Manual Action - When requesting links be removed, how important to Google is the address you're sending the requests from?
-
We're starting a campaign to get rid of a bunch of links, and then submitting a disavow report to Google, to get rid of a manual action.
My SEO vendor said he needs an @email domain from the website in question @travelexinsurance.com, to send and receive emails from vendors. He said Google won't consider the correspondence to and from webmasters if sent from a domain that is not the one with the manual action penalty.
Due to company/compliance rules, I can't allow a vendor not in our building to have an email address like that.
I've seen other people mention they just used a GMAIL.com account. Or we could use a similar domain such as @travelexinsurancefyi.com.
My question, how critical is it that the domain the correspondence with the webmasters be from the exact website domain?
-
Thanks for the thanks, Patrick G.
An amusing sidelight: one company that refused my request for company email had previously entrusted me with use of their corporate credit card -- and continued to do so after refusing my request.
Go figure.
(sigh)
-
Is there any fear that the entire domain would be considered spam, if you use a company domain?
Or is it just that you want to use a separate email address, so it doesn't get intermixed with other items? Seems like some people on the web strongly advise to use a Gmail address.
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2237534/Google-Unnatural-Links-Manual-Penalty-A-Recovery-Guide
What is the Best Email Approach?
Some prefer to use an email address associated with the penalized website: Joe@example.com.The thought is that a domain based email provides maximum credibility. My concern with this approach is getting a domain's email torched by having it marked as spam.
My preferred method is to use Gmail from the Dedicated Account created for the link removal campaign. A cc to Joe@example.com seems to add sufficient credibility. By having all of the email outreach documented there, it's easy to share with Google. Using Gmail canned responses further adds to the efficiency.
-
Thanks for the insights Daniel.
Yeah, it is difficult the bigger the company.
Do you have any insights into whether I need to worry a lot about getting spammed, if I use an email on my domain?
-
I agree is always better to use a company address when representing the company (for link removal requests to third parties... or anything else. e.g.. creating Linkedin profiles or acting as Privacy Officer.)
I have had many "lively" discussions with clients about getting company email addresses.
Bottom line: hopeless with Fortune 500 or large companies with rigid policies. They are not going to make an exception for you, however compelling your case. They are hung up on (often phoney and imagined) compliance issues. Even if you clear that hurdle, they can always fall back on the old "we have to treat all vendors equally" claim.
But I have had some success with medium sized companies. In one case, I offered to let the IT manager monitor my email to ensure I was using it only for agreed upon purposes....on pain of contract termination.
-
Thanks for the insight. Will have to check out your book.
One follow up. Is there a rule of thumb between the time you get a message in Google Webmaster Tools, and the time you get penalized for not getting rid of those links or sending a disavow report?
-
I've done both. If it's possible for me to use a domain email then I do so, not for Google's sake, but rather, so that it looks more official to the people who are receiving the email. If I can't, then I make up a Gmail account like sitenameemails@gmail.com and when I send the emails I include a line saying, "You may have noticed that this email did not come from an @sitename.com email address. Because we are sending a large number of emails out we did not want to risk our domain being flagged as a sender of spam. If you would like verification from a site owner of this link removal request, please email siteowner@sitename.com."
-
Thanks for the note. I really appreciate it.
@William Kammer, get this, my agency admitted they are using Rmoov, and need it for that reason. So you were exactly right.
-
Google doesn't care where the email comes from to request a link removal. I've never seen a disavow report where the email of the requester is even mentioned. All Google wants to see in a disavow report is which links you want to disavow, and how much of an effort your made to get them removed manually.
The reason your SEO is requesting an email address at your domain is likely because he's using software to request link removals, and that software requires the email. Services like Rmoov are great for streamlining the disavow process, but in order to use Rmoov, you have to prove you're part of company, which requires the email address.
