Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links ...

[jid]

Hi,

We recently got "the message" from Google about unnatural links for two of our 50 sites. Ranking has dropped significantly since, we did not take any action to remove the links.

All our 50 sites were managed by the same SEO company but only two got this message.

We are in the process of understanding the best ways to deal with this situation, but currently there are two main approaches we can detect:

1. Remove the links, resubmit for reconsideration
2. Ignore the message and do not do anything, if you do something it is actually like admitting you did something wrong, and Google can not prove that you did...

Any insights on what approach we should adopt?

Thanks in advance.

[imrubbish]

I have posted the same question this morning regarding one of my sites, so il keep updated with comments here as well

[Jinx14678]

Have you questioned the SEO Company About their practices and how they gain your links?

This could REALLY help us here give you the best possible answer (even though right off the bat, #2 seems like a bad idea, just for the fact you need to see what is going on, so it can be stopped if necessary before other sites are penalized)

The Best Answer is #1 in my opinion

Since the most probable cause for your penalty is content farms and overuse of anchor texts, here is a nice post about a person who went through that

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/unnatural-link-warnings-blog-networks-advice

This is a little old, but it is a WBF on this issue

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-oh-i-got-a-penalty

Here is also a post from Dr. Pete on cutting the bad links strategies

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-ways-to-recover-from-bad-links

IMHO

I would personally (since you know it is a penalty cause you were warned) use Dr. Pete's article to help you track down the bad links, attempt to remove them, fix any other issues you may have on your site that are "questionable" and submit a reconsideration letting them know you worked with an SEO firm, and you took matters into your own hands, cleaned them up, and it won't happen again.

And then you wait....

Hope this helps

Shane

[Leadhub]

Just got this message on one of my sites as well. I thought we had been doing everything by the book but am finding a lot of directory submission websites the farther down I go. Most of our links are from solid sites with solid page ranks, but there are some directories like this: http://www.56resolutions.info/Business/Equipment/?s=H that I think may be giving us some problems.

I guess our next step is talking to everyone here to find out who submitted the site to these directories and then attempt to get them removed.

[JarrodH]

It is better to do nothing in almost all cases.

Submitting for reconsideration is not going to undue any devaluation that is done on links they found as unnatural.  In extreme cases where all/most of your links appear to be unnatural, you may receive an additional trust penalty, but that only lasts a couple of months at the most.

Google has been devaluing links that appear unnatural for a long time, the only thing new is that they are now sending notifications.

Build quality content and links, expand your social reach etc.. you will rebound from any ranking losses over time.  Use the notification as a wake up call that quality is better than quantity.

[imrubbish]

I dont see how doing nothing will do any good at all, we have dropped massively for 75% of our keywords and Google is telling us they have detected unnatural links, i dont believe doing nothing will help.

Google is telling us to get our links in order and show them we have got it sorted by resubmitting, surely ignoring will just ensure you get penalized?

[JarrodH]

Hello IM Rubbish,

You are in a unique situation (assuming that you are not an affiliate marketer). A large majority of people getting the message are seeing only minor changes in their rankings (Even after the 2-4 week lag time).  Getting the notification does not mean that your are going to lose rankings or get a penalty.  There are a lot of cases where webmasters (or their SEO's) never built a single link and are still getting the message. The majority of people who are loosing rankings are only loosing rankings on a few over-optimized keywords, and on a limited number of pages.

In the case where someone has lost a ton of their rankings because of massive low quality link building and over optimization (and in many cases low quality websites), I still do not suggest submitting a re-consideration request. Most of the rankings that were lost were because of devalued links not because of a penalty.  And most trust penalties/filters are short lived.   If your site has lost that many rankings, inviting Google to do a full manual review of your site is a very bold move, and you must be prepared to do a ton of work to get a positive answer (most people are not getting positive answers even after spending weeks and hundreds of man hours to "clean up" their links).  And here is the kicker, getting a positive answer is not going to cause Google to revalue the unnatural links, so your rankings are not going to rebound as much as you might hope.   They may shorten the length of the trust penalty, but the trust penalty is short lived anyways (It must be short lived else competitors could  easily wack eachother).  You don't need  Google's written forgiveness to rebuilt trust, you can do that by building better content, being socially engaged etc.

Here are 2 scenarios to illustrate my point

• Scenario 1 - You contact Google, they tell you that you have "Unnatural Links".  You go about removing whatever links you can that you believe to be unnatural.  You reply to Google and they respond telling you that you still have unnatural links.. Repeat multiple times and still not get a positive answer from Google.  This is what is happening to most people.

