Does anyone have any suggestions on removing spammy links?
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What if the anchor text has a lot of variation but they are still exact keyword phrase, just a lot of different ones?
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Thanks Ryan,
Yes I'm using whois and a variety of other services to discover contact information but more often than not, I'm getting returned mail (address not valid). Some of the networks, especially those banned from Google have hidden themselves VERY well. One of my hit sites is 16 years old and I'm not embarrassed to say what seemed very ok years ago is now an issue along with what appears to be content scrapping along with a link to my site. I'm thinking it might be best to remove the "you can use this article as long as you give a link" statement that was popular in the past..RIGHT? ..
I'll keep digging into the whois info..along with other search techniques but I was hoping someone had some luck with hosting services replying to this issue. -
Ron, you are missing the key idea.
You should simply not worry about anchor text. Why? Because you should not have control over anchor text. If you earn authentic links from others, they will link to your site.
I control less then 5% of the anchor text for my clients. I would have to think further about the math but it may very well be less then 1%. At those low percentages, you are not at any reasonable risk of incurring a penalty related to manipulative anchor text links.
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The challenge with contacting a host is their hands are tied. There are only two ways I can think of for a host to potentially help you:
1. Provide the site owners contact information. That would be a breach of confidentiality. There is simply no reason for a host to share this information with you.
2. Remove the links to your site. If you filed a DMCA complaint regarding a copyright infringement, then a host is likely to help you. They may also assist with trademark complaints. Otherwise the site owner is free to link to any site they desire. The site owner is not breaking any laws by linking to your site. Therefore the web host is not able to take action.
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Thats what I thought from remembering issues back in "the day". Thanks for clarifying. Hmmm...seems like there is a career opportunity for people right now who want to go into the hunting down website owners business
I'd certainly pay a nice penny at this point. -
What about with your guest posting? Are you using anchor text or branded terms?
How do you target other keyword phrases that a page is not totally targeted for when Google also doesn't want a bunch of pages on a site that target slightly different but simliar keyword phrases? Is this a matter of creating great content i.e. blog posts, linkbait, etc. that target those different pages?
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The idea is the overwhelming majority of links to your site should be earned. People should want to link to your site. If a large percentage of the links to your site are self-created then I have two suggestions:
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review your website. Consider all aspects which may affect the user experience.
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review your content. Is it authoritative? Is it accurate? Is it compelling? etc.
Let's take this Q&A post as an example. SEOmoz has a great site. It is a custom built site. There are many aspects of the site which help offer a great user experience. It is still a work-in-progress, but hopefully some of the $18 million they recently received will be set aside for site improvements
Also look at the content of this article. It seems very helpful to many people based on the responses received. This Q&A is relevant to the site, it's a current topic, etc. If you can generate great content on your site, then you should earn links naturally.
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Exactly..when reviewing our site about a keynote speaker a few years ago we realized we didnt have much info that was helpful to people hiring a keynote speaker..so we added that..our own ideas on the subject..probably why we passed through the last Google updates so well. We have tons of original helpful content..however; I've learned we have to be better than that. There is soooo much our company has to offer that we need to get out there for our industry. We have been at the top 1% of it for awhile now in terms of dollars, experience etc. So once again, its time to revisit, refine, etc. but what this thread is about is removing links! And thats what i want to talk about here
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Ryan, I am 100% agreed with you, man if I look into competitor's links they are all or full of manipulated links. they are still there. I don't know why
I am agreed with you on the ".to create amazing content which others find useful / helpful / amazing then let the world know about it. If you wish to build more links, then embed yourself as a member of the community related to the site's niche and sparingly mention the site."and this is the best long term planning for a site.
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Rayan i have just found one of my clients has the same problem, I am glad of your previous expirence as i dont want to have to go thought such a long process.
Did you investigate if blocking those links by making the server drop the request will work. This seems to be a easier way if posible?
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Did you investigate if blocking those links by making the server drop the request will work. This seems to be a easier way if posible?
Alan, I had not investigated blocking server links. Anything is possible but after thinking about the process, it does not seem reasonable to me that Google would remove a penalty based on the block. Some challenges:
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How could Google see the block exists?
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Even if the block does exist, why would Google care? The types of links Google is penalizing are not likely to receive any traffic, which is why they are being penalized. If the links actually received traffic, Google would not have any problem with the links.
