Google Webmaster Tools Search Traffic->Manual Actions shows "No Manual WebSpam Actions Found" but is it right?

[robdob12]

Hi,

a couple of years  ( 2012 )upon contacting google I was notified that I had a manual penalty against my site for unnatural links, Today I just checked the WMT->Search Traffic-->Manual Actions and it says "No Manual WebSpam Actions Found",  is this right and I no longer have a penality or is this misinformation?

thanks,

[robdob12]

Hi,

Thank you for your reply.  The old site was a completely different structure then the new site,  the only thing the now have is a common main landing page on the old site which looks the same as the main landing page on the new site.  the only difference being that the navigation buttons on the OLDsite are pointing to the sections on the newsite using a nofollow,  I have also since added a

<meta name="<a class="attribute-value">googlebot</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">noindex, nofollow</a>">

The reason for the original penalty was unnatural inbound links as below:

""
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
""

This action is no longer being reported, and in the past I had tried to clean the site up, but kept getting my reconsideration requests refused.

Upon looking in my new sites GWT I noticed that a lot of the spammy links which once pointed to my old site are now being listed within new sites linking to you section and termed "Via intermediate Site",  upon suggestion I included the : <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">googlebot</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">noindex, nofollow</a>">, and upon waiting several more days I will also start to disallow indexing via the robots.txt file.

Around the 6th of Jun, 2014 I noticed my inbound traffic declined, at that point my main landing page for my new site dropped from position 7 page to page 11, and now several days later I can't seem to find a listing for my main page within the first 20 pages.  so somethings up.? I am seeing other pages from my site being indexed, but my main page is not found for my main KW.  If I sear the company name then my main landing page comes right up.

I'm hoping that once I get rid of those "via intermediate site": links that things will start to resolved themselves.?

what do you think? any advise would be appreciated.  thanks,

thanks,

[David-Kley]

Generally, Google is pretty good about letting you know when there are severe issues regarding the state of your website's quality. If you are not seeing an error present in GWT, then it may have been resolved.

"but I still need to be able to present the user with an easy way to get from the old site to the new site when they type in the company name.."

Was the old site on a different domain? If so, you can park the old domain on top of the new one, and use htaccess to forward the old domain traffic to the new domain. If you do not use htaccess to redirect, then Google will index both domains, and hit you for duplicate content.

"Today I just checked the WMT->Search Traffic-->Manual Actions and it says "No Manual WebSpam Actions Found",  is this right and I no longer have a penality or is this misinformation?"

When you received the message orginally, did you clean up the issues responsible for the manual action? Could be that you just waited it out, and they passed it over (2012 was a while ago). I would review what the original penalty was for, and double check that the issue has been resolved. What does your current ranking look like?

[robdob12]

okay,  great,  can you tell me how I can prevent and get rid of this "Via intermediate Site" links from being displayed in my new sites web master tools..

is nofollow not working when I'm linking buttons on my oldsites main page to sections on my newsites domain.  How should I go about doing this as I don't want these two sites to be connected SEO wise, but I still need to be able to present the user with an easy way to get from the old site to the new site when they type in the company name..

is there anything else I need to add or do to accomplish this..

thanks, and does this really mean I kno longer have a manual penalty on the old site..?

[WilliamKammer]

While the manual action may have been removed, it's possible you're still suffering from a different, non-manual penalty (one the algorithm dishes out without manual (human) involvement). So, it's good news that you no longer have the manual action, but it doesn't mean you have no penalty at all.