Manual Spam Action Revoked... Finally!
-
Just got this:
Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www. for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Previously the webspam team had taken manual action on your site because we believed it violated ourquality guidelines. After reviewing your reconsideration request, we have revoked this manual action. It may take some time before our indexing and ranking systems are updated to reflect the new status of your site.
Of course, there may be other issues with your site that could affect its ranking without a manual action by the webspam team. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If your site continues to have trouble in our search results, please see this article for help with diagnosing the issue.
Thank you for helping us to maintain the quality of our search results.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
-
Hi Stephane, I'm wondering if you've seen any rebound at all since the penalty was revoked back in May?
-
Well think of it: If you keep your old site, you'll have to clean it up first and then start building links again almost like it's a new site. And nothing guarantees that it will be ever successfull as it once was. Chances are, it will never be.
If you start a new website, you'll also have to build links again but you won't have to clean it up first. You'll also get to monitor your link building campaign so that you can keep your link profile clean.
So no matter if you keep your old website or build a new one, you'll have to build links and that will take the same amount of time.
My advice to you is to start building a new website and keep cleaning up the old one for a while but try to minimize the lost as much as possible. If the old site ever gets back on track 100% before the new one gains traction, just redirect the new site to the old one. If the new one gains traction and starts getting profitable, kill the old site or whatever but don't redirect it to the new one to avoid passing bad link juice.
I think it's best to play it safe.
-
Wow. These are very unfortunate news...!
Can you please PM me the old site.
I'm on the same dilemma... I got the approval but nothing happened.We already spent so much time on it that if in fact we had done what you suggest we could have been way better off. But it is an old site so we hope for the best.
I do know that I need to fix many other things but still...Thanks
-
To sum up things, the site has pretty much gone to hell since so I'm abandoning it.
Don't waste time an energy recovering from a penalty, it's faster (and more profitable) to build a new website from scratch.
-
Hi Stephane,
You are now 2.5 months over. Are you back up? Is it truly over?
On that note, how long did it take you from the penalization to the RR approved?
During the penalization, did you have pages de-indexed?
Thanks
-
Great work, I don't think you're so lucky, perhaps a bit but it appears you did what was necessary to clear your link profile many would shy from as it's laborious and difficult. But not impossible.
Excellent feedback from you, so many thanks. I've gotta go through the process for a client very shortly.
-
I should also add that when submitting the reconsideration requests, I explained everything that's been done, from the SEO services / softwares used to build the links to everything you did to clean it up.
I included the full list of back links in a Google Docs spreadsheet as well as the list of disavowed links. I also printed all the emails I sent in PDF format and uploaded that as well to Google Drive. I shared both documents and included them in the reconsideration request.
Don't forget: the Google team will not open documents from anywhere else than Google Drive.
-
It took me about 50 to 60 hours to go through approximately 6,800 links. What a f*cking pain.
Here's how I did it if ever it helps someone:
1. I gathered all the back links from the following sources:
- Google Webmaster Tools (Sample Links + Latest Links)
- Link Detox (http://www.linkresearchtools.com/)
- ahrefs.com: Make sure to include sitewide links and nofollow links too (you can't be too careful)
- opensiteexplorer.org
2. I merged all the backlinks into one single Excel spreadsheet and removed the duplicates.
3. I uploaded the backlink list in CSV format into Link Detox (http://www.linkresearchtools.com/). It verifies if the links are still there and gives you back lots of details about each link like text anchors and the destination url.
4. You will be able to export 3 reports from Link Detox: Healthy Links, Suspicious Links and Toxic Links. Merge all 3 in one single spreadsheet.
5. I identified the obvious links first by sorting the Link Detox spreadsheet by anchor text. You can easily spot the exact match anchors.
6. Next, sort the spreadsheet by destination URL. You know the URLs to the pages you've spammed
7. Finally go manually through all what's left. Have fun!
8. When you're done putting all the bad links in another spreadsheet, rerun the Link Detox report by uploading the full link list as well as the list of links to disavow. This will allow you to see what's left and if you forgot anything.
I identified about 1,500 bad links from nearly 1,000 unique domains and emailed each of them when possible (about 300 - 400 emails sent).
It took two reconsideration requests before the penalty was finally taken off. The first time, I only used the links found in GWT and Link Detox. The second time around, I used ahrefs.com and opensiteexplorer.org also. I found about 100 more links the second time.
-
How long did it take you to do this?
How many RR's did you submit as well?
-
Congrats Man. You are one the few lucky guys who has done this.
-
Feels good, doesn't it!
I have two reconsideration requests in the queue right now waiting for a response. I keep refreshing WMT all day long to see if "Message(1)" is going to appear.
