Help Understanding GWT Message

[KempRugeLawGroup]

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

[Travis_Bailey]

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.

[KeriMorgret]

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!

[KempRugeLawGroup]

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

[KempRugeLawGroup]

We never posted on sexualproblems.com. Well, at least I didn't, but thanks for pointing that out. I'll definitely look into.

[Travis_Bailey]

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.

[AvalaunchMedia]

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.

[KempRugeLawGroup]

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/