How Long for Penguin Recovery if All Links Were Removed at Once?
-
Hi, I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on length of time before a Penguin recovery can take place, assuming you removed all the bad links at once? I have a client that has a Penguin penalty, with all the bad links pointing in to a domain, which then redirected to theirs. So, I simply had that domain removed and it now returns a 404 instead of redirecting to the main site. Now all of the bad backlinks do not pass through.
All of this happened at once about 5 weeks ago. I was glad to discover such an easy solution, but am wondering how long something like this would take. My initial thought was it would take 2 or 3 months to see recovery, but I was hoping since the issue was fixed so quickly, recovery would be faster. Any experience with Penguin recoveries with all spam links removed (less that 100 links) at once?
-
Assuming that those are the only unnatural links the site had, there's a good chance that when Google refreshes the Penguin algorithm again the site will once again look clean in the eyes of Penguin and be able to rank again.
However, if Penguin refreshes soon, there is a chance that not much will change as Google needs time to revisit each of the offending linking domains and recognize that they are no longer linking to you (even if it is through a 301). This is why some sites need to sit through two refreshes before they see a recovery.
Keep in mind as well that the site has to have good links in order to see a recovery. If the previous rankings were only supported by the equity that came through the 301 (prior to getting affected by Penguin) then you might not see much improvement once Penguin refreshes.
Gary mentioned that the next Penguin refresh is probably going to be in the next two weeks. I don't know that anyone knows that for sure...I'm thinking that this is a guess as it has already been seven months since the last refresh and historically the longest Google has gone between refreshes is 6 months. I agree that it makes sense for Google to do it soon, but it still could be several months if that's what they decide to do.
-
Yes, it may likely also have something to do with the sitewide.
It also sounds like you aren't being told the whole story, by your account.
-
Hi Gary,
The fact that it is just one site makes me question if the one site was an old penalized version of the site that they tried to 301 their way out of?
Not likely, they're two separate businesses. I really have no idea who redirected that site to the current site in question (nor does the owner). All I know is the owner says "they used to use that site"... when I saw the site was penalized and that all the bad links pointed to this other site, I quickly stopped the link flow from the bad site to the current site.
Are some of the other links bad but you don't believe they are?
No, they just have a handful of backlinks from local directories like merchant circle, etc. They're all the complete norm.
I do wonder though if it has anything to do with the sitewide footer link they have linking back to the SEO company that had gotten them into this mess (also, this particular link is "keyword -rich")
-
Gary brought up a pretty good point. "So I do wonder if there are more than just that issue. Are some of the other links bad but you don't believe they are?" - Gary
I dealt with one situation where many link farms and a particularly spammy domain were pointed at the site overnight. That tripped the Googles BS detector. When I dug into it, I found so much more had happened throughout the years. The initial disavow I proposed would have cut about 50K links if memory serves. The client looked at a few and stated they had paid 'good money' for some of those links and disavowing/removing them would be crazy.
Suffice to say, the process never went through and they kept on 'guest blogging'. (Writing on someone else's site every once in a while and the 'guest blogging' you hear about today are generally two different things.) They kept on 'not recovering'. I check from time to time.
A case of typical manipulation, in my experience, usually involves thousands of links at the least. Your mileage may vary. Without knowing the domain, I can't go into much detail.
-
John Mueller from Google has stated many times that the algorithm must first detect that those links are now either removed or disavowed. then you would need to wait for a Penguin refresh, which is probably going to be in the next 2 weeks and only runs every 6 months.
The fact that it is just one site makes me question if the one site was an old penalized version of the site that they tried to 301 their way out of?
Otherwise bad domains normally would not pass the bad links on to the domain. this was talked about in great detail many times in the past as a negative seo tactic where people would buy bad domains and point them at their competitors. Google put a stop to that very quickly.
So I do wonder if there are more than just that issue. Are some of the other links bad but you don't believe they are?
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
-
Should I disavow these links?
Hi all, I have a ski website that I am currently performing a toxic backlink audit on. I have noted that a lot of the links being flagged as toxic/spammy by the tool I am using seem to be the same/similar sites with different URLs. The sites are vaguely related to skiing (relating to helicopter travel options for travelling to ski resorts) but it is concerning me that there are so many of them and they are being flagged as so toxic.
