Our stage site got crawled and we got an unnatural inbound links warning. What now?

[gallreddy]

live site: www.mybarnwoodframes.com

stage site: www.methodseo.net

We recently finished a redesign of our site to improve our navigation. Our developer insisted on hosting the stage site on her own server with a separate domain while she worked on it. However, somebody left the site turned on one day and Google crawled the entire thing. Now we have 4,320 pages of 100% identical duplicate content with this other site. We were upset but didn't think that it would have any serious repercussions until we got two orders from customers from the stage site one day. Turns out that the second site was ranking pretty decently for a duplicate site with 0 links, the worst was yet to come however.

During the 3 months of the redesign our rankings on our live site dropped and we suffered a 60% drop in organic search traffic. On May 22, 2013 day of the Penguin 2.0 release we received an unnatural inbound links warning. Google webmaster tools shows 4,320 of our 8,000 links coming from the stage site domain to our live site, we figure that was the cause of the warning.

We finished the redesign around May 14th and we took down the stage site, but it is still showing up in the search results and the 4,320 links are still showing up in our webmaster tools.

1. Are we correct to assume that it was the stage site that caused the unnatural links warning?

2. Do you think that it was the stage site that caused the drop in traffic? After doing a link audit I can't find any large amount of horrendously bad links coming to the site.

3. Now that the stage site has been taken down, how do we get it out of Google's indexes? Will it be taken out over time or do we need to do something on our end for it to be delisted?

4. Once it's delisted the links coming from it should go away, in the meantime however, should we disavow all of the links from the stage site? Do we need to file a reconsideration request or should we just be patient and let them go away naturally?

5. Do you think that our rankings will ever recover?

[eyepaq]

Hi,

Indeed the stage site is still out there .. http://screencast.com/t/ZbmvsYE7njYv

Again, that's easy to fix  - if you want to - as you just need to verify the site in Web master tools and then use the removal tool.

For the main site - your visibility is low now -> http://screencast.com/t/PQzdxTih

Can you identify in this graph when the stage site was pushed into the index ? (in order to see if that was the reason for any drops in visibility / rankings)

Anyway - the main site was not very stabile even before .. the link profile is not strong enough to set it on a stabile course.

[gallreddy]

I edited the post and included links to both the live site and the stage site. Wondered if you have any more feedback after seeing taking a look at the backlinks to the site?

[eyepaq]

Hi,

1. Are we correct to assume that it was the stage site that caused the unnatural links warning?

** I don't think this is the case. However - if you post the url someone here can have a look.

2. Do you think that it was the stage site that caused the drop in traffic? After doing a link audit I can't find any large amount of horrendously bad links coming to the site.

** It can be the case - but if the test site will be removed and that was the case for the drop then you should get back on track very fast.

3. Now that the stage site has been taken down, how do we get it out of Google's indexes? Will it be taken out over time or do we need to do something on our end for it to be delisted?

** Verify the stage site in Google Web master Tools and then use site removal tool there and you will get the site out in one single move. (if tjis is really what you want).

4. Once it's delisted the links coming from it should go away, in the meantime however, should we disavow all of the links from the stage site? Do we need to file a reconsideration request or should we just be patient and let them go away naturally?

** You can disovow but is better to remove them - see #3.

You should send a reconsideration request after you remove the stage site and explain. If you will get a response that you are still in violation of the guidelines and they still see un natural links that means the stage site was not the reason

5. Do you think that our rankings will ever recover?

** Hard to tell without seeing the domain name. If the stage site was the issue and you solve it (remove it) then yes - although I doubt that - at least based on the information available so far.

Hope it helps.

Cheers.