Will a Google manual action affect all new links, too?
-
I have had a Google manual action (Unnatural links to your site; affects: all) that was spurred on by a PRWeb press release where publishers took it upon themselves to remove the embedded "nofollow" tags on links. I have been spending the past few weeks cleaning things up and have submitted a second pass at a reconsideration request. In the meantime, I have been creating new content, boosting social activity, guest blogging and working with other publishers to generate more natural inbound links.
My question is this: knowing that this manual action affects "all," are the new links that I am building being negatively tainted as well? When the penalty is lifted, will they regain their strength? Is there any hope of my rankings improving while the penalty is in effect?
-
Hi Maria
What do you mean by "Low quality directory made just for the purpose of gaining a link" -- Is there an issue with linking back from directories to your site?
Does this apply to submitting my website to social bookmark websites using a specific anchor text that am optimizing for?
Thanks
James
-
Hi Michael,
"You are correct that it wasn't a single press release but 3-4 that all had the same circumstances."
It's quite unlikely that a few press releases are the sole cause of your penalty, although it is possible. But I think you may have more links to clean up. Here are two examples:
http://healthmad.com/health/when-las-vegas-gets-the-best-of-you-6-ways-to-get-back-on-your-feet-in-sin-city/ - self made article
http://www.cannylink.com/healthhospitaldirectories.htm - Low quality directory made just for the purpose of gaining a link
-
Interesting. I hadn't seen these links before and have never purchased links. I'll download the list from open site explorer and review and disavow these and similar. Thanks for pointing these out!
-
Agreed. Ordinarily it wouldn't matter, but once subject to manual review they would be.
-
Looking in Open Site Explorer, I'm seeing several suspicious links in the report. These are links from sites that have nothing to do with medicine whatsoever, all with targeted keywords in the anchor text. When I click to view the page and look for the actual links, I'm not seeing anything. So, it seems the links are no longer there.
If the report from Open Site Explorer is correct, it looks to me like someone was purchasing links and has now removed them. Did you purchase links?
Some of the suspicious links are:
- afghan-network.net/Bookshop/persian-books.html
- learnscratch.org/resources/why-learn-scratch
- www.tiltshift.com/
If these links are also in Google's link profile, I could see why the site is penalized.
-
I suspect you missed some and Google are being well... Google.
Ahrefs do a 7 day money back guarantee. You can even find a 50% off coupon around for the first month. Some people will even need to check majestic as well.
No one site will get all the links unfortunately.
-
Agreed. But given that I had those removed in quick order and it has been several weeks since they have considerably dropped, any reason why they wouldn't have removed the manual action. I am essentially back to a pre-PRWeb profile.
-
Just looking a bit more, but you could have been flagged for manual checking because from around the beginning of August you had a huge spike of links. Based on Matt Cutts previous statements about Prweb, they would have seen it as possibly spammy.
From August you went up to nearly 125 referring domains, before dropping back down to 36 now. Prior to PRweb, you were at around 30 referring domains. I suspect this spike is what caused a manual review.
-
I don't know if that makes me feel better or not, but you basically confirmed my thoughts. I may do what you indicate and disavow everything, but I am going try one more time and cut a lot more deeply in actual link removal first.
Meanwhile, of course, I am top 5 for all my major terms in Bing and Yahoo. Joy!
Thanks
-
I have to say on my first quick look I cannot determine why you would have got a manual penalty. Your link profile does not look spammy, and I wonder if google are specifically targeting sites that use PRweb.
With Ahref's I only see 77 dofollow backlinks, and to be honest you could probably be very brutal when it comes to dissavowing these links and starting again.
It is strange that the two methods of link building (prweb, and infographics) are two methods that Matt Cutts has recently (in the last few months) said that should be nofollow links.
But I cannot give anything definitive based on what I am seeing.
-
I disavowed in the same day I submitted a reconsideration request, but I did also include it in my documentation. I also included multiple emails to publishers and contact form submissions, as recommended to me.
-
Sure. http://www.urgentcarelocations.com
I just added the footer links to each state profile this week and see how those could be considered "spammy." They weren't supposed to be implemented with "urgent care" after every one of them. I doubt that is an issue here, however, given that they keep referring to unnatural links.
-
Sometimes it takes a little while for the disavow tool to remove links. So, you may need to give it some time if you just did that. You can always include the disavow request in the documents for your reconsideration request. Beyond that, I'd take a closer look at your other links to see if there are other links causing an issue.