Link Building | | SolveWebMedia
Do you think it is worth disavowing these? Or contacting the owner to ask them to remove the link? I have included an example of some of the links below. https://www.cannes-helicopters.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://nice-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5 Slightly different site but same favicon icon:
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://www.whitetracks-holidays.com/Helicopter_Transfers_Villars_Switzerland.htm Thanks in advance for any advice / help!0 -
When link building yourself where would you advise are the best places to add links?
Hi I am not having much success with SEO companies so am looking at link building and doing SEO myself. Where would you advise are the best places to add links? Also is it better to add links to specific pages or just to the home page? Thanks in advance
Link Building | | Briggzy0 -
Spammy links
Hi I was reviewing a clients link profile and found a lot of the links they have pointed at their domain have the anchor text "Buy Viagra" or "buy viagra online" and similar. Now the website has absolutely nothing to do with this kind of business so no doubt these links are spammy. To my knowledge the website has not been penalised by Google so far. Is it best to disavow or just leave alone? Kind Regards
Link Building | | TheZenAgency0 -
Link Removals (DA Damage?)
Hi, I am now working on a website with some rubbish links in their profile, which were created by the previous SEO Company. They are footer links from unrelated business websites. All authority from these links have been removed by Google during the latest updates and our SEOMOz DA went from 37 to 35 after the past Penguin update. My question is: Should I get these links removed or rather will we see any advantage to getting the links removed? Or should I just focus my efforts on getting a better link profile together using content? What I don't want to happen is to remove these not great links and then see a decrease even further of the authority. Thanks
Link Building | | brightonseorob0 -
Which way of Link Building is best for seo and long term results
Hi - Have started off with a Automotive site - www.mycarhelpline.com based in India 15 months back Have achieved close to daily visitors of 2500+ in numbers Have made do follow links through - Article submission in high pr directories, couple of press releases, high pr forum submission, directory submission with high pr (though yet to get link from yahoo, botw n dmoz) and couple pf backlinks in high other pr sites Need to know - Best way to create backlinks - is article writing the best way to create backlinks - as against paid directories and paid press releases. I Can target 350 articles in high pr article directories for 6 mo - Ezine, Selfgrowth, Articledashboard n others How can i achieve my target of 10,000 daily visitors. What link bulding strategy do i need to adopt - as am finding difficult to explore sites where i can build backlinks except articles There are other Auto sites - heard of getting 40K unique visitors on daily basis Pl suggest . thnx
Link Building | | Modi0 -
Feedback on Link Removal Services
Hi Guys, Not looking for a debate on whether or not to use link removal services (linkdelete.com, deletebacklinks.com etc), I'm just interested in hearing any feedback you may have after having used one. What was your experience with the service? Do you believe it helped you recover from a penalty? Cheers.
Link Building | | David_ODonnell0 -
Finding links online that already exist as link juice based on search results
I'm curious about this, I can't find anything on the net that talks about it. I wrote an article about it on squidoo and have had no responses so I am thinking this is very rare subject. The question is I have done some backlink research with my competitors with linkdetective.com and found many links (even follow ones) related to sites that provide search results. Here are a link about what I am talking about as an example, I have found many more besides this one. http://search.lphant.com/es/webResults.html?q=free%20scrabble%20dictionary&hl=en&page=1&src=hmp_es&ref=1 My site appears in those results. When looking at the source there is no "nofollow". I found this page because linkdetective.com had this link listed pointing to my competitor. Are these valid backlinks? What I have been doing is adding these links to http://www.google.com/addurl so that Google knows about them. Is there something I am missing or are these valid?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
How many nofollow links should we build to have a natural link profile
Hi guys, As with many link builders we have been building lots of dofollow links for our site, so many that mainly our incoming links are dofollow. Some pages have 99.5% dofollow external links which I know is not very natural. In your experience in terms of percentage how much should you have in terms of nofollow external links in your link profile. I noticed SEOMoz has about 12-13% nofollow external links, shall I go with this figure? Thanks guys. David
Link Building | | sssrpm0