Fix Bad Links in Google

[TomBristol]

I have a client who had some grey hat SEO done in the past. Some of their back links aren't from the best neighborhoods.

Google didn't seem to mind until 9/28, when they literally disappeared for all searches except for their domain name. Google still has their site indexed, but it's just not showing up.

There are no messages in Webmaster Tools.

I know Bing has the tool where you can disavow bad links and ask them to discount them. Google doesn't have such a tool, but what is the strategy when you don't have control over the link sources, such as in blog comments?

Could this update have been a delayed Penguin ranking change from the latest Penguin Update on the 18th?

http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Tom

[TomBristol]

That is an excellent point and I hope it is a Panda update rather than a Penguin. Fixing content on the website will be exponentially easier than trying to track and remove links.

It very much looks like a Penguin penalty, though, and I didn't think Panda acted like this.

Here's an example search:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Why+Sell+Your+Car+For+Cash+to+Auto+Buyer%22&rlz=1C1SNNT_enUS360US360&oq=%22Why+Sell+Your+Car+For+Cash+to+Auto+Buyer%22&sugexp=chrome,mod=19&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

That is the exact phrase on one of the inner pages. It looks like this domain "http://ip-72-167-48-40.ip.secureserver.net/" is now ranking above their actual domain, which you can see if you click the link to see the "entries that they omitted"

I've never seen a domain like that, but I assume it's the result of something GoDaddy is doing on their hosting end.

Anyway, it's very curious. Any other thoughts would be more than welcomed.

[KaneJamison]

I don't have an answer for all of your questions, but this Panda update may be the cause of the rankings drop:

http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-update-20-released-2-4-of-english-queries-impacted-135291

It's more likely to have affected a site based on content than links, however. Unless you're working with an Exact Match Domain, I'd guess this is the most likely cause of any significant ranking drops from the date you mentioned.