My Website Has a Google Penalty, But I Can't Disavow Links
-
I have a client who has definitely been penalized, rankings dropped for all keywords and hundreds of malicious backlinks when checked with WebMeUp....However, when I run the backlink portfolio on Moz, or any other tool, they don't appear anyone, and all the links are dead when I click on the actual URL. That being said, I can't disavow links that don't exist, and they don't show up in Webmaster Tools, but I KNOW this site has been penalized. Also- I noticed this today (attached). Any suggestions? I've never come across this issue before.
-
At this point you can only wait to see the results of the reconsideration request and hope they provide you examples if more clean up is needed.
-
I used a software called WebMeUp...no other software shows the bad backlinks as they are all 404's now and no longer linking to the website. I have already submitted a reconsideration request.
-
Have you tried ahref? Majesticseo? cogintiveseo? to see your backlinks or just moz?
If you think you have been hit try using this https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration and see if itshows up.
-
Hi Karen,
Breaking away from the hypothesis about the penalty here for a second, but I am wondering if the HTTPS / HTTP issue is part of the problem here.
Would you be able to PM me the website in question if you are not comfortable sharing it publicly here? I am not a Moz staff member (I used to be, 2006 - 09) but I help out with Q&A as an associate.
Cheers,
Jane
-
I have all the bad links, they are all 404's now.
-
Have you looked into the Link Detox tool? It supposedly helps you find the bad links that no one else monitors.
-
Thanks Travis but there are no crawl issues
-
Have you attempted to crawl the site? If not, I would give it a little Screaming Frog. If I knew the URL, I would have done it already. : )
Sometimes crawl problems look and feel like penalties. That upward trend in pages blocked by robots.txt before the fall is making me a little suspicious. Plus, if it is a problem with crawlability - that's easier to fix than a penalty.
-
Can you pinpoint the approximate date that the traffic dropped significantly? Look for a Penguin update that's near that time frame using this page: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
If you don't see a Penguin update near your drop in traffic, AND you don't have a manual penalty, you might have another issue. Possibly a Panda penalty or just some other site health issue that caused the drop in traffic. Considering the large amount of spammy backlinks you say existed, it does sound like a Penguin penalty is likely, but it can't hurt to check that Google Algorithm Change history.
If the spammy backlinks are ALL gone now, then you're right... there's nothing you can do in regards to disavowing or manual removal. If you do have a manual penalty that was given due to unnatural inbound links, you can submit a reconsideration request and let them know that you didn't build the backlinks and they all disappeared. Let Google know you plan to continue to monitor your backlink profile and take immediate action against future negative backlinks that are found.
-
Alright...weird...the search results show some https but when I click on them I get the "SSL Connection Error"
-
There's a chance I'm wrong about this. Maybe EVERY site shows that "update" line, regardless of whether or not an https version was found by Google....
Try a "site:" search on Google for both variations.
- site:https://example.com
- site:http://example.com
edit: "if you have a website on HTTPS, or if some content is indexed under different subdomains." You'll see the "update" line if you've got multiple sub-domains as well. So that's likely what's happening in your scenario.
-
I don't have that version of the site...If I try to go to https://website I get an "SSL connection error"
-
That "update" line you posted a screen shot of means you have an https version of your website. Are you sure you've got the right version verified in Webmaster Tools? If you've verified http but not https, or vice versa, verify the other one. You might be able to see the backlinks in Webmaster Tools on the other version.
You can read more about this recent Google Webmaster Tools update here: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2337524/Google-Webmaster-Tools-Gives-More-Precise-Index-Status-Data
Update us with what you find once you look into that a bit!
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 doesn't show proper meta for my subpage, how to fix it?
We have a subdomain blog.companyname.com. I am working on its English version blog.companyname.com/en but for some reason Google shows meta description from blog.companyname.com in search results which is not in Englsih language. How do I force google to show blog.companyname.com/en 's own meta?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SofyaFr0 -
Need advice on overcoming a Google penalty
Here is the situation. Our website for our primary product (www.thetablift.com) has received a penalty by Google. Not long ago we had excellent rankings; (1st page) for some of our primary keywords, like "tablet stand". Now we are not in the index at all. Here is what happened (or at least what seems to have happened in my non-SEO opinion). Around October 2016, we had the "bright" idea to try and emulate a campaign that Eat 24 did, utilizing inexpensive traffic from advertisements on porn websites. The idea was a play on a joke we often hear about our product being perfect for certain activities where one needs to free one's hands while watching a screen. Of course this is not how we market our product (it is a best selling mainstream product), but we wanted to see if we could emulate the success of another mainstream brand that utilized this kind of non-mainstream advertising. The immediate result was a whole lot of traffic, but obviously the wrong kind, as it did not convert. So we pulled the plug after about 3 days. Flash forward several months later and we not only lost our great SEO rankings, but we were removed from Google's index entirely. I assume the reason for this is that somehow the website got dinged for being somehow related to porn. But of course it has nothing to do with that. So the question is: how do we go about getting un-penalized by Google? We had build up some solid SEO over the previous couple of years, and I'd like to get back to where we were, if possible. Oh, and this may or may not be relevant, but we also switched from www.tablift.com to www.thetablift.com a few months before we did this campaign. However, we used permanent redirects and did a textbook changeover, so I don't think that had any bearing. But I can't be sure. What are the steps to reverse this damage, if any? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | csblev0 -
How to rank my website in Google UK?