Congrats!
-
Congratulations!
I am sure getting the manual penalty revoked involved some hard work. Keep us updated on how long it takes for your search performance to improve.
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
-
what Due to terms of use violation, your account has been suspended by Akismet Anti-Spam Plugin ?
I have seen many, built links but after three days it says "Due to terms of use violation, your account has been suspended by Akismet Anti-Spam Plugin".
Link Building | | kenhaa5
What is the solution?
If anyone knows, tell me.
I am in a lot of problems, why this problem? Below is the screenshot
Screenshot_6.png What is the solution?0 -
Is it really possible to clean up a website from spam links?
I have an acquaintance/customer, who is a politician in Italy, he had a website under his name as domain firstnamelastname.it (where firstname and lastname are the firstname and lastname of the guy). He used it during his campaign, then he forgot about the existance and didn't pay the bill to the isp. I don't know what happen exactly, I assume someone registered it after it expired and started using it for some fraudulent purpose, because checking the backlink profile I can see the first backlinks from 2013 are legit and coming from relevant sources (local newspapers), but all the following 300+ links are spam, using keywords like "louis vuitton", "ralph lauren", and so on... Right now the domain is in status "deleted", so I could just register it again, disavow the spammy links and had recycle it. But I am scared as hell. I never had to disavow a single link in all my life, and I don't know if it is going to really clean up the domain from any possible google penalization. Is it?
Link Building | | max.favilli0 -
One page hit with 10K no follow spam links, should we disavow?
Hi everyone, I'd like your opinions on the best way to handle this situation: One particular site page just got hit with 10,000 no follow spammy backlinks over 10 days time. I've read that it's pointless to use the disavow tool on no follow links (since it basically does the same thing) but we want Google to be aware that this WAS NOT US and we don't want to be penalized for these spammy links. Couple of questions: 1. Do we send backlink removal requests to each domain webmaster? 2. Should we skip removal requests and move right to disavow? 3. Should we take other action? As a site we have NEVER used any black hat SEO tactics over a 15 year history and have many HQ do follow and no follow links to the site and this particular page. Thanks for any suggestions in advance!!
Link Building | | geteducated0 -
Best Course of Action For Over Optimized Link Profile
I'm working on a few sites right now and before I came on board, they purchased spammy link building packages. For instance, one site shows 3.8k links from 600 root domains. As you can guess, these are ALL spammy pages with dozens to hundreds of links on each. They're all targeted keywords to the homepage. Our other site shows 600+, and again, all spammy links from unrelated spam sites and free link directory packages. The site in question had duplicate content taken from other sites and about 7 pages total indexed. It has since been updated to a WordPress theme with original content and many additional pages. It also has proper SCHEMA locations as it is a legitimate, local business. We receive next to no organic traffic, the pages don't rank for the terms (duh), and basically I'm concerned with moving forward. I don't want to spend time building legitimate links to our sites if we're already nuked by Google. What I'm asking is, do any of you have experience _successfully _using the disavow tool to remove past links? I really don't think a solid link building campaign to our newly updated site is going to undo the thousands of spammy and over-optimized links we have in place already. How likely is it that Google gets the point that we are a legitimate site with new, fresh content when the site receives legitimate links from related sites and such?
Link Building | | kirmeliux0 -
Manual action and no ranking impact?
Hello, I received the message in Google Webmasters Tools about unnatural links to site (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UFHCw4Q_FQ) for two of my websites. I have a hard time undestanding why since I don't buy links, I don't do link exchanges and I don't directories or article directories. Anyways, I received this message on Friday and I didn't lose any rankings on either of those sites or at least not on my main keyword which is the only one that matters. Is it normal that I didn't lose any rankings? Would you advise I do anything specific? Thanks a lot.
Link Building | | EndeR-0 -
Is it recomended to block a page using the robots file if it has recieved a manual Pengiun/Panda Penalty ?
The whole idea is creating a new page altogther instead of the page that is performing poorly after the pengiun/panda update.
Link Building | | Gmorgan0 -
Will removing a 301 re-direct from an old spammed URL drop the links from our profile?
Essentially there is an old page that has been the target of an old school link building agency. There is a 301 re-direct from the old page to the newer version. if I drop the 301 re-direct and update our sitemaps. Will those links be removed from our profile? The old URL passes nothing in actual value & a link building campaign has been running on the new page for over a year.
Link Building | | BenjyH0 -
How to Manually Check if Link is Follow or No Follow?
So I just got the link - yippee! When I look at the source code href line with my url I don't see the term 'no follow'. Does this mean I have a followed link?
Link Building | | Clicksjim0