Google Disavow wrong Sample URLs
-
Sometime last year we were penalized for unnatural links by Google. We followed a couple of good posts on MOZ on how to go about correcting all of this (Excel Showing work, Google Docs, Ahrefs, semrush, etc...) and submitted a reconsideration request as well as a list of urls using Disavow Tool.
So today, about 20 days later, we get a reply from Google stating that we still have some links that are outside their quality guidelines with 3 examples. Problem is, none of the 3 examples they listed have our website on them. I even did a View Source and checked all our inbound link reports for these websites. All of the 3 examples are Lawyer / Legal Advise websites and ours has nothing to do with this.
Any ideas on how to reply and ask them to double check? Maybe they mixed up with another account they were working on at the same time.
-
Have you tried browsing the site with the googlebot user agent? Could those sites have been hacked, and only show the spam if they think you're Google? I've seen that hack before, though don't know if any of those links have ever been in a sample bad link report from Google.
-
Google isn't good at continuing to check to see if links are live after they add them to your link profile. It's likely a link used to be there to your site, then was removed, but Google didn't update your link profile or bother to look to see if the link was there.
I ran into this exact issue about six months ago. It was solved within a couple weeks by updating the disavow report with those examples they listed, plus some others I found after going through the link profile with a stricter mindset on quality.
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
-
URL indexed but not submitted in sitemap, however the URL is in the sitemap
Dear Community, I have the following problem and would be super helpful if you guys would be able to help. Cheers Symptoms : On the search console, Google says that some of our old URLs are indexed but not submitted in sitemap However, those URLs are in the sitemap Also the sitemap as been successfully submitted. No error message Potential explanation : We have an automatic cache clearing process within the company once a day. In the sitemap, we use this as last modification date. Let's imagine url www.example.com/hello was modified last time in 2017. But because the cache is cleared daily, in the sitemap we will have last modified : yesterday, even if the content of the page did not changed since 2017. We have a Z after sitemap time, can it be that the bot does not understands the time format ? We have in the sitemap only http URL. And our HTTPS URLs are not in the sitemap What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ZozoMe0 -
Product URL Optimisation
Hi guys, We are currently trying to add new products to our site but we are in a quandary on what type of URL structure to pursue. For example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | michel_8
Product Name: Aspect Exfoliating Cleanser 240ml https://www.example.com.au/aspect-exfoliating-cleanser-240ml (including the size)
VS
https://www.example.com.au/aspect-exfoliating-cleanser 1.) Which is a better URL structure based on SEO 2018 and why?
2.) Is there any merit in removing the size from the URL key with the aim of attracting more traffic? Keen to hear from you guys! Cheers,0 -
Competing URLs
Hi We have a number of blogs that compete with our homepage for some keywords/phrases. The URLs of the blogs contain the keywords/phrases. I would like to re-work the blogs so that they target different keywords that don't compete and are more relevant. Should I change the URLs as I think this is what is mainly causing the issue? If so, should I 301 old URL's to the homepage? For example, say we we're a site that specialised in selling plastic cups. Currently there is a blog with the URL www.mysite.com/plastic-cups that outranks the homepage for _plastic cups. _The blog isn't particularly relevant to plastic cups and the homepage should rank for this term. How should I let Google know that it is the homepage that is most relevant for this term? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Buffalo_71 -
Same content different URL - Google Analytics other Options
One of my clients came to me today asking to mirror their current website and host it on a different domain (i.e domain.com and domain.ca). Their reasoning is that there is no actual way to confirm via form entries from their website which visitors are submitting the form from an organic perspective and which ones are submitting the form through an Adwords ad campaign referral they are running (which I have nothing to do with). I know Google Analytics will show you visits to pages on a site and then you can find out which source (organic vs. cpc) they came from, but it won't confirm the source on the actual form entry. So my client feels the only way to find out this information would be to mirror the website so that the separate analytics would validate their Ad spend. Does anyone know of any tools that I could use for something like this? I do NOT want to mirror the website as I am fearful of duplicate content and the YEARS of organic SEO work I have put into this website going to waste. The other element I should mention is the client only wants to have this "mirorred" site up for 2 months. Any thoughts, suggestions and arguments for a mirorred website are welcomed! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Is Google ignoring my canonicals?
Hi, We have rel=canonical set up on our ecommerce site but Google is still indexing pages that have rel=canonical. For example, http://www.britishbraces.co.uk/braces/novelty.html?colour=7883&p=3&size=599 http://www.britishbraces.co.uk/braces/novelty.html?p=4&size=599 http://www.britishbraces.co.uk/braces/children.html?colour=7886&mode=list These are all indexed but all have rel=canonical implemented. Can anyone explain why this has happened?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HappyJackJr0 -
URL Parameter Being Improperly Crawled & Indexed by Google
Hi All, We just discovered that Google is indexing a subset of our URL’s embedded with our analytics tracking parameter. For the search “dresses” we are appearing in position 11 (page 2, rank 1) with the following URL: www.anthropologie.com/anthro/category/dresses/clothes-dresses.jsp?cm_mmc=Email--Anthro_12--070612_Dress_Anthro-_-shop You’ll note that “cm_mmc=Email” is appended. This is causing our analytics (CoreMetrics) to mis-attribute this traffic and revenue to Email vs. SEO. A few questions: 1) Why is this happening? This is an email from June 2012 and we don’t have an email specific landing page embedded with this parameter. Somehow Google found and indexed this page with these tracking parameters. Has anyone else seen something similar happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevin_reyes
2) What is the recommended method of “politely” telling Google to index the version without the tracking parameters? Some thoughts on this:
a. Implement a self-referencing canonical on the page.
- This is done, but we have some technical issues with the canonical due to our ecommerce platform (ATG). Even though page source code looks correct, Googlebot is seeing the canonical with a JSession ID.
b. Resubmit both URL’s in WMT Fetch feature hoping that Google recognizes the canonical.
- We did this, but given the canonical issue it won’t be effective until we can fix it.
c. URL handling change in WMT
- We made this change, but it didn’t seem to fix the problem
d. 301 or No Index the version with the email tracking parameters
- This seems drastic and I’m concerned that we’d lose ranking on this very strategic keyword Thoughts? Thanks in advance, Kevin0 -
Does Google check Whois
Hello everyone, I own quite a lot of website active in the same niche and sometimes targeting the same keywords, these sites are hosted at different IP's. But they all have the same Whois details, i was wondering if Google checks the Whois-data? And if it affects the serp's? Regards, Yannick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iwebdevnl0 -
What url should i link to?
Hi everybody, after some discussions i decided to keep my page on the old domain for better seo rankings; However, the new third level domain sounds better: poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it.... the question is: i'm going to recive a high value link and i don't know if i should link directly to the old adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) where the page is located or to the new one by making a 301 redirect to the previous. what's best? and second question what's the way to keep the page on this adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) but show poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it as url? thank you guido
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0