My Website Has a Google Penalty, But I Can't Disavow Links
-
I have a client who has definitely been penalized, rankings dropped for all keywords and hundreds of malicious backlinks when checked with WebMeUp....However, when I run the backlink portfolio on Moz, or any other tool, they don't appear anyone, and all the links are dead when I click on the actual URL. That being said, I can't disavow links that don't exist, and they don't show up in Webmaster Tools, but I KNOW this site has been penalized. Also- I noticed this today (attached). Any suggestions? I've never come across this issue before.
-
At this point you can only wait to see the results of the reconsideration request and hope they provide you examples if more clean up is needed.
-
I used a software called WebMeUp...no other software shows the bad backlinks as they are all 404's now and no longer linking to the website. I have already submitted a reconsideration request.
-
Have you tried ahref? Majesticseo? cogintiveseo? to see your backlinks or just moz?
If you think you have been hit try using this https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration and see if itshows up.
-
Hi Karen,
Breaking away from the hypothesis about the penalty here for a second, but I am wondering if the HTTPS / HTTP issue is part of the problem here.
Would you be able to PM me the website in question if you are not comfortable sharing it publicly here? I am not a Moz staff member (I used to be, 2006 - 09) but I help out with Q&A as an associate.
Cheers,
Jane
-
I have all the bad links, they are all 404's now.
-
Have you looked into the Link Detox tool? It supposedly helps you find the bad links that no one else monitors.
-
Thanks Travis but there are no crawl issues
-
Have you attempted to crawl the site? If not, I would give it a little Screaming Frog. If I knew the URL, I would have done it already. : )
Sometimes crawl problems look and feel like penalties. That upward trend in pages blocked by robots.txt before the fall is making me a little suspicious. Plus, if it is a problem with crawlability - that's easier to fix than a penalty.
-
Can you pinpoint the approximate date that the traffic dropped significantly? Look for a Penguin update that's near that time frame using this page: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
If you don't see a Penguin update near your drop in traffic, AND you don't have a manual penalty, you might have another issue. Possibly a Panda penalty or just some other site health issue that caused the drop in traffic. Considering the large amount of spammy backlinks you say existed, it does sound like a Penguin penalty is likely, but it can't hurt to check that Google Algorithm Change history.
If the spammy backlinks are ALL gone now, then you're right... there's nothing you can do in regards to disavowing or manual removal. If you do have a manual penalty that was given due to unnatural inbound links, you can submit a reconsideration request and let them know that you didn't build the backlinks and they all disappeared. Let Google know you plan to continue to monitor your backlink profile and take immediate action against future negative backlinks that are found.
-
Alright...weird...the search results show some https but when I click on them I get the "SSL Connection Error"
-
There's a chance I'm wrong about this. Maybe EVERY site shows that "update" line, regardless of whether or not an https version was found by Google....
Try a "site:" search on Google for both variations.
- site:https://example.com
- site:http://example.com
edit: "if you have a website on HTTPS, or if some content is indexed under different subdomains." You'll see the "update" line if you've got multiple sub-domains as well. So that's likely what's happening in your scenario.
-
I don't have that version of the site...If I try to go to https://website I get an "SSL connection error"
-
That "update" line you posted a screen shot of means you have an https version of your website. Are you sure you've got the right version verified in Webmaster Tools? If you've verified http but not https, or vice versa, verify the other one. You might be able to see the backlinks in Webmaster Tools on the other version.
You can read more about this recent Google Webmaster Tools update here: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2337524/Google-Webmaster-Tools-Gives-More-Precise-Index-Status-Data
Update us with what you find once you look into that a bit!
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
-
Link backs from same IP? Can it hurt?
We host several client sites on our VPS host. We'd like to add a link back to the footer, however cautious as these are all on the same IP. Will this hurt our SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | idlwebinc
Will Google ignore these link backs?0 -
Google WMT/search console showing thousands of links in "Internal Links"
Hi, One of our blog-post has been interlinked with thousands of internal links as per search console; but lists only 2 links it got connected from. How come so many links it got connected internally? I don't see any. Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
What can cause for a service page to rank in Google's Answer Box?