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After working through a few of these penalties I really feel Google is trying to achieve one of two goals. Either to punish webmasters who have violated their policies, or to clean up the web. Blocking the links does not achieve either goal.
With the above noted, it is just my intuition and logic. I have been mistaken before. Nothing beats testing and experience!
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Just worth a follow up, there are now multiple tools and services that help with this. I wont link to them because I own one of them, but just search google for either bad link removal tool or bad link removal services to find a bevy of companies assisting in the process.
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a) How did you contact Google, was it purely through reconsideration requests?
b) How did they respond back to you, was it whoever's email was linked to the domain in Google Webmaster Tools?
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During my initial case of working on this type of penalty in 2011, the first couple contacts were through Reconsideration Requests. After that the contacts were e-mail exchanges. They e-mailed me directly.
There seems to be a bandwagon of "Google is bad / evil / [insert adjective]". In my experience if you are sincere and put forth the proper effort, they will do what they can to help. In the overwhelming majority of cases I find people are not sincere. They are not sorry they cheated the system, they are sorry they got caught. They are not putting forth the proper effort, they are putting forth the minimum effort. When this happens, the relationship becomes adversarial.
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Hey Ryan,
Thanks so much for your detailed analysis, this confirms the gameplan we had to remove thousands of links to our site. We ended up contacting about 800 webmasters who owned ~2,500 domains total with spammy links to our domains, and we had about a 6.5% response rate.
About 42 site owners responded and removed their links easily. Then there were about 10 who responded that they would take down the links for a fee. We've paid 8 website owners for a total of about $135 but there are three more that own a ton of domains and they want another $410 total for about 75 links.
We are trying not to spend that much on link removal, do you think if we document this and send it to Google they will understand the high cost that we don't want to pay, or will they just tell us that we have to pay this off if we want the manual penalty removed?
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Google does not require you to give in to blackmail. With that said, I completely agree with your approach. Paying $10 to remove all the spammy links from a domain with numerous links is an easy fix, and can help with Penguin and future updates as well. This opinion may not be popular, but in the business world we need to value our time as well.
For the sites which attempt to charge larger fees, I would recommend replying with the following...."We are attempting to remove links from a large number of domains. We are unable to afford the thousands of dollars it would require to pay site owners to remove links. We would request that you please voluntarily remove the link as a courtesy. You may also wish to consider that providing a followed link to a penalized site may cause your site to be penalized. Instead of removing the link perhaps you would be willing to change it to a "nofollow" link."
Best of luck!
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Thanks so much Ryan, I had a hunch that we should use common sense on this one. I will definitely try the nofollow approach with the website owners who are not cooperating, and I'll respond back in here with an update here with the results for the benefit of others.
Thanks again!
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This is exactly what happened to us. We have removed over 600K links so far but still not enough for google. We are out of luck now because we cannot get any more links removed!
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Here is an update of my efforts so far to find out out what happened and how to fix two of my banned money sites. I used various tools, some public and some private to find a list of the following:
**Some notes: **
- My sites that were heavily linked were penalized at the same time. My sites that were not linked together as much were not.
- The entire site was not penalized, only the very important key phrases, the type one might spend money on.
**I ran tools to find: **
- Banned links
- Not indexed links
- Use of keyword anchor text as a percentage of overall anchor text
After I "married" those lists..I began a process of link removal request especially for the overuse of the same three keyphrases which resulted, frankly, from not monitoring the efforts of one of one of subcontracted partners.
I created different link removal email request templates for the different kind of links after a few really angry replys. The email templates were for:
- Blog comments
- Private article sites
- Mass release articles sites
- Regular old links
Note: I sorted these by IP. When i found tons of links for the same IP I often offered money to rid myself of the links.
Two months later I have had 175 of about 500 bad links removed. I have not had the penalty lifted nor have i submitted it to Google. I dont plan to. Some mistakes were made, I am making huge efforts to take away the bad (these sites are from 1996 to 2008 .. SO..somethings can no be undone.
My current strategy is to make more good to dilute the bad. Like creative cooking.
Also, ofcourse I have started a new dish for dinner that might end up being what is served. No telling how long the others have to sit on the stove before its eatable
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I meant to use the word "penalized" not banned
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