-
Thinking about it Kurt, I have to agree that it is odd that a manual penalty has arisen from this. Michael, if you would like to share a link to your site, perhaps we can have a look and see if there is something obvious happening.
-
I have disavowed the URLs now. The major offender was streetinsider.com. I was able to remove URLs on two other offending publisher sites. Even with the disavow, however, Google didn't remove the manual action. Going to try out removeem.com to see if their tools/service can assist.
-
Bummer about the rejection. You said that you were having trouble getting the press releases removed (and I assume the links), have you disavowed those links?
-
Thanks Kurt. You are correct that it wasn't a single press release but 3-4 that all had the same circumstances. In fact, it was the same 2-3 publishers that removed the nofollow tags. The real crummy thing is that those publishers refuse to remove the links so I am having to resort to disavowing them.
While I have been working through a couple of reconsideration requests, I have built some pretty strong links, but Google seems to have capped me at page 5.
I actually got a negative response back from Google this morning following my latest reconsideration request. It provided no specifics as it did in the past only that my "Site violates Google's quality guidelines" and references the manual action of "Unnatural links to your site." I'm on round three now. I only have about 300 total inbound links nearly all of which are purely natural or nofollow. What a mess...
-
That stinks that those publishers did that. I'm a little suspicious that this would happen from a single press release. Usually, it takes Google a bit more than that to trip a manual action. Are you sure there aren't other links, maybe other press releases, that are suspicious? I only ask because Google usually responds to a pattern of manipulation, not a single action.
In regards to your actual question, natural links typically aren't "tainted" by a previous penalty. In fact it would probably work in the exact opposite way. With manual actions Google thinks that you are trying to manipulate them. In order to get the manual action removed, Google is looking for you to clean up the old links, apologize, and demonstrate that you have changed your ways. So, getting new links that are completely natural demonstrates that you have changed your ways.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
Yes. The publisher (streetinsider.com, amongst others) are technically violating PRWeb's copyright terms as they are altering the content prior to publishing. PRWeb isn't very happy, but has been unsuccessful at getting the articles removed (which isn't helping my reconsideration request).
-
Ditto. I saw a competitor use PRweb, and was tempted. However, I felt the potential for spammy links not the direction I wanted my SEO to go in.
This just reinforces the issue.
-
manual action ... that was spurred on by a PRWeb press release where publishers took it upon themselves to remove the embedded "nofollow" tags on links.
Seriously? I've been thinking about trying PRWeb for product announcements but this makes me rethink that strategy.
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
-
Will google be able to crawl all of the pages given that the pages displayed or the info on a page varies according to the city of a user?
So the website I am working for asks for a location before displaying the product pages. There are two cities with multiple warehouses. Based on the users' location, the product pages available in the warehouse serving only in that area are shown. If the user skips location, default warehouse-related product pages are shown. The APIs are all location-based.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Airlift0 -
Links Not Detected by MOZ, AHREFS, GSC-ARE THESE QUALITY LINKS?
Our SEO provider has been creating content (6 blog posts per month as well as building page write ups) and has been promoting that content. Several links per month have been created as a result of this effort. Many of the links have been from commercial real estate publications. I am concerned that the quality of these links is not high enough to improve our ranking. Most links do not appear on AHREFS, Google Search Console or MOZ. Is this a red flag that these links are weak? Ranking and traffic on the site have improved considerably since this provider began the project in April of 2019. They have been writing about 30 pages about New York City. commercial buildings each month in addition to 4 short blog posts and 2 extremely well researched and authoritative blog posts. My concern is that the links are not of sufficient quality to result increased ranking. That the improvement in ranking is solely due to the addition of new content rather than the creation of these links. Basically, that I am incurring the cost on an ongoing basis of an link building campaign with little to no benefit. That being the case, I would shift resources to content creation and increase and improve content rather than develop links with little value. A sample of links are below: Would greatly appreciate some feedback as to whether these are in fact helpful to the domain authority, reputation and ranking of our website. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan https://patch.com/new-york/bayside/bayside-queens-priciest-area-retail-office-space-study https://qns.com/story/2019/12/04/these-commercial-streets-in-queens-were-among-the-most-expensive-in-2019/ https://patch.com/new-york/brooklyn/flatbush-ave-priciest-retail-spot-outside-manhattan-study http://thejewishvoice.com/2019/12/07/nycs-most-expensive-commercial-streets-neighborhoods-in-2019-would-surprise-you/ https://atalyst.com/investment-banking-interview-metro-manhattan/0 -
What is Google supposed to return when you submit an image URL into Fetch as Google? Is a few lines of readable text followed by lots of unreadable text normal?
