Persistent Unnatural Links in Webmaster tools

[eXia]

We recently were notified about unnatural links from two websites (totalling a few thousands links each). We went to the websites and asked them to remove the links, which they apparently did.

After this we applied for reconsideration to Google, explaining the situation, however they came back and said we still have links. We noticed there were still links, however there were less than before, and so we once again asked the sites to remove all the links.

Now we are sure all the links are gone as when we click a random link and view the page source there is no reference to our site, however WebMaster tools is not updating the link list, claiming we still have thousands of links.

Do we have to apply for another reconsideration request to get them to re-crawl the sites to get rid of the links, or should it happen automatically?

[Visiblics]

Hi eXia,

Yes, you shall again have to apply for the reconsideration. But before applying, make sure clean your overall link profile. You should only have natural links (or should appear as natural, which Google can't detect).

Once you're sure that there are no thin quality, unnatural links, you can again apply for reconsideration.

[kellymandingo]

It's so hard to tell whats natural and what's not in Google's eyes, i think the rule of thumb here is, if you have paid someone to do link building for you question those links and start there, also look out of poor directory submissions too (there are some good directorys) however you know the ones i mean.

Download the links in WMT and start there,

It's an absolute pain in the backside as you will never know what links your removing and how Google views them

Make a Google doc's account, list every single link you can find, Visit every single one of those links and catalogue what has been done, if its been removed note is has been removed , if you have requested the removal note that down too so in your next reconsideration request Google can see you have been actively trying to resolve the issues, and don't forget to link in that Google doc

If you have used a 3rd party who's is getting your link building for you be honest and name them, if you know you have done wrong apologise and tell them it will never happen again,

Never say its a competitor as that is very highly unlikely, you may have 1000's of links so good luck and it wont be easy,

[MarieHaynes]

I'm guessing that you have other links that you probably think are ok but are unnatural in the eyes of Google.  I have found that most webmasters, when evaluating their links tend to be too lenient.

Any link that was built by you or an SEO for the point of increasing your Google rankings is considered unnatural in the eyes of Google.  It may have been the two websites you mentioned that set off the penalty, but now that you've got a penalty you've got to come totally clean.

You need to make an attempt to contact each website that has a potentially unnatural link to your site using all means possible - email address from site, contact form, and email from whois data.  If you can't get a link removed then you need to show in your reconsideration request a copy of every attempt to get the link removed.  That usually does the trick, but it's a lot of work!

[eXia]

Thanks for the answers everyone. I'm currently going through and making a spreadsheet of the sites who are linking more than 100 times.

Some of the sites I have no idea why there are links or why there are hundreds for them for that matter. We are going to contact them all (if we can find their contact details) and then apply for reconsideration.

Thanks for the tips everyone.