Hi guys, I own a London based rubbish removal company, but don't have enough jobs. I know for sure that some of my competitors get most of their jobs trough Google searches. I also have a website, but don't receive calls from it at all. Can you please tell me how to rank my website on keywords like: "rubbish removal london", "waste clearance london", "junk collection london" and other similar keywords? I know that for person like me (without much experience in online marketing) will be difficult task to optimize the website, but at least - I need some advices from where to start. I'm also thinking to hire an SEO but not sure where to find a trusted company. Most importantly I have no idea how much should pay to expect good results? What is too much and what is too low? I will appreciate all advices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gorubbishgo0 -
Website was hacked and is clean now. What to do next for Google?
Hai All, Website was hacked and is clean now. What to do next? Send a Reconsideration Request to Google through Google search console. How detailed should this request be? As detailed as possible? And how much time will it usually take before Google responds? Should I remove all infected URL’s that Google has indexed by using Google search console, remove URL’s? Or is this not necessary? (All the infected URL’s will give a 404 statuscode now) Regards, Maurice
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mlehr0 -
Disavow Links & Paid Link Removal (discussion)
Hey everyone, We've been talking about this issue a bit over the last week in our office, I wanted to extend the idea out to the Moz community and see if anyone has some additional perspective on the issue. Let me break-down the scenario: We're in the process of cleaning-up the link profile for a new client, which contains many low quality SEO-directory links placed by a previous vendor. Recently, we made a connection to a webmaster who controls a huge directory network. This person found 100+ links to our client's site on their network and wants $5/link to have them removed. Client was not hit with a manual penalty, this clean-up could be considered proactive, but an algorithmic 'penalty' is suspected based on historical keyword rankings. **The Issue: **We can pay this ninja $800+ to have him/her remove the links from his directory network, and hope it does the trick. When talking about scaling this tactic, we run into some ridiculously high numbers when you talk about providing this service to multiple clients. **The Silver Lining: **Disavow Links file. I'm curious what the effectiveness of creating this around the 100+ directory links could be, especially since the client hasn't been slapped with a manual penalty. The Debate: Is putting a disavow file together a better alternative to paying for crappy links to be removed? Are we actually solving the bad link problem by disavowing or just patching it? Would choosing not to pay ridiculous fees and submitting a disavow file for these links be considered a "good faith effort" in Google's eyes (especially considering there has been no manual penalty assessed)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
Why are bit.ly links being indexed and ranked by Google?
I did a quick search for "site:bit.ly" and it returns more than 10 million results. Given that bit.ly links are 301 redirects, why are they being indexed in Google and ranked according to their destination? I'm working on a similar project to bit.ly and I want to make sure I don't run into the same problem.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDatSB1 -
Can you recover from "Unnatural links to your site—impacts links" if you remove them or have they already been discounted?
If Google has already discounted the value of the links and my rankings dropped because in the past these links passed value and now they don't. Is there any reason to remove them? If I do remove them, is there a chance of "recovery" or should I just move forward with my 8 month old blogging/content marketing campaign.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Beastrip0 -
Google, Links and Javascript
So today I was taking a look at http://www.seomoz.org/top500 page and saw that the AddThis page is currently at the position 19. I think the main reason for that is because their plugin create, through javascript, linkbacks to their page where their share buttons reside. So any page with AddThis installed would easily have 4/5 linbacks to their site, creating that huge amount of linkbacks they have. Ok, that pretty much shows that Google doesn´t care if the link is created in the HTML (on the backend) or through Javascript (frontend). But heres the catch. If someones create a free plugin for wordpress/drupal or any other huge cms platform out there with a feature that linkbacks to the page of the creator of the plugin (thats pretty common, I know) but instead of inserting the link in the plugin source code they put it somewhere else, wich then is loaded with a javascript code (exactly how AddThis works). This would allow the owner of the plugin to change the link showed at anytime he wants. The main reason for that would be, dont know, an URL address update for his blog or businness or something. However that could easily be used to link to whatever tha hell the owner of the plugin wants to. What your thoughts about this, I think this could be easily classified as White or Black hat depending on what the owners do. However, would google think the same way about it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bemcapaz0