my disavow file I'm losing rankings. What would you suggest? I don't really want to revoke my disavow file because it has totally bad links. I have this idea to build 58 links from high quality sites (instead of the 58 I disavowed). Do you think it'll work faster (if at all) or I just need to remove my disavow file?
Reporting & Analytics | | VinceWicks0 -
More Traffic From Lower Rankings?
I have access to analytics for two different sites that rank for the same keyword. Strangely, the site that ranks on page 3 gets three times as much traffic as the site that ranks on page 1 (rankings according to multiple SEO tools as well as my own browser). How is this possible?
Reporting & Analytics | | JABacchetta0 -
Why do we temporarily rank for highly competitive words after writing a related blog post?
I write for a blog that Google probably "likes" at this point because we update so frequently and get a decent amount of traffic. Sometimes this happens and it has always been puzzling to me: Let's use an example. Say I write a blog called "How to eat spaghetti." For the next few days, we will get a ton of traffic for people who type "spaghetti." But when I check us on rank trackers we are nowhere to be found for that term. What is happening here? Sometimes the traffic will all be international and located in some random city in Africa or something. Any thoughts? Super confused by this. We have gotten lots of traffic for extremely competitive words because of this, but it only lasts a couple days.
Reporting & Analytics | | LilyRay0 -
Do I need to turn off custom results or empty my cache before using the SEOMOZ Pro Rank checker?
I'm getting unusual swings in SERPS ranks from one day to another (I had several keywords ranked in top ten go to the the third or fourth page in a week). I knwo that there's always variation because of localized and custom search, but this seems to be something more.
Reporting & Analytics | | bbelgard0 -
Ranking on page 1 position 3 but hardley any visits
in one of my projects the expected vistors is around 23000 weve got the keyword onto the first page position 3 and weve only recieved 30 vistits this month, my qustion is why? are the local searches from google analtics that tell you thier are 23000 searches for that keyword false please can someone shed some light on this, my client is totally over the moon with his ranking but cant believe that hes only recieving 30 visits this month from what we thought was a million dollar keyword
Reporting & Analytics | | Westernoriental0 -
Is 10 Keyword Targets for Page Rank too many?
My client has selected 10 keywords that they want to rank on the first page of Google for. Is 10 keywords too many to try and rank for? I have heard that you should focus on top 5 keywords instead.
Reporting & Analytics | | dseasterling0 -
Ranking Testing
At times when I change something on my site it effects my rankings. For my business I care mostly about my rankings in certain locations (not local). How can I see how I am ranking in various locations at a given time? I see several tools out there, but none of them seem to work. For example I recently I added a badge to my site and my ranking dropped a spot locally, but I do not think it did elsewhere. The value of the badge is worth that if it is just local, but if it made me drop a ranking in one of my major markets it would not be worth it.
Reporting & Analytics | | RobDalton0