Unnatural link Manual Penalty by Google

[SameerBhatia]

Hi,

Our product Quiz Maker help users to create quizzes and can share, embed etc. We have a link  in our embed code which was DoFollow and we've got many doFollow links from the websites on which our quizzes got shared but these links are too old like 2009, 2012 etc.

After that,  to complying with Google policies, we've changed the dofollow link to nofollow in embed code. Here are two scenarios:

1.) We've too many dofollow links which are too old and we don't have control over it as these are the natural links, given by our users before we changed the embed code link.

2.) Now, we are getting nofollow links from the widget as the embed code consists of nofollow link.

Our embed code is editable and user can change it to dofollow or nofollow as per their requirement.  Moreover, some people shared quizzes on their website (without using embed code) with dofollow link. But, now, google is taking manual action penalty against us.

How we can resolve it as it seriously affects the overall performance of our website.

Thanks

[SameerBhatia]

Thanks Patrick. It is helpful.

We've approached appx. 600 website owners and asked them to remove our link. Most of them do not respond , so, we disavow these links and sent reconsideration request. Again, Google refuses to remove penalty from our website. Anyone, can help.

Thanks in Advance.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

According to Google (via this article from Search Engine Land), these links are considered unnatural and should either have a "nofollow" tag or be removed entirely. Here is a bit from that article:

Google is reminding widget makers to remove the links from their widgets are add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the links. If they do not, Google said the “webspam team may take manual actions on unnatural links.” If you do get a manual action for this, Google said you need to remove the links or add the rel=”nofollow” before submitting a reconsideration request.

Additionally, those that embed these widgets on their site should “add a rel=”nofollow” attribute on those unnatural links or remove the links entirely from the widget,” Google said later on in their blog post.

I would review different link building strategies and techniques such as those from this guide from Moz. You'll find through this guide and competitive research (with tools like Open Site Explorer, Majestic, and Ahrefs) that there are a ton of great link opportunities that go beyond these embed links.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Good luck!
P