First attempt at manual penalty removal fails - all example links provided by Google not in Majestic, GWT, Ahrefs, LinkDetox, or OSE.
-
Hello all,
I am trying to recover a site from a manual penalty. I already submitted once. Here's what we did. We took the link profile from webmaster tools, majestic seo, ahrefs, link detox, and ose. We manually looked at every link to exclude good links. Then used a tool to run the removal campaign. Submitted a disavow file and reconsideration request.
Google came back with a denial. When I looked at the three example links that Google provided, they were definitely spammy (forum profile and comment spam). But none of them were in any of the original csv downloads from GWT, Ahrefs, Majestic, OSE, or LinkDetox.
What can I do?
Thanks in advance for any help.
-
One of the example links provided isn't even in the index apparently.
I've had that happen to me before. I usually explain in my reconsideration request that this example is no longer in the index. But, I also try my best to see if I can find similar indexed links that I have not dealt with. Usually there are others there.
For your search, don't use the link: operator. Google's link operator does not work well. The rest of your search should work well, but if your keyword phrase is a popular one then you'll have to be more creative. Have they used the same username in profiles? That would be something to search for.
-
Okay, interesting. One of the example links provided isn't even in the index apparently. Also, I am trying the following search, but I think I am doing something wrong because I am getting zero results back.
inurl:member -site:clientsite.com + "keyword phrase" + link:clientsite.com
I am trying to find pages link to my client's site, that are not on my client's site, that have member in the url, that use keyword somewhere.
What am I doing wrong?
-
I find that this is really common for sites that have utilized low quality forum and spam comment links. Google will often come back with example links that are in the index but nowhere to be found in any of the backlink checkers. I usually find though that with some creative thinking you can find more of these links to try to remove and disavow.
Look for patterns in your forum links. For one of our clients, the forum links given to us by Google were all Russian forum profiles all on a phpBB platform (I believe...can't remember all of the details right now.) We did some Google searches like the following:
inurl:user/profile "keyword"
inurl:user/profile "username"
"powered by phpbb" + "keyword" <--This only works if you have a relatively unique keyword or username
"powered by phpbb" + "username"
Of course, these are just examples though. You may need to be more creative in the searches that you do.
Similarly, we will often get example links that are press releases and not in our backlink checkers. You can search for text from your press releases in quotes to find more. This also works well if you have used boilerplate author bio text for low quality articles.
I believe that the reason why Google wants you to find these before they remove your penalty is that these links will hurt the site in the Penguin algorithm if not removed. It is unfair that these links are not in WMT, but the work must be done to try to find them.
One other thought is to ask your client if they have a list of known links that were made. This may seem obvious, but I've had a couple of cases where clients were able to contact the offshore linkbuilding firm that made links for them and suddenly we have a list of hundreds of links that we can deal with.
Best of luck!
-
How do you obtain a complete link sample indeed. You really can't. Even the best programs may show only 25-30% of your entire profile at any one time (and in some cases only 15%). According to Google, all you are "supposed" to need is the export from GW Tools, that's clearly not the case.
Unfortunately, if you are only at 52% removal on your existing links that's not nearly high enough. I'd personally recommend trying again to get that number up, on your existing links, but make sure to run a NEW download from GW Tools regularly, they appear to be updating that bi-monthly now so new links are probably already in your account.
Keep working and consider adding www.linkrisk.com into your analysis as well. That's another pretty good source of links and it does a good job of sorting the links into suspect classes for you so also very helpful.
Sorry I can't be of more help.
-
Thanks for responding. I actually did exactly what you suggested the first time around. I pulled from every available source including Majestic, GWT, OSE, LinkDetox, and Ahrefs. I was only able to achieve a 52% removal. But I ran it for a month and contacted some webmasters up to 9 times. I did disavow at the domain level and linked to both the disavow and link pruning sheets within your the request.
And again, the link examples that came back were not in ANY of the tools and sources used. So my question is, how do I obtain a more complete link sample.
-
Ouch, I just lost my entire response to you so unfortunately, this one won't be as detailed.
What you described is common. Google doesn't provide a full backlink view of your links and I've personally experienced what you've experienced, receiving sample links that are not referenced at all in the Google link download I originally worked from. To combat this, use multiple sources: Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer, Google Download, Ahrefs, etc. I then take these links and import ALL of them into the Link Detox tool over at www.linkresearchtools.com. The tool does a fantastic job of auto-sorting the duplicates for you. Do this so you work with a larger sample going forward.
Unfortunately, now that you've been denied Google won't even consider looking at another recon submission for at least another 3-5 weeks. Take that time to run a more complete link sample then refine your analysis around the sample link classes and anchor texts they provided. Finally, the standard for Unnatural Link Manual Action removal campaigns is high: think 70%. So try your best to remove as much as you can. What you can't, make sure to DISAVOW at the domain level and link to both your Disavow File AND your Link Pruning Sheets within your next Reconsideration Request.
Good luck and if you remember nothing from this answer remember this going forward:
Golden Rule of Link Building: "Any link on which YOU can control the placement and or anchor text rich nature, is an UNNATURAL LINK."
I hope this was helpful.
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
-
Strange site link on Google for a Facebook result
A Facebook page targetted to US Hispanics (with content in Spanish and English) is showing me a hindi sitelink underneath the main Facebook link when I google (in the US, English) for the page [ page name facebook]. We don't have any content in hindi, or targetted to that audience. If I click on the sitelink while logged out of facebook, I can see it takes me to a facebook subdomain of hi-in. When I'm logged in it just redirects me to the same page. Any idea why this could be happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_80 -
Can Google read content/see links on subscription sites?
If an article is published on The Times (for example), can Google by-pass the subscription sign-in to read the content and index the links in the article? Example: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/property/overseas/article4245346.ece In the above article there is a link to the resort's website but you can't see this unless you subscribe. I checked the source code of the page with the subscription prompt present and the link isn't there. Is there a way that these sites deal with search engines differently to other user agents to allow the content to be crawled and indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CustardOnlineMarketing0 -
Site wide links - should they be nofollow or followed links
Hi We have a retail site and a blog that goes along with the site. The blog is very popular and the MD wanted a link from the blog back to the main retail site. However as this is a site wide link on the blog, am I right in thinking this really should be no follow link. The link is at the top of every page. Thanks in advance for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Google PR & OSE DA/PA Question
Hey Moz Community, Can anyone explain why a website would have a PR4 Home page and most inner pages PR3 with only a DA12 and PA14 from OSE? The website in question is my Rotary club http://carymacgregorrotary.org. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhiteboardCreations
Patrick0 -
Google contradictory communications about manual action being applied
Hello,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mylittlepwny
we received a manual action (partial match) for pure spam for a site of ours. The date is not sure, because we didn't receive any notification in mail or inside Google Webmaster Tools dashboard, so all we can say for sure is that we noticed that the manual action page wasn't empty anymore in 10/03/2013. Some context: our Google traffic got a big hit on 07/20/2013, losing around 60% out of 250k visits per day. At first we thought it was an algorithmic penalisation related to Panda update. It already happened a few times in the past: losing part of Google traffic and having it back usually a couple of months after, often even better than before. We were really surprised at first to be deemed as pure spam given that the domain is ours since it was created 7 years ago, that we have never employed black hat techniques and that our efforts were always put into building valuable pages for users instead of using spam techniques to deceive them. But after noticing the manual action, we obviously thought that this was the actual reason for our traffic sudden drop. So we tried to figure out from the 4 URLs that Google reported as examples of the pure spam affected pages, what issues on our site could have been misinterpreted for pure spam. We also checked all the webmaster guidelines and fixed the issues we thought we could not be fully compliant with. All this process lasted for 3 months, after which we submitted our reconsideration request on 12/16/2013.
On 01/07/2013 we got the following answer: We've reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that would directly affect your site's ranking in Google's search results. You can use the Manual Actions page in Webmaster Tools to view actions currently applied to your site.
Of course, there may be other issues with your site that could affect its ranking. Google determines the order of search results using a series of computer programs known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking will happen from time to time as we make updates to present the best results to our users.
If your site isn't appearing in Google search results, or if it's performing more poorly than it once did, check out our Help Center to identify and fix potential causes of the problem. Now we are really puzzled because Google is saying 2 opposite things: We still have a pure spam manual action, and we don't have a manual action (as per their newest response to our reconsideration request).
We could find online a few cases somehow similar to our own, with Google apparently giving contradictory communications about manual actions, but none of them helped to build a clear explanation. I don't want to enter into the merits of the reasons of the penalisation or whether it was or wasn't deserved, but rather knowing if anyone had the same experience or has any guess on what happened.
What we could think of is some bug or problem related to synching between different pieces of Google but still, after some days, the manual action notice is always there on Google Webmaster Tools and nothing changed in our traffic. We are now thinking about sending a second reconsideration request asking to update our Google Webmaster Tools manual actions page accordingly to our current actual status.
What do you think? thank you very much0 -
Link Building
We have just recently launched a new website in Australia and as l am new to the SEO community, l was looking for a little advice on link building. Where is best to start? There are not many authorative websites for our industry. Are there specific websites that are good to link to? Are there any good tools to assist with this? Any help would be great. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
What's the news on sitwide nofollow links and anchor text penalties
Is it possible to be penalized for sitewide nofollow links because of anchor text penalties, even if you use branded anchor text?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
My site links have gone from a mega site links to several small links under my SERP results in Google. Any ideas why?
A site I have currently had the mega site links on the SERP results. Recently they have updated the mega links to the smaller 4 inline links under my SERP result. Any idea what happened or how do I correct this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | POSSIBLE0