I am seeing something like this (Is this normal?): HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Autoboof
Server: nginx
Content-Type: image/jpeg
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Last-Modified: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:23:04 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=1209600
Expires: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 15:23:55 GMT
X-Request-ID: v-8dd8519e-8a1a-11e5-a595-12313d18b975
X-AH-Environment: prod
Content-Length: 25505
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:24:11 GMT
X-Varnish: 863978362 863966195
Age: 16
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: keep-alive
X-Cache: HIT
X-Cache-Hits: 1 ����•JFIF••••��;CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 75
��C•••••••••• •
••
••••••••• $.' ",#(7),01444'9=82<.342��C• ••••
•2!!22222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222��•••••v••"••••••��••••••••••••••••
•���•••••••••••••}•••••••!1A••Qa•"q•2���•#B��•R��$3br�
••••%&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz���������������������������������������������������������������������������•••••••••••••••••••
•���••••••••••••••w••••••!1••AQ•aq•"2�••B���� #3R�•br�0 -
What will happen if we 302 a page that is ranking #1 in google for a high traffic term?
We're planning to test something and we want to 302 a page to another page for a period of time. The question is, the original page is ranking #1 for a high traffic term. I want to know what will happen if we do this? Will we lose our rank? Will the traffic remain the same? Ultimately I do not want to lose traffic and I do not want to 301 until it has been properly tested.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maxcdn0 -
Client wants a seperate .tv domain for their media/videos instead of a subdomain/subfolder. What is the best way to pass of link equity to a new domain?
We have a client that wants to place their video content on a .tv tld instead of a subfolder/subdomain in their .com website. They believe that the .tv domain will better represent the media experience of their business. We can understand this client's position however we are concerned about their .tv domain will lose out on the link equity if it were no longer placed in the .com's subdomain/subfolder. Here are our questions: 1. What would be the best way to pass of link equity from .com website to a new .tv domain? Should we just have a video link on the .com website that 301 directs to the new .tv domain? 2. Is there any SEO benefit of having a .tv domain for Google Video queries or even Youtube? 3. Is there any long term value of having two different websites? For link equity purposes we understand that it would be better if everything was in a .com. However is a .tv domain ideal for a better representation of their media content? We appreciate any feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Will adding 1000's of outbound links to just a few website impact rankings?
I manage a large website that hosts 1000's of business listings that comprise an area that covers 7 state counties. Currently a category page (such as lodging) hosts a group of listings which then link to it's own page. From these pages links are present directly to the business it represents. The client is proposing that we change all listings to link to the representative county website and remove the individual pages. This essentially would create 1000's of external links to 7 different websites and remove 1000's of pages from our site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Your_Workshop
Does anyone have thoughts on how adding 1000's of links (potentially upwards of 3000) to only 7 websites (that I would deem relevant links) would affect SEO? I know if 1000's of links are added pointing to 1000's of websites the site can be considered a link farm, but I can't find any info online that speaks of a case like this.0 -
Doing a re-design but worried about my new navigation affecting rankings
Hi, I'm a little worried/interested in the affects of my new navigation on ranking. So here is the current site - followuk.co.uk/mothers-day I have chosen an internal page because 99% of my traffic goes to these and generally external links and social shares happen on these pages (naturally because of the nature of the content). As you can see I have a nav bar on the left which links to all other pages. In my new design I will get rid of this nav bar altogether and have a breadcrumb which will give the user the option to root back to a category page which will contain these links instead. Kind of like this: Home > Important Dates > Mothers Day (if your on the mothers day page) I'm in two minds because maybe pages are passing PageRank helping each other to rank, but on the other side maybe the strong pages which do rank well and gain links/social shares are not ranking as well because they are passing link juice through the navigation to other pages. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | followuk0 -
Does Google make continued attempts to crawl an old page one it has followed a 301 to the new page?
I am curious about this for a couple of reasons. We have all dealt with a site who switched platforms and didn't plan properly and now have 1,000's of crawl errors. Many of the developers I have talked to have stated very clearly that the HTacccess file should not be used for 1,000's of singe redirects. I figured If I only needed them in their temporarily it wouldn't be an issue. I am curious if once Google follows a 301 from an old page to a new page, will they stop crawling the old page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RossFruin0