How to handle a pure spam penalty (from GWT) as a blogging platform

[KingLouis]

Hello,

I have a blogging platform which spammers unfortunately used a few years ago to create spam blogs. Since them, we've added spam filters and even if I can't not assume there isn't any spam blog left, I can say that most of the blogs are clean.

The problem is, in Google Webmasters Tools, we have a Pure spam message in the Manual actions page. (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604777?hl=en), with a list of 1000 blog links.

All these blogs have been marked as spam in our system for at least 1 year, technically it means they return a 410 header and display something like "this blog doesn't meet our quality requirements".

When I've first seen the manual action message in GWT, I have asked for reconsideration request. Google answered within a week saying that they had checked again our website, but when I go went to the manual actions page, there was still a "pure spam" message, with a different list of blogs, which have already been marked as spam for a year at least.

What should I do ? Ask for reconsideration requests as long as Google answers ?

Thank you in advance,

[MeganSingley]

Hi Imran,

Instead of adding to this thread, I think it would be better to start a new question about how to check a site regarding duplicate content. Thanks!

[KingLouis]

Hello Marie, their URL still exist but the spam content isn't displayed.

Here is what happens when you go on a blog flagged as spam :

• Header 410
• 301 redirect to a page best practices which explains why this blog has been disabled
• this page is in the robots.txt as disallow, noindex, nofollow, with no link to the original website

Is this good ?

Thanks

[MarieHaynes]

These blogs are marked as spam but do they still exist at all?  I mean, if you type in the url are the pages live?  If so, they're still passing pagerank.  Is there a way to completely remove the pages?  Somehow Google is still seeing them.

[FedeEinhorn]

404s. Remove them from existence.

Why will you have content that is pure spam on the site? if it is spam, delete it.

[Travis_Bailey]

Throw that spam in the 410 can. It let's the crawlers know it's gone 'for good'.

[KingLouis]

Hello Federico,

Thank you for your quick reply.

When you say "Clean ALL the blogs, remove any trace of spam" :

• what is the best way to do : 410 or 404 ?
• if a spam blog has a meta noindex tag, will Google still considerer it ?

I will keep you updated with the future events.

[FedeEinhorn]

Steps you should followÑ

• Clean ALL the blogs, remove any trace of spam (document everything in the process)
• Go back to the first point and make sure you have NO SPAM left (again, if anything comes up, document the changes you make)
• Once you are completely certain that there's no spam left, you can send another reconsideration request, make sure you show them the work you have done to clean the site.
• Wait for their response, and if you still get a negatory, repeat the process as most likely you still have spam in your site.

Hope that helps!