Help Understanding GWT Message
-
Brief background: A few months ago, our firm exchanged blog posts with another law firm in Pennsylvania with followed links. Though we did exchange links, the posts weren't spammy. They wrote "A Floridian's Guide To A Car Accident In Pennyslvania" and we wrote one for Pennsylvanians in Florida. (The reason for this is that Personal Injury law varies drastically from state-to-state, and Florida has a ton of people who move back and forth).
My question: His firm got a message from google saying our link to him violated googles' guidelines. I went and removed the link, BUT I didn't get any message saying his link to our site was a violation. Shouldn't we both have gotten messages? Perhaps, mine is "in the mail" so to speak, but I would think both would go out at the same time, so I'm wondering if there is another possible reason?
Thanks,
Ruben
-
Yes, I got it from Majestic SEO. View page source then ctrl+f and type in 'daisy'. A lot of the domains with a lot of exact match anchors - hidden behind giant images.
The registrant of the site probably has no idea this all happened.
-
I'm searching for that anchor text with a site:sexualproblems.net, and once the site comes up (it takes a while), I'm not seeing that anchor text on the site itself, though Google did see it at one point. I wonder if their site got hacked?
Travis, it'd be great if you told us which tool you used. Thanks!
-
Travis,
Can you show me how your seeing we got this information, so I can figure out what to do with it? I just ran our site through OSE, and I'm not seeing that. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right spot.
Thanks,
Ruben
-
We never posted on sexualproblems.com. Well, at least I didn't, but thanks for pointing that out. I'll definitely look into.
-
Your site appears to have received a little less than 70K links from sexualproblems.net in the last 90 days. The anchor text is "daisy fondant cutters". It looks like the result of a post on sexualproblems.com. I could go on, but it looks like the guest posting strategy isn't working out.
-
Hi Ruben,
Since these are "manual" messages, a Google employee had to personally review the account and decide to send the message. It is likely something about the site flagged Google, prompting them to manually review the site. We don't really have a way of knowing if what they address in the message is what flagged that site, but it is likely.
If Google thinks what this site did violated the guidelines, that means any site, including your own, that is in violation of that guideline has the potential to receive the same message.
It is likely that yours is "in the mail." You could receive it a week from now or ten months from now.
I would recommend cleaning up or "no following" the link. You might consider waiting until the other site has submitted their reconsideration request to find out if your actions to remove the link were acceptable.
-
Here's a link to the post that got flagged (the links are removed now): http://www.kempruge.com/a-floridians-guide-to-a-car-accident-in-pennsylvania/
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
-
A few pages deindexed from Google .. PLEASE HELP!
My client has a fairly new site and we were agressively building content to the website. It is an ecommerce store and we have got a blog as well. We guest blogged in a few places and wrote 3-5 articles a day. Last few days, i noticed 3-4 pages that we were building links to got deindexed. What could be the reason? We weren't using any bots to build links, only a couple of it around 5-10 links to a page. Google WMT is not showing any messages and no manual action is seen. What could be the reason? I've submitted those URL for reindex and so far nothing seems to work. Any idea? Please help.
Technical SEO | | WayneRooney0 -
Manual Action found in WMTs, no email, no message in WMTs
Someone I know said that they were looking though there WMTs and under Manual Actions they found they had a partial penalty. There is no date against it and they never got an email and there are no messages WMTs for it. I haven't personally dealt with a Manual penalty before, but I would have expected there to be a message in WMTs for it ( an email might have been missed because of a spam filter etc). Could it be a very old penalty?
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays0 -
Problem of possible duplicate title tag and description. Help me!
Hi everybody, I'm optimizing this huge website that has a lot of identical categories for differente locations. I'm trying to find a smart way to write title and description for these categories, changing the location as a variable on the title and description phrase. Here some examples: Title: Attractions in [CITY]. Sightseeings, monuments and museums in [CITY]. Description: Find travel ideas and suggestions for [CITY]. On [NAME OF THE WEBSITE] you can find a lot of attractions, monuments and sightseeing off the beaten path in [CITY]. Changing only the name of the CITY on these Titles and Descriptions, am I running the risk of duplicate title and description? Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | OptimizedGroup0 -
Help with site structure needed - any assistance welcomed!
