Matt Cutts or No Action Is Required

[VinceWicks]

Here's the deal. I got a message in the Manual Action section in GWT:

Unnatural links to your site—impacts links

On one hand, Matt Says that I need to do my best to take down links on sites that Google hinted me about (I've got a sample link) and it that does not work, I can apply the Disavow tool. Matt says it on this page in his video:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604772?ctx=MAC

On the other hand, if you take a look at the text on the same page, it says that I'm not supposed to do anything at all if I got this message. Here's  the quote:

"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.  "

I am not sure why I need to apply the Disavow tool if, " the links already won't count in ranking".

[Dr-Pete]

Google tends to downplay the existence of negative SEO, because: (1) frankly, it makes them look bad, and (2) people tend to over-estimate how common it is (we all like to blame the competition). In most cases, if Google thinks a link is malicious and being created by a third-party to harm you, they'll just devalue it.

The problem is that Google is far from perfect at detecting who created a link. If they had that down, they'd be a lot better at dealing with spam. So, I wouldn't trust them to simply figure it out. If a link or linking domain is clearly bad, and especially if you've suffered a penalty, be proactive.

The very fact that Google is warning you in Webmaster Tools suggests that they haven't simply devalued these links. They think that the links are suspect.

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

Thanks Marie and good addition.

[MarieHaynes]

I like Kurt's answer.

In some cases a partial match penalty only affects say, one page of your site.  So, say you were a news site and someone wanted to boost up a particularly favorable article about themselves and they built spammy links to just that one article.  You don't need to do anything about those links.  The "penalty" just means that that page is not going to rank well.

But, if you've hired an SEO or done SEO on your own and know you have unnatural links then really you should clean it up.  In some cases a site can be penalized for one or more keywords and when the warning is lifted you can rank better for those keywords.  But, in many cases, when the work is done to remove the bad links and the warning gets lifted there is no immediate change in rankings.  However, if you have enough bad links to warrant a manual warning, you can be fairly certain that the Penguin algorithm either is, or is going to be, affecting your site.  For many sites once the work is done to remove the manual warning and then Penguin refreshes, they see a jump up.  You're not going to see a jump to prior levels though because those were gained on the power of unnatural links.

If you know you've got unnatural links and you do nothing to remove them you'll likely always have an anchor pulling down your rankings and even if you get new links you're not likely to see much improvement.

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

Vince,

There are different kinds of manual action that Google can take on a site.  In some cases, it's necessary to clean up the offending links and in others it's not.  It's not quite as black and white, however, as to which manual actions do not require clean up.  I've seen some sites that received the same message you did where there was no noticeable effect on their rankings.  For them,  there really wasn't any need to do anything.  Other sites, however, there was a noticeable effect on their rankings and it appeared that the manual action Google had taken was not just to ignore the offending links, but Google was actually penalizing the rankings of sites for certain keywords.  For those sites, it was advisable to clean up the bad links.

So, if your rankings have been effected, then go ahead and clean up the links.  If not, it up to you, but I'd agree with Patrick that it's probably still a good idea anyway.

Lastly, note that Google's examples may not be the only type of link that is causing an issue.  They are just a couple of examples.  When you request reconsideration, you may find that Google denies it and gives different examples as to why.  Just a heads up that the issue may be bigger than you think.

Good luck.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

[WhiteboardCreations]

Vince,

Go with the Disavow for that link and any links which could be misconstrued as spammy. Even though GWT is telling you not to take action, you should do it anyways as it can't hurt to have that link removed from your profile.

Alternatively, you could message/email the specific site owners or managers to request the link to be taken down. It may take a while for this though for them to respond and schedule that task. Keep that in mind also.

Hope this helps! - Patrick