Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I'd proceed very carefully. Here's the problem - those same links from copies of your content that could potentially be causing you trouble with Penguin are also helping Google understand that you're the original source of that content. You could remove those links, still have Penguin in play and start getting outranked by the copies or even get hit by Panda on top of Penguin. I would really want to see your entire link profile, because these kinds of links by themselves aren't that likely to cause a Penguin penalty. Obviously, your webmaster knows the site and I don't, buy my gut says that something else is going on here and that you've got other, more problematic links in play. If these links are the problem, it may be better to disavow them in Google Webmaster Tools. That could help maintain the signal that these are copies but remove any negative aspects of the links themselves. Unfortunately, it's really situational and depends on the scope of the problem and your overall link profile.

Delete all the spam posts, delete all the authors of those posts and 404 the pages. Require admin approval for new accounts to only people you trust not to spam. Add some anti-bot registration protection (security question, captcha, clearly state "admin approval required") and block common IP blocks.

Thanks for the replies everyone, now comes the fun part when I have to crack on and work way through 48,000 backlinks!

Sure, from what I know the EMDs hit were spammy but the thing is... why work on three sites & create partial duplicate copy in the hopes that them being EMDs would give you a boost when you could create great non-duplicate copy for one site and have it rank based on putting quality work & effort into it? Odds are you'll have better luck that way than you would linking between your own EMDs like that. And if the plan is to 301 redirect the two EMDs to the primary then you'd really need a strong link profile on the two EMDs to have them help enough once redirected. Instead you could spend the time working on the primary site instead of spreading your effort across three sites.

I would get rid of these links. I'll bet that very few people use them. They "should not" be the problem since they are "nofollowed".  However, you never know what google is doing. This massive number of links are going to evaporate a lot of pagerank.  No need to do that. If it was really important to link to these other sites I would make one internal page such as "about us" or "our international sites" and link to them on that one page with a followed link.  That link will be anchored with the domain name or the official company name.

Hi Rahul, Good question! Of course, there is nothing actually 'illegal' about duplicate or thin content...it is simply unwise. I can completely understand the frustration with this when you see competitors employing a dumb tactic like the one you've described (creating tons of thin, duplicate pages and simply changing out the city name on each one) and managing to rank well in Google for it. I've seen lots of examples like that over the years, too. Often, these pages are old and have unfairly accrued 'trust' in Google because of that. They totally don't deserve to rank, but even despite Google's duplicate content penalties, they are. So, you are faced with a temptation to follow their example. You've seen those old cartoons where the character has a little angel and a little devil on either shoulder. What your competitors are doing represents that little devil. I'll take the role of angel here in hopes of helping you to see why you shouldn't go with the devil Your competitors are showing every human being who visits their website that they are happy with making the least possible effort. If they make the least possible effort for their own business, just think of what a poor effort they must make for their clients' websites. I certainly wouldn't want to hire such a lazy, uncreative web design team. Would you? Your competitors are sitting ducks for a duplicate content penalty from Google. Even if they are getting away with this today, tomorrow could be the day Google hammers down on them or an algo change makes all of that stuff on their website invisible for good. I certainly wouldn't want that kind of constant threat of disaster hanging over my head. Would you? Your competitors are providing a very poor user experience for their website's human visitors. Instead of trying to be helpful and share what they know about designing websites in Boston or Atlanta or San Francisco, they are simply trying to manipulate people. Every page on a website represents an opportunity to educate, to inspire, to engage. Not only are your competitors being manipulative, they are missing a massive opportunity to build relationships with potential customers. This is a huge loss! Your competitors are teaching all of their colleagues that they have no standards of excellence. In the Internet Marketing industry, lots of pros refer clients to colleagues whom they trust. For example, my firm doesn't do citation cleanup. I have a colleague who does and am happy to refer incoming clients to him because he has proven to me that he has very high standards. His website, blog and track record on the web prove his authority and dedication to excellence. There is absolutely no way I would refer a client to a web design firm whose website was littered with duplicate doorway pages. So, there is more lost opportunity. I hope these few examples are starting to build a clear picture in your mind of how failure to take the high road can harm your business in a variety of ways. I recommend that you shake your head at what your competitors are doing and resolve that you will leave them in the dust by building awesome, unique, useful, inspiring pages and utilize your very best SEO skills to help those pages to rank well. Building your business on the web calls for maximum effort and maximum creativity - not minimum effort. Get fired up and do this right! It will serve you well in the long haul.

Hi! It appears as if your tracking code is old and should be updated. Maybe that could have something to do with it? Also, note that iOS devices (if you have a lot of traffic from iPads and iPhones) report traffic from search engines as direct traffic. Best regards, Anders

I'm interested to know if there's any new insight on this, as I'm tempted to use a special character as it is the literal brand name of the company. My intention is to prepend the company name with the symbol but I'm concerned it may come across as unprofessional and be a poor reflection of the brand.