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
-
No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag
I'm getting an error in Search Console that pages on my site show No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag. However, when I inspect the pages html, it does not show noindex. In fact, it shows index, follow. Majority of pages show the error and are not indexed by Google...Not sure why this is happening. Unfortunately I can't post images on here but I've linked some url's below. The page below in search console shows the error above... https://mixeddigitaleduconsulting.com/ As does this one. https://mixeddigitaleduconsulting.com/independent-school-marketing-communications/ However, this page does not have the error and is indexed by Google. The meta robots tag looks identical. https://mixeddigitaleduconsulting.com/blog/leadership-team/jill-goodman/ Any and all help is appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Sean_White_Consult0 -
How to get out of Google's sendbox
Hello, i posted this question before here in forum, that 2 of my pages were sendboxed but never had a clear answer on how to get them back up, i do know that i need to build high quality backlinks pointing to those pages, but where do i start? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tonyklu0 -
'No Follow' and 'Do Follow' links when using WordPress plugins
Hi all I hope someone can help me out with the following question in regards to 'no follow' and 'do follow' links in combination with WordPress plugins. Some plugins that deal with links i.e. link masking or SEO plugins do give you the option to 'not follow' links. Can someone speak from experience that this does actually work?? It's really quite stupid, but only occurred to me that when using the FireFox add on 'NoDoFollow' as well as looking at the SEOmoz link profile of course, 95% of my links are actually marked as FOLLOW, while the opposite should be the case. For example I mark about 90% of outgoing links as no follow within a link masking plugin. Well, why would WordPress plugins give you the option to mark links as no follow in the first place when they do in fact appear as follow for search engines and SEOmoz? Is this a WordPress thing or whatnot? Maybe they are in fact no follow, and the information supplied by SEO tools comes from the basic HTML structure analysis. I don't know... This really got me worried. Hope someone can shed a light. All the best and many thanks for your answers!
Technical SEO | | Hermski0 -
Help - we're blocking SEOmoz cawlers
We have a fairly stringent blacklist and by the looks of our crawl reports we've begin unintentionally blocking the SEOmoz crawler. can you guys let me know the useragent string and anything else I need to enable mak sure you're crawlers are whitelisted? Cheers!
Technical SEO | | linklater0 -
Sitemap coming up in Google's index?
I apologize if this question's answer is glaringly obvious, but I was using Google to view all the pages it has indexed of our site--by searching for our company and then clicking the link that says to display more results for the site. On page three, it has the sitemap indexed as if it wee just another page of our site. <cite>www.stadriemblems.com/sitemap.xml</cite> Is this supposed to happen?
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Why has Google removed meta descriptions from SERPS?
One of my clients' sites has just been redesigned with lots of new URLs added. So the 301 redirections have been put in place and most of the new URLs have now been indexed. BUT Google is still showing all the old URLs in the SERPS and even worse it only displays the title tag. The meta description is not shown, no rich snippet, no text, nothing below the title. This is proving disastrous as visitors are not clicking on a result with no description. I have to assume its got something to do with the redirection, but why is it not showing the descriptions? I've checked the old URLs and he meta description is definitely still in the code, but Google is choosing not to show it. I've never seen this before so I'm struggling for an answer. I'd like to know why or how this is happening, and if it can be resolved. I realise that this may be resolved when Google stops showing all the old URLs but there's no telling how long that will take (can it be speeded up?)
Technical SEO | | Websensejim0 -
Site 'filtered' by Google in early July.... and still filtered!
Hi, Our site got demoted by Google all of a sudden back in early July. You can view the site here: http://alturl.com/4pfrj and you may read the discussions I posted in Google's forums here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6e8f9aab7e384d88&hl=en http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=276dc6687317641b&hl=en Those discussions chronicle what happened, and what we've done since. I don't want to make this a long post by retyping it all here, hence the links. However, we've made various changes (as detailed), such as getting rid of duplicate content (use of noindex on various pages etc), and ensuring there is no hidden text (we made an unintentional blunder there through use of a 3rd party control which used CSS hidden text to store certain data). We have also filed reconsideration requests with Google and been told that no manual penalty has been applied. So the problem is down to algorithmic filters which are being applied. So... my reason for posting here is simply to see if anyone here can help us discover if there is anything we have missed? I'd hope that we've addressed the main issues and that eventually our Google ranking will recover (ie. filter removed.... it isn't that we 'rank' poorly, but that a filter is bumping us down, to, for example, page 50).... but after three months it sure is taking a while! It appears that a 30 day penalty was originally applied, as our ranking recovered in early August. But a few days later it dived down again (so presumably Google analysed the site again, found a problem and applied another penalty/filter). I'd hope that might have been 30 or 60 days, but 60 days have now passed.... so perhaps we have a 90 day penalty now. OR.... perhaps there is no time frame this time, simply the need to 'fix' whatever is constantly triggering the filter (that said, I 'feel' like a time frame is there, especially given what happened after 30 days). Of course the other aspect that can always be worked on (and oft-mentioned) is the need for more and more original content. However, we've done a lot to increase this and think our Guide pages are pretty useful now. I've looked at many competitive sites which list in Google and they really don't offer anything more than we do..... so if that is the issue it sure is puzzling if we're filtered and they aren't. Anyway, I'm getting wordy now, so I'll pause. I'm just asking if anyone would like to have a quick look at the site and see what they can deduce? We have of course run it through SEOMoz's tools and made use of the suggestions. Our target pages generally rate as an A for SEO in the reports. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Go2Holidays0