Webmaster Tools Manual Actions - Should I Disavow Spammy Links??
-
My website has a manual action against it in webmaster tools stating;
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
I have checked the link profile of my site and there are over 4,000 spammy links from one particular website which I am guessing this manual action refers to. There is no way that I will be able to get these links removed so should I be using Google's Disavow Tool or is there no need? Any ideas would be appreciated!!
-
Hi Rich,
This is a manual action, which means your site has been penalized. You DO need to take action to get this penalty lifted, especially if you have noticed a decrease in traffic/rankings.In general, the Google Webspam team likes to see ample evidence that you did everything in your power to remove links BEFORE using the disavow. If you submit a reconsideration request after skipping this step, your request will likely be rejected.
This process has been well-documented by several webmasters. I highly recommend reading these posts for more background and advice:
-
Technically you don't need to, I don't personally see the harm in doing so however. It's really up to you.
-
Thanks - I see what you are saying but I can't see them removing these links. Would you recommend I use the disavow tool even though Google are saying they are discounting these links???????????
-
Yes, for your part the theory is you don't need to take any action, those links won't affect you
However it's almost a per-warning and there is no harm in attempting to remove the links. You wouldn't need to resubmit though it won't hurt to drop and email and make sure you've taken some action.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604772?ctx=MAC
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/manual-actions-viewer.html
"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."
-
Are you sure on this as Google has stated in the manual action "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".
Doesn't this mean that they have 'disavowed' them already??
-
Google likes to see you try, its a good idea to attempt contact with the website asking them to remove the links, if you don't try don't expect Google to try either, I recommend send an email to them (try postmaster or webmaster @ )
No response then you can use the disavow tool then when you request your site to be reconsidered you have proof that you've tried.
Good luck.
-
Hi,
A pretty simple answer this time: you should use the Google Disavow Tool to do this. As, as you say you won't be able to have the links removed by yourself. And this is your way of telling Google that you want them to ignore these links.
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
-
Backlink Profile: Should I disavow these links? Auto-Generated Links etc
Hello Moz Community, At first I wanted to say that I really like the Q&A section and that I read and learned a lot - and today it is time for my first own question 😉 I checked our backlink-profile these days and I found in my opinion a few bad/spammy links, most of them are auto-generated by pickung up some (meta) information from our webpage. Now my question is if I should dasavow these links over webmasters or if these links shouldn't matter as I guess basically every webpage will be picked up from them. Especially from the perspective that our rankings dropped significantly last weeks, but I am not sure if this can be the real reason. Examples are pages like: https://www.askives.com/ -Auto-Generates for example meta descriptions with links http://www.websitesalike.com/ -find similar websites http://mashrom.ir/ -no idea about this, really crazy Or we are at http://www.europages.com/, which makes sense for me and we get some referral traffic as well, but they auto-generated links from all their TLDs like .gr / .it / .cn etc. -just disavow all other TLDs than .com? Another example would be links from OM services like: seoprofiler.com Moreover we have a lot of links from different HR portals (including really many outdated job postings). Can these links “hurt” as well? Thanks a lot for your help! Greez Heiko
Technical SEO | | _Heiko_0 -
What do I do with these back links?
In the last two weeks, I've got 10 pingbacks from this http://caraccidentlawyer.cc/coroner-ids-berkeley-bodies-who-were-killed-in-recent-car-accident/ and sites like it. The featured attorney is a competitor of ours and, since the links aren't sex/drugs/rock&roll related, (and he's linked too) I doubt this is a negative SEO campaign, but I want it to stop. These blogs are basically pure spam. Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
How to Remove a website from your Bing Webmaster Tools account
I have a site in Bing Webmaster Tools that I no longer work on. I can't seem to find where to delete this website from my webmaster tools account. Anyone know how (there doesn't seem to be anything obvious under Bing Help or on a Google Search).
Technical SEO | | TopFloor0 -
Is it possible to export Inbound Links in a CSV file categorized by Linking Root Domains ?
Hi, I am performing an analysis of the total inbound links to my homepage and I would like to have the total amount of inbound links categorized by the Linking root domains. For example, the Open Site explorer does offer the feature to show you the Linking Root Domains to your page. Then when you click on the first Linking Root Domain, it also shows you the Top Linking Pages ( Which means all the pages that link to your page from this particular top level domain) Now I would like to export this data to a CSV file, but open site explorer only exports the total amount of top level linking domains. Does anyone has a solution to this problem ? Thank you very much for the help in advance!
Technical SEO | | Feweb0 -
Webmaster Tools - Clarification of what the top directory is in a calender url
Hi all, I had an issue where it turned out a calender was used on my site historically (a couple of years ago) but the pages were still present, crawled and indexed by google to this day. I want to remove them now from the index as it really clouds my analysis and as I have been trying to clean things up e.g. by turning modules off, webmaster tools is throwing up more and more errors due to these pages. Below is an example of the url of one of the pages: http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?mact=Calendar,m1a033,default,1&m1a033year=2084&m1a033month=3&m1a033returnid=59&page=59?phpMyAdmin=xxyyzz The closest question I have found on the topic in Seomoz is: http://www.seomoz.org/q/duplicate-content-issue-6 I want to remove all these pages from the index by targeting their top level folder. From the historic question above would I be right in saying that it is: http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?mact=Calendar I want to be certain before I do a directory level removal request in case it actually targets index.php instead and deindexes my whole site (or homepage at the very least). Thanks
Technical SEO | | Mitty0 -
Why are my links not being counted?
I have a site that has over 400 links going to it. When I use Moz open site explorer or any other SEO tool its says I have only 12 links. Does anyone know why this could be happening?
Technical SEO | | Goopping0 -
No inbound links. Should I link-build or create new content?
I have a PR4 site with good traffic but the blog is not very popular--the posts do not generate any backlinks and hardly get any traffic. Yet, I continue to kick out a new post every week. Site: http://www.stadriemblems.com/
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept
Blog: http://www.stadriemblems.com/blog/ I keep posting content so that Google keeps crawling the site and viewing it as fresh (and yes, I'm posting for my human visitors' benefit too!), but I'm wondering if eventually this will hurt more than help if Google detects all these new pages are not being linked to, and therefore starts viewing the site as low quality and devalues it. So should I: Keep posting Stop posting and build links to the posts Try to promote my blog to get more traffic and hope people link to it Something else or some combination of the above0 -
Add to Cart Link
We have shopping cart links (<a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p"></a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">The SEOMoz site crawls are flagging these as a massive number of 302 redirects and I also wonder what sort of effect this is having on linkjuice flowing around the site. </a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">I can see several possible solutions: Make the links nofollow Make the links input buttons Block /cart/add with robots.txt Make the links 301 instead of 302 Make the links javascript (probably worst care) All of these would result in an identical outcome for the UX, but are very different solutions. What would you suggest?</a>
Technical SEO | | Aspedia0