Google sending warnings about Artificial or Unnatural links in Google Webmaster Central

[jfeitlinger]

Has anyone seen warnings about Artificial or Unnatural links notice show up in their Google Webmaster central yet? I just looked at each of our clients and had not but after reading the Search Engine Land article at http://searchengineland.com/google-warning-more-about-bad-link-networks-117079 I was wondering what your thoughts were regarding this topic?

We are not purchasing links for our clients sites but definitely going out their and building links. Article concerned me that I may run into issues for my link building clients. Thoughts?

[jeffreytrull1]

Having artificial or unnatural links isn't strictly limited to purchasing links. Are you doing anything else that