Hi all, I am currently tasked with finding a better way to optimise our website ukdocumentstorage dot com. For starters, I would like to know what our site structure actually is at present. So I would like to be able to see which pages are linking to what at the moment & which pages have broken links on which I need to remove from the content. Hopefully I'd then be able to tidy up any errors that the site already has in its internal linking. Is there a way to do this easily? Or to have a graphical representation of the sites structure? I have just signed into our Webmaster Tools account and I am faced with a list of 10 'Crawl Errors' which are all 404 errors. Some of them do not actually exist anymore, but are still being linked to from a few pages according to WMT. For example, /industries_served_legal.htm is still being linked to from 5 of our pages (including /industries_served_local_authority.htm) However, this doesn't seem to be a case at all on the page as I can't find a link to /industries_served_legal.htm on /industries_served_local_authority.htm. Any advice as to why this is happening? Is there a way to find out easily where these broken links are situated on the page? And if I do actually manage to find our broken links, how would I go about removing them? The page /document_security.htm doesn't exist in our Sitewizard list of pages anymore, yet still exists online. How do I go about deleting this unecessary page properly? And does this harm our rankings? The document_security page also has an extra link on the top toolbar to a Document Management page, an addition which is no longer present on our up to date pages. Now this page (and the extra dropdown page when you hover over it) still exist on our list of Sitewizard pages at the moment, but we obviously no longer want to have these online anymore. How should I remove these? I understand that this is a lot of information, and so I would appreciate any help that can be given on these! Many thanks
Technical SEO | | janc0 -
Rel Canonical ? please help again!
Hi, I have been looking at the on page section and the grading. And I have noticed on nearly all of my pages an error. No More Than One Canonical URL Tag Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Number of Canonical tags</dt> <dd>2</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>The canonical URL tag is meant to be employed only a single time on an individual URL (much like the title element or meta description). To ensure the search engines properly parse the canonical source, employ only a single version of this tag.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove all but a single canonical URL tag</dd> </dl> <a class="more expanded">Minimize</a> Please how do I make sure these canonicals are working properly, My rankings are getting worst fro long tail and short tail keywords. I am not even ranking for the main keywords "Probate" at all now! Our site is probate, we sell probate, we talk aout probate and now we are out of the top 200??? http://www.finalduties.co.uk Kind Regards Elissa HAyes
Technical SEO | | Chris__Chris0 -
Has anyone used a company to help promote their site
Hi, i receive around ten emails a day claiming they can help you get your site in the top ten in google, now i know most are a load of rubbish but i am just wondering if anyone has used any of these companies for a new site or an old site. I am about to launch a new site after xmas and i am just wondering if any of these companies are worth looking at to help promote the new site instead of doing all the ground work myself. Would love to know your thoughts
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
A website that will not load on a particular computer? Help Me Please!
We took on a new client about two weeks ago, took them off a proprietary CMS, placed them on a WordPress site, optimized the site, etc. and were finishing up small details three days ago. My PC in my personal office all of a sudden would not load the site from a Google search, from a direct url, etc.
Technical SEO | | RobertFisher
Our office was using a D-Link wireless router but my PC is hardwired in the office. I cranked up my MacBook Pro with solid state drive (6 months old), got on wireless, and....site would not load. PC's and Macs in offices around me would all load the site. A search online brought up a fix for the PC and tried it - did not work, had lead dev try it - did not work, called a server side friend and he had never heard of such a thing. Every fix revolved around changing IP addresses, etc. I uninstalled my antivirus programs on my PC, installed every update that was outstanding, there was no new software installed on either box prior to problem. Can you help??? Is there any chance someone not associated with us and just looking for my client or someone entering a direct url could experience?0 -
Redirection help to retrieve broken links
Hi, my hosting company after they updated my joomla website lost thousands of pages of content, i am now searching for all broken links and re doing the content to get my links back, but i am having a problem understanding how to redirect these links. For example, i have now managed to retrieve this page http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/have-your-say/liberal-dem-leader-says-he-will-be-the-next-prime-minister-what-do-you-think but the old url for this page was http://www.in2town.co.uk/Have-Your-Say/Liberal-Dem-Leader-says-He-Will-be-The-Next-Prime-Minister-What-Do-You-Think/menu-id-4953 i do not have the unfriendly url for this page, so what i am trying to find out is, how to tell google that the above page is now http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/have-your-say/liberal-dem-leader-says-he-will-be-the-next-prime-minister-what-do-you-think in my joomla site. if anyone could please explain how to do this with joomla 1.5 then you will make me very happy as then i will be able to retrieve some of my lost links
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860
