Links Removed from Site but not Google Webmaster Tools
-
I have a new client who has been fighting to get past an unnatural links penalty. One of the biggest reasons behind it was that they paid to get a followed link/ad on a blog network, well this ad ended up being a site wide link which ended up giving them thousands of back links within a few days.
After getting the owner of the blog network to remove the link i manually spot checked a handful of pages and used screaming frog to crawl looking for a link referencing their site. From what i can tell they are all gone. However they are still in Google Webmaster Tools as well as Google's index and it has been a couple months since they have been removed.
Does anyone have any advice on getting them removed from Google's entities even though they are already off of the website?
Thank you in advance,
Kyle -
Kyle, if you have done a domain level disavow, there's no need to do another URL by URL.
We are seeing disavow take anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months to take effect. Wish I could offer better news, but it looks like you're in a hurry-up-and-wait mode. -
Hey Kyle,
I've not read through all the answers here so apologies if this has already been mentioned but have you used Googles Disavow?
Google says "If you believe your site's ranking is being harmed by low-quality links you do not control, you can ask Google not to take them into account when assessing your site. You should still make every effort to clean up unnatural links pointing to your site. Simply disavowing them isn't enough"
Am pretty sure that as long as you have removed all unnatural links and you have added them through Disavow they will eventually be removed from GWT... they can take sometime unfortunately..
Hope this helps
-
Gotcha, i already disavowed their entire domain do you think it would be more effective disavowing each URL that they have listed in GWT?
-
cache is in the little drop down to the right of the url in searches (usually).
Theres no way to force google to go and reindex the page in full, if its been 6 months and they are still definitely the cause of problems disavow them - whilst not the ideal solution at this point in time it can work. but i advise only doing it if it definitely that site or set of sites causing you issues. you may find google is ignoring those links now but the index just hasnt been updated. Also there is no telling how out of date sections of GWT are.
-
Thanks for the response Andy!
Yes we have seen a decent amount of links get removed, close to 600. However none from this blog network that was the largest culprit. It was just driving me crazy that we got them removed but Google is still showing them there if i do a query of site:blog.com + "brand name"
I just wish there was a way to make Google recrawl that blog indepth rather than waiting, which on that point, what happened to Google cached pages?
-
do the links still show in OSE and majestic?
GWT can take 6 months to show a drop of links in my experience, and sometimes longer - it basically will only show it once its revisited the site to makesure the page or link doesn't exist. This means if you are one of say a million links on the page it will take a long time to get reindexed because its huge and likely to be low value - but that link wont disappear until its been reindexed or disavow has been accepted for that page.
Have you spotted any dropping links at all?
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
-
Do you disavow all the links on the WhatsApp Gold site?
Do you disavow all the links on the WhatsApp Gold site? https://www.watsabgold.com/
Link Building | | JackBarrie0 -
Tools for Documenting and Monitoring Link Structure
The sites I work with all have increasingly published more and more content. In order to maximize the potential and "link juice" of every post and the site, we are linking the post to other relevant internal posts. What I want to ask though is if the community here has any tips or recommendations as a way to monitor and track this. The reason being that I don't want to just go in guns blazing and link all over the place. I want to keep and maintain link structure, even on a content level. For now, I've been using pencil and paper and assigning numbers to keep structure. However, with so many posts and so many links within each post, I'm starting to notice that maybe this is a little impractical. Are there any recommendations?
Link Building | | JasonKhoo0 -
Will our website traffic be adversely affected by Google by allowiing other sites to post our content on their sites?
Hi, We're a radio station posting original content each day. We belong to a sector of similar radio stations. It's been proposed that we all contribute content to this group
Link Building | | Hope-Media
so any radio station can grab this content and post it on their own websites. As the site with the most content and web traffic, could this potentially harm us?1 -
Significance of (no follow) on inbound link reports on Open Site explorer
I have a new website. Several of my inbound links report on open site explorer have (no follow) next to them. I assune this is not optimal-why does it happen? Brooke
Link Building | | wianno1680 -
Attaining quality links from sites of a different language.
Working on a campaign for a Bed & Breakfast within non-english market. The possibilities of establishing quality links is very limited. However, as it is most of the time, there are plenty of english sites we can target. What is the latest news on achieving link presence on a site that does not match your own site's language? Given this campaign relates to travel; there shouldn't be an issue in achieving links on foreign sites, is there? Does the PR flow through just the same?
Link Building | | SpadaMan0 -
Can high SERPS and/or social signals minimize Google penalties and a back linking removal question
As I am continually sizing up my competition in the SERPS I have scanned their sites with a fine tooth and comb. I have found that these sites practice in the very things that I have practiced in the past and have removed thinking that may be some of the reasons I was hit with Penguin. Some of these factors are: Link Scheme with sites they own (C Blocks) Content for Search Engines (Keyword rich text) Exact anchor text in back linking profile Yet even though my competition practices in these methods (One site even places exact anchor text in the footer and header of every page for one of their other forum site) they seem to have not even been touched with any of the recent updates. In fact it seems their ranking have increased. In scanning these sites the only major difference that I have been able to see between them and I is that their SERPS are higher than mine and they have way more social signals than me. One site has about 73k facebook likes where I only have about 300. My question is Can Google ignore penalties for sites that have higher SERPS and /or social signals that would effect another site that had lower ones? My other question is related to back links My main site has links from another site I built a long time ago (Pre SEO and not knowing what I was doing) somewhere in the 73k range. Obviously a HUGE signal to Google that this might be spam and I am aware. I have removed the links from that site but unfortunately the average crawl rate per day is very low so it is taking a very long time for Google to find those pages and re-crawl them to find the links gone. Since that site I have than has those links pointing to my main site has very low traffic I am totally willing to kill that entire site with a 404. Can this help speed up the removal of those links from that site? I figure since the site no longer exists all links from that site will be removed almost immediately from my main site. Any thoughts?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
Which tool is best for analyzing link prospect urls
Hi Mozers, I am currently looking for the best tool for analyzing bulk urls which are potential link prospects. I would like information on seo quality metrics like rel=nofollow etc. Your advise is much valued. Thanks, Fuad
Link Building | | Fuad_YK0 -
Linking to root domain or specific sub-site
Hello, When optimizing for multiple keywords, should I try to get links back to the root domain of the company I work with, or would it be better to link back to sub-sites specific to the keyword I am optimizing for? Does 'getting the root up' help all keywords I work with? Cheers, Mike
Link Building | | Malarowski0