Hi Mike, Thanks for the reply. I'm out of the country right now, so reply might be somewhat slow. Yes, we have links to the pages on our sitemaps and I have done fetch requests. I did a check now and it seems that the niched "New York" page is being crawled now. Might have been a time issue as you suggested. But, our DC page still isn't being crawled. I'll check up on it periodically and see the progress. I really appreciate your suggestions - it's already helping. Thank you!

no not if your not indexing it, your doing what they want, cleaning up the index, but still letting the crawler find links to other pages

For me it depends on the design.  The search engine robot gobbles text or code if you will in order.  So if there's no other content in the way and it's a page full of links then either one will do.  The first link gets the most juice but they all get divided by the number of links.  So while it may be a good idea to do a site map of sorts it's not necessarily boosting your site as much as it is helping to map it.  Since you didn't say it was a sitemap directly, then I'd say design it for google & people. Since there's no content, I don't really think it matters.

Wow this is just a great attempt on auto generating a lot of b*llshit content about a certain topic. Back to your issue, If there are link multiple links like this one I would recommend using the disavow tool Google Webmaster Tools provide as this will tell Google not to use these links in calculating your authority. Have seen this before, also before the disavow tool existed and this can cause some backlink profile issues.

Chris thank again. I will take your advice and start building new links. For now i will keep the links that allready exist, and hope that no penalty hits me by the time i build new ones.

I will start out by saying I am not answering your question, really. The whole reason I found your question here is because I was about to jump on and ask THE VERY SAME QUESTION. I am working on several projects, and on at least 75% of the projects, I am seeing the exact same thing. The one or two sites I am targeting in OSE are CRUSHING ME with what Google and Cutts would perceive as crappy backlink sites. I have seen some people have responded to your question by saying "don't let OSE, Raven, Majestic or whatever" be your guiding light in this regard, as Google doesn't use any of these services. But the pattern cannot be denied. Backlinks STILL work. Now, it's possible this could change at any time, and I am - for the most part - refraining from duplicating their (in Google's opinion) backlink strategies on these thin directory sites. However, it is really difficult to explain to your client why slow and steady will be better in the long term for their SERP efforts than blasting their link and anchor text out to dozens or hundreds of sites. Of course, there is this - which was pointed out on inbound.org I believe: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34432?hl=en Before May 27: In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. After May 27: In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share. == With this in mind, I think a lot of those sh*tty backlinks that are beating my arse are likely on their last leg. Again, this is all conjecture. But that sly change with no real announcement is interesting, no? edited for formatting

If you are selling blue widgets then you really only want people that are looking for blue widgets, no use directing people who are not interested. As for ranking No, it will not help. What does help is and sort of related, is clicks from search engines, Bing and now Google track users that use the search engine in the way that. If a user goes to Bing or Google and searches for blue widgets and clicks on result #1, then returns and clicks on #2, and does not return, then that is a signal that #2 is a better result for the search term. if this happens enough then #2 will replace #1.

To add an actionable response to the mix..... I suggest making a list of authority sites within your niche or closely related.  Research what kind of sites they are linking to (if only gov sites etc. then scratch off the list).  If you find other sites similar to yourself that have links then make a resource not currently available and start a campaign that has merit as to why high authority sites SHOULD link to you.  (for the benefit of their users and their site) "I want to make money" is not unique in any way and in my opinion if you are teetering on turning to spammy farm style marketing to build your site then you are probably a long ways from where you need to be.  When you are talking about yourself you will find few to listen but when you start talking about others and focusing on ways that you can be an asset to them you will find an audience truly interested in what you have to say. For example:  Dedicate a small section of your site to filters specially for homes that were certified with Energy Star AirPlus at the time they were built.  Then go to http://epa.gov/iaplus01/join_now.html and sign up as an ally to the program.  If accepted (it is not tough by any means) then you get a DA 100 dofollow back link from the ultimate authority in your industry, the EPA.  Doesn't that sound like a better long term business building option than choosing strategies that will position yourself as the enemy to a $100 Billion Company that controls 70% of the worlds search volume?

In that example, about 1/3 of what was written was verbatim from the original site.  As an individual case, it's not bad and you may possibly get by with doing that without ever being filtered or penalized.  I'd say to always keep the exact duplicated content to a minimum and add as much of your own original thoughts into each comment as possible.

Don't stress on this. Say you write an article about a business/product or two.  One of them catches wind and references that article in an article or a news page.  Do you see a reason for penalization? This kind of thing happens all the time and it is fine.  So unless you are trying to catch a case of Artificial Growth Syndrome by manipulating recips you've got nothing to worry about. In your specific case, make sure you are not creating a significant percentage of your total incoming links in this manner since you are actively pursuing.  Maybe create a badge/seal of approval in this case.   As Seen on etc.  Then instead of emailing begging for a link you can email and let them know they have been reviewed and deemed worthy of your approval

Hi Dario, no-indexing the author archive is probably the most commonly used method to prevent duplicate content issues from harming single author blogs in terms of search. However, it is not the only method, and is not the best one in terms of usability.  Other options include redirecting the author archive page to the blog home page, using canonical tags, or disabling the author archive altogether. In terms of usability, I prefer the last option. Why create an author archive at all for a single person blog?

Hi Marie, You are absolutely correct. I was confused. Thanks for clearing that up for me. Carla