Google sending warnings about Artificial or Unnatural links in Google Webmaster Central
-
Has anyone seen warnings about Artificial or Unnatural links notice show up in their Google Webmaster central yet? I just looked at each of our clients and had not but after reading the Search Engine Land article at http://searchengineland.com/google-warning-more-about-bad-link-networks-117079 I was wondering what your thoughts were regarding this topic?
We are not purchasing links for our clients sites but definitely going out their and building links. Article concerned me that I may run into issues for my link building clients. Thoughts?
-
Similar story here, got lots of sites, got warning ion 2 I least expected, was using some article blogs a while back, but only as part of a wider link profile. No penalty from warning, am hoping it's just a wake up call. Wish things were clearer, google needs to be more transparent.Fixing anything they don't like is also ridiculously difficult.
-
I have access to dozens of legitimate websites and knowledge of their SEO. One of the sites received the notice from Goggle, but had no rankings drop. Another site had sudden rankings drop for permutations of a keyword (went from averaging position 8 to averaging position 23).
I looked into what made these sites / keywords unique.
We did not knowingly use any blog networks. (and if we had links from them, it would have been low quantity)
We had many anchor text links. The quantity was similar or less than other website which received no penalties or warnings.
The website that received the warning did have some pure spam PR backlinks, but they were removed 7 months ago.
What seemed to make the website which received the warning unique was the high percentage of anchor text links to natural social and forum links. The website had less than 1,000 links total. Other websites with 2,000 to 10,000 links (and a similar to slightly larger quantity of anchor text links) received no warning,
What seemed unique about the site that received a drop for one set of keywords was that the site was having ranking problems with that keyword and a push was made to make more inbound links with that keyword. (we talking 10's of links, not hundreds or thousands.)
These sites have competition with 10,000 to 50,000 inbound links I would call "unnatural" we haven't seen those website dropping in rank.
It seems to me that google was very upfront when they state "over optimization". It is relational to your total link profile.
-
I have access to dozens of legitimate websites and knowledge of their SEO. One of the sites received the notice from Goggle, but had no rankings drop. Another site had sudden rankings drop for permutations of a keyword (went from averaging position 8 to averaging position 23).
I looked into what made these sites / keywords unique.
We did not knowingly use any blog networks. (and if we had links from them, it would have been low quantity)
We had many anchor text links. The quantity was similar or less than other website which received no penalties or warnings.
The website that received the warning did have some pure spam PR backlinks, but they were removed 7 months ago.
What seemed to make the website which received the warning unique was the high percentage of anchor text links to natural social and forum links. The website had less than 1,000 links total. Other websites with 2,000 to 10,000 links (and a similar to slightly larger quantity of anchor text links) received no warning,
What seemed unique about the site that received a drop for one set of keywords was that the site was having ranking problems with that keyword and a push was made to make more inbound links with that keyword. (we talking 10's of links, not hundreds or thousands.)
These sites have competition with 10,000 to 50,000 inbound links I would call "unnatural" we haven't seen those website dropping in rank.
It seems to me that google was very upfront when they state "over optimization". It is relational to your total link profile.
-
I had three show up for one of our test sites. All came on 3/29. All said the same thing.
Funny thing is, while it said that we had to request re-inclusion into the index, the site remains well ranked on other terms.
This makes us think that the infractions are for getting exact match anchor text links (they were the ones that got the messages). Compared to the other organic links we earned (variations of the anchor text in the links).
So, this latest wave of penalties applies to keywords, not the site, which is a step in the right direction.
We are already anticipating what the next penalized type of link will be, and we are already actively testing.
-
Having artificial or unnatural links isn't strictly limited to purchasing links. Are you doing anything else that might not be considered above board by Google? I'd start there and examine your clients' backlink profiles and make adjustments if needed.
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
-
How to create link from google redirect?
I have seen redirect links from google but not sure how to create one. Please guide if anyone knows the answer. Example: https://images.google.cv/url?q=https://moz.com
Link Building | | Melissacarter3 -
Internal Link Building and Link Juice Quality
Hi There! I manage the website for a law office that covers many geographical locations. For very specific niche content, we would prefer to create one piece of content and link to the various geographic locations where we would handle that topic instead of posting multiple variations of the same content for each specific geographical area. If we put a button on these pages that has links to each location, will that have the same "link juice" effect to the pages we're linking that linking directly in the text would? (example: the Where can we help you? button on this page : http://www.zdfirm.com/volkswagen-recall/) Thank you!
Link Building | | ZDAdmin0 -
Submitting pages to google to expidite them finding links to my site
Is it a good practice to submit a page linking to my site to expedite google finding the link or is it better to wait for the google spider to find it? Thanks, Ron!
Link Building | | Ron100 -
What is the process of link earning to avoid link building?
Hi All, I want process to earning links for new SEO 2014. Can anybody explain? Thanks, Akhilesh
Link Building | | dotlineseo0 -
Does Google Groups and Google Community links count?
Hello Everyone. I noticed when I added a few links from Google Groups and Google Communities. It has a do follow? Does that mean it help your SERPS? Thanks for you help?
Link Building | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT0 -
Bearshare links?
I am doing competitor link research and so far 4 of the 4 have had links from search.bearshare.net What kind of site is this? I am sure it isn't valuable but I can't figure out how it is getting crawled.
Link Building | | EcommerceSite0 -
How do you check to see if your site (site A) has already been linked to by another site (site B) when you have a large site with lots of links
There are some basics in SEO relating to finding out about who has linked to whom that I could use some help with.
Link Building | | hughman0 -
Natural vs UnNatural Links: How to Understand It?
Today, I was reading one help article on Google webmaster tools help regarding Google friendly sites. I found that, Natural links can give us more benefits compare to Unnatural links. So, I have search on Google regarding Natural vs Unnatural links and come to know about great video. But, I am still confuse with exact understanding. I am trying to create external links on different websites. So, is it natural or not? How can I justify value of external website before creating link over there.
Link Building | | CommercePundit0