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.
-
just something to note for others and for future, you get the notice IN JUNE 2013, and you are posting here asking about in almost in September... this can generally cause mayhem and result in what has happened, a lost message. Gotta be on toppa the game man, notice, next day or same night better get into it!
-
I guess that could make sense. Google has really done a poor job with all these penalties and not telling webmasters what is going on.
A check of the rankings on this site do not look any better than the month before. They are still much worse than they used to be.
-
Hey Dave,
I just found this tool from Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration. Try that.
Edit: Ok, so I just tried the tool and it just took me to the manual actions section of webmaster tools. I did a little more searching and I don't see any other way at this point to do a reconsideration request. Unless someone else out there knows of another way, I'd have to change my previous answer and say that you don't have a manual action any more.
You said you've been removing bad links. Perhaps when Google redesigned the manual action notification system they re-reviewed sites and yours no longer qualified for a manual action so they lifted it.
Have you noticed anything in your rankings?
-
I am not sure if I can. When I click on reconsideration request it takes me to the manual spam action page, and then says no action taken.
-
Oh they suck.
But they have been getting better every week since, just not back to where they were.
-
Well, how are your rankings doin?
-
It's possible that the new message system in Google Webmaster Tools may only display new messages. Since your original message came before the Manual Action section was setup, it may not be listed. I'd still do the reconsideration request because it will answer your question. If there isn't any manual action, they will tell you that. If there is, then you may get it removed.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
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
-
Google Flux in Rankings Or Something More Serious
Hi all, Two weeks ago i noticed that one of our pages which normally ranks in the top 5 of search results dropped out of the top 50 results. I checked to make sure there were no Google penalties and checked to make sure the page was crawlable. Everything seemed fine and after a few hours our page went back into the number one position. I assumed it was a Google Flux. This number one ranking lasted about a week, today I see my page has dropped out of the top 50 yet again and hasn't come back up. again there are no penalties and there doesn't seem to be issues with the page. I'm hoping it comes back up to the top by tomorrow. What could be causing such a big dip multiple times?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes0 -
When does Google index a fetched page?
I have seen where it will index on of my pages within 5 minutes of fetching, but have also read that it can take a day. I'm on day #2 and it appears that it has still not re-indexed 15 pages that I fetched. I changed the meta-description in all of them, and added content to nearly all of them, but none of those changes are showing when I do a site:www.site/page I'm trying to test changes in this manner, so it is important for me to know WHEN a fetched page has been indexed, or at least IF it has. How can I tell what is going on?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
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 find all indexed pages in Google?
Hi, We have an ecommerce site with around 4000 real pages. But our index count is at 47,000 pages in Google Webmaster Tools. How can I get a list of all pages indexed of our domain? trying to locate the duplicate content. Doing a "site:www.mydomain.com" only returns up to 676 results... Any ideas? Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Google Generating its Own Page Titles
Hi There I have a question regarding Google generating its own page titles for some of the pages on my website. I know that Google sometimes takes your H1 tag and uses it as a page title, however, can anyone tell me how I can stop this from happening? Is there a meta tag I can use, for example like the NOODP tag? Or do I have to change my page title? Thanks Sadie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dancape0 -
Google + under Google business domain email account
Hello there, I have a quick and straight question and I am hoping to find answer here. What do we do with a G+ profile that was set up through a business domain's email account that is used by more than one person? We want to use the company name, but we can't as it is considered personal email account although it is under business domain verified by Google. Is there a way that we ask Google to change it and allow us to use the name of the company or should we just deactivate it? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | montauto0 -
Google penguin penalty(s), please help
Hi MozFans, I have got a question out of the field about www.coloringpagesabc.com.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
Question is why the rankings and traffic are going down down down the last 4 months. Costumer thinks he got hit by google penguin update(s). The site has about 600 page’s/posts al ‘optimized’ for old seo:
- Almost all posts are superb optimized for one keyword combination (like … coloring pages) there is a high keyword density on the keyword titles and descriptions are all the same like: <keyword>and this is the rest of my title, This is my description <keyword>and i like it internal linking is all with a ‘perfect’ keyword anchor text there is a ok backlink profile, not much links to inner pages
- there are social signals the content quality is low The site to me looks like a seo over optimized content farm Competition:
When I look at the competition. The most coloring pages websites don’t offer a lot of content (text) on there page. The offer a small text and the coloring pages (What it is about :-)) How to get the rankings back:
What I was thinking to do. rewrite the content to a smaller text. Low keyword density on the keyword and put the coloring pages up front. rewrite all titles and descriptions to unique titles and descriptions Make some internal links to related posts with a other anchor text. get linkbuilding going on inner pages get more social signals Am I on the right track? I can use some advise what to do, and where to start. Thanks!!</keyword></keyword> Maarten0 -
Recommendation to fix Google backlink anchor text over optimisation filter penalty (auto)
Hi guys, Some of you may have seen a previous question I posted regarding a new client I started working with. Essentially the clients website steadily lost all non domain name keyword rankings over a period of 4-12 weeks, despite content changes and various other improvements. See following:: http://www.seomoz.org/q/shouldn-t-google-always-rank-a-website-for-its-own-unique-exact-10-word-content-such-as-a-whole-sentence After further hair pulling and digging around, I realised that the back link anchor text distribution was unnatural for its homepage/root. From OSE, only about 55/700 of links anchor text contain the clients domain or company name!....8%. The distribution of the non domain keywords isn’t too bad (most repeated keyword has 142 links out of the 700). This is a result of the client submitting to directories over the last 3 years and just throwing in targeted keywords. Is my assumption that it is this penalty/filter correct? If it is I guess the lesson is that domain name anchor texts should make up more of your links? MY QUESTION: What are some of the effective ways I can potentially remove this filter and get the client ranking on its homepage again? Ensure all new links contain the company name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Qasim_IMG
Google said there was no manual penalty, so not sure if there’s any point submitting another reconsideration request? Any advice or effective experiences where a fix has worked would be greatly appreciated! Also, if we assume company is "www.Bluewidget.com", what would be the best way to link most naturally: Bluewidget
Blue widget
Blue widget .com
www.bluewidget.com
http://www.bluewidget.com....etc I'm guessing a mix of the above, but if anyone could suggest a hierarchy that would be great.0