  • Result - You have removed a ton of links, some of which were likely still helping you, and Google still ignores your plea.  But now you are marked as a admitted offender and have been manually reviewed, which only makes it tougher to recover.  On top of that you have spent time that could have been spent improving your site, which would ultimately have a much longer term impact on your trust/rankings, and also reduce chances of future dips in rankings due to unnatural links.

• Scenario 2 - You do the above steps, but instead you do finally get a positive response from Google.   Your rankings are still not going to bounce back to where they were prior to the devaluation happening.  Google is not going to revalue links its automated algorithms have devalued.

  • Google may remove/shorten the trust penalty which will help slightly with your rankings, but it will not get you back you original rankings. and again, most trust penalties are 1-3 months long.  And even that time can be reduced if positive trust signals are introduced.

[imrubbish]

I was all prepared to shout down your answer as i just could not see how going on like nothing has happened will help.

But you make some very very valid points and as such we have decided to "try" get rid of 20-30 of the definitely crappy links that offer no value, tidy up the blog posts - delete the really rubbish blog posts and start building some better content and better links. But crucially we will not do a resubmit request.

[waqid]

Here is a suggestion. I had the same issue with one of my clients. We added the client to some human edited directories and after about 30 days we were back on our rankings. You are going to need to browse this site for a list of Human Edited Directories and sort through them. These sites are not cheap, you will spend anywhere from 20-300 per submission. Most being permanent listings.A few annual and very few monthly.

[David1234]

Tried that waqid. Was expensive and still our rankings are terrible since 3 weeks after getting the letter. Maybe cause yahoo and botw for instance saw fit to place us on some regional pr0 page that gets cached once a decade. Seems awfully unfair to penalize a site for things they might not have caused, or be able to control.

[David1234]

Is there some certain way to know if youve got a penalty when rankings drop after getting this letter? Is it worth sending for reconsideration if youve got a good website?

[dohertyjf]

David -

What's your definition of a "good website"? If traffic has dropped 75%, Google has lost faith in your site and something has gone horribly wrong, thus your site is no longer considered "good" in their eyes. If you've done any unnatural linkbuilding (any comment spam or bought links), you need to get as many of these removed, or at least let Google know about it so that you can get back in the index.

There is no way, beyond being notified in GWT of unnatural links being detected and seeing a drop in traffic/rankings, to know for certain that a manual penalty has been applied. Usually you will receive a notice in GWT when this happens, though. Otherwise it's algorithmic.

[David1234]

Hi John,

Well naturally, my definition of a 'good website' will be biased. However there are no GWT reported onsite issues, no coding/browser issues, 100% original content, low bounce rate and a high % or returning visitors. We only received the GWT notice of unnatural links and 3 weeks later found quite a large drop in most but not all, rankings. Does this mean it's an algorithmic penalty and if so, how long will it last? We didnt publish any unnatural links on blog networks ourselves, but an seo company we paid money to did, and they have not responded to any of our requests for removal of those links. Ive been able to email some blogs and get a positive removal but the majority have not responded, and there are hundreds.

[David1234]

Any comments/suggestions? How long will this stupid penalty last? We never even created the bad links and cant get them removed.

[dohertyjf]

Hey David -

It all depends on how long it takes for the reinclusion request to process, if your rankings have indeed tanked. If you didn't build the links, be sure to talk about this prominently in your reinclusion request. Other than that, honestly, make a stink and get on Google's radar. If it's a case of negative SEO, then we need to make Google aware of it.

[David1234]

Hey John -

I'm really not convinced there was any negative seo in the sense that the term is being meant of late. I believe our past seo company built blog network links without consulting us. The foreign porn site links are more of a mystery. I'm reluctant to submit a reinclusion request in case they manually make rankings worse, what do you think about that idea? Our site has not tanked, but all major KWs have dropped 5-10 spots. A couple havent budged since getting the letter.

[dohertyjf]

David -

Thank you for explaining more clearly, it's really appreciated!

If all major keywords have dropped 5-10 spots, it seems that your traffic must be down quite a bit, not to mention brand exposure.

I would submit a reinclusion request. I would be totally transparent, tell them what you have done to try to get the links removed, but also tell them that you did not build these links. Show them what links you are responsible for.

Unfortunately there is no way to know how long it will take for your client to recover. It's possible that they will be sandboxed for a while. What I would recommend doing is moving forward to building really good links for them, trying to get good press coverage, and try to get in contact with someone on the spam team to review your case.

John