Hello Everyone, Have recently seen a Google result for "vps hosting" showing service page details in Answer Box. I would really like to know, what can cause a service page to appear in the Answer Box? Have attached a screenshot of result page. CaRiWtQUcAALn9n.png CaRiWtQUcAALn9n.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eukmark0 -
Website Redesign, 301 Redirects, and Link Juice
I want to change my client’s ecommerce site to Shopify. The only problem is that Shopify doesn’t let you customize domains. I plan to: keep each page’s content exactly the same keep the same domain name 301 redirect all of the pages to their new url The ONLY thing that will change is each page’s url. Again, each page will have the exact same content. The only source of traffic to this site is via Google organic search and sales depend on the traffic. There are about 10 pages that have excellent link juice, 20 pages that have medium link juice, and the rest is small link juice. Many of our links that have significant link juice are on message boards written by people that like our product. I plan to change these urls and 301 redirect them to their new urls. I’ve read tons of pages online about this topic. Some people that say it won’t effect link juice at all, some say it will might effect link juice temporarily, and others are uncertain. Most answers tend to be “You should be good. You might lose some traffic temporarily. You might want to switch some of your urls to the new structure to see how it affects it first.” Here’s my question: 1) Has anyone ever done changed a url structure for an existing website with link juice? What were your results and do you have a definitive answer on the topic? 2) How much link juice (if any) will be lost if I keep all of the exact content the same but only change each page’s url? 3) If link juice is temporarily lost and then regained, how long will it be temporarily lost? 1 week? 1 month? 6 months? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirbyf0 -
Why do Local "5 pack" results vary between showing Google+, Google+ and website address
I had a client ask me a good question. When they pull up a search result they show up at the top but only with a link to their G+ page. Other competitors show their web address and G+ page. Why are these results different in the same search group? Is there a way to ensure the web address shows up?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ron_McCabe0 -
Penalty from Google due to spam that was not our doing
Hi, My company has enjoyed pretty good rankings for our main keywords in Google for the past 13+ years we have been in business. We have always been very white-hat about our SEO -- always erring on the side of not doing anything rather than risking a penalty. Well, last Thursday, we received the dreaded Google penalty due to a pattern of unnatural links. The hit is devastating - we are not even in the top 50 for our own company name anymore. Through research, we believe we have found the culprit -- and it has nothing to do with any of our own actions. We operate a discussion forum, and there was a link to one of the threads that was being used as the target for a lot of link spam -- Chinese blog comments, etc. We had nothing to do with this, but obviously someone had an agenda and was working on spamming to this page. Who knows - it may have even been the company that was being discussed negatively in the thread, attempting to have us blocked. We discovered it the same day we received the penalty notice, and issued a reconsideration request, detailing what we believe we found. So far, we haven't disavowed any of the links, but I am thinking we should. We have asked Google if they're able to just turn off any link juice for that one page, especially since we don't know who is doing this spamming, and whether they will continue. Has anyone experienced something similar? How does one prevent themselves from receiving a penalty that they had nothing to do with? What is there to keep any competitor from launching a spammy link-building campaign to get their competitor removed from Google? Is there anything we can do to resolve this? Thanks for any and all thoughts...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kylie_rw0 -
How to link my websites with each other - to avoid google penalities and get some value
I have good high DA PA websites hosted on same IP, added in same google analytics and GWT account. So i think google knows that owner is the same. How should we link them with each other to get some value? Put nofollow? With what anchor (Money keyword or domain name)? But whats the point? We cannot make natural link building profile with our own website nofollow links, i assume they will not count. What can you suggest? Maybe it is better not to link at all?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele0 -
Google isn't displaying the www. for my site in the SERPS
I noticed that every other site url in the serps for my main keywords has a www. on their display url except mine. I have the site set to display the www. Can this potentially hurt my SEO and what can I do to fix this? Thanks Aaron. www.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | afranklin0