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 Also there is no telling how out of date sections of GWT are.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
-
Unnatural link Manual Penalty by Google
Hi, Our product Quiz Maker help users to create quizzes and can share, embed etc. We have a link in our embed code which was DoFollow and we've got many doFollow links from the websites on which our quizzes got shared but these links are too old like 2009, 2012 etc. After that, to complying with Google policies, we've changed the dofollow link to nofollow in embed code. Here are two scenarios: 1.) We've too many dofollow links which are too old and we don't have control over it as these are the natural links, given by our users before we changed the embed code link. 2.) Now, we are getting nofollow links from the widget as the embed code consists of nofollow link. Our embed code is editable and user can change it to dofollow or nofollow as per their requirement. Moreover, some people shared quizzes on their website (without using embed code) with dofollow link. But, now, google is taking manual action penalty against us. How we can resolve it as it seriously affects the overall performance of our website. Thanks
Link Building | | SameerBhatia2 -
Best Tool For Diagnosing A spammy Back Link Profile
Buongiorno from the river Wharfe 🙂 With Googles crusade to penalise sites with dodgy backlink profiles I'm looking for an automated tool which could flag up any dodgy links. Yes ive used Open Site Explorer but I really am after something that gives me a simple "yes theres a problem and heres where it is" type solution. Any inights welcome 🙂
Link Building | | Nightwing
Grazie tanto,
David0 -
Link building for a product review site
I'm doing SEO for a product review website, and I'm curious what link building opportunities are best for this category. Assume only the following: The website is basically a blog Most of the articles are reviews on cosmetic products, though there are also articles regarding news, product roundups, tips&tricks and similar content The website is in a local, non-english language Disregarding low-value opportunities such as directories, what kind of websites should I aim for outreach purposes? So far, I'm thinking the following: Product manufacturers (very low success chance, as the review site is fairly new and in a localized language) E-commerce sites selling the products (average to low success chance, since a lot of them use CMSes that might not allow integration of a review) Other cosmetic blogs, particularly for guest blogging (average to low success chance, since the website is fairly new) Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks!
Link Building | | mihaiaperghis0 -
Are site profile links from sites like Quantcast still a Google friendly quick win?
I heard one of the speakers from Link Love suggest getting an easy high PR link from Quantcast.by creating a site profile page. What is everyone's opinion on the value of this type of link when blended with other types of link building activity. Low, Moderate? What is the best way to find these types of link profile opportunities? Any one have a good list?
Link Building | | Clicksjim0 -
OSE shows links on sites but can't find links
Hi mozzers, I'm cleaning up our backlink profile and looking up anchortexts in OSE. I downloaded and selected one anchortext. However when I go to the sites OSE found, I can't find the links. I look in the source code and onpage keywords. Is it because of my lack of skills that I can't find the links 🙂 or isn't OSE working properly.
Link Building | | StephWeigert0 -
Can these unnatural links from a site that was hacked hurt me?
After reading the article http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012 I decided to do some investigating to see if I to have suffered from link penalties. After using site explorer I found a ton of over optimized unnatural links from jnjbtw.com and other pharmacy sites. See screen shot: My site is a website about kayak fishing we clearly have nothing to do with pharmacy, doctors or drugs. I know similar questions have been asked before about spam sites linking to you and if they affect you or not but this is about how overly optimized the links that are going to my site are. Would this flag penguin to add a penalty to my website? Any idea how jnjbtw.com has all these links to my site were they hacked?
Link Building | | mr_w0 -
If Google truly penalizes sites for bad linking, could my competitor sabotage me?
I am sure this has been discussed before (I am new). I am very paranoid about upsetting Google with questionable SEO practices. The white hat people sometimes claim that google will penalize you for bad linking, paying for links, buying social bookmarks etc. If this is true, could my competitor do this for my site to lower my rankings? I would never know about it until it was too late. If they can't do this to me, then what's to stop me from doing it to my own site? Maybe I am missing something here. Thanks for your input.
Link Building | | frankthetank20 -
Where are all the sites that are linking to me?
I need to compile a list of all the siters linking to my site, but my open site explorer analysis shows very few links. I know for certain that there are many many more sites linking to it (it's an academic site and there are links to it from a lot of academic directories). What am I doing wrong?
Link Building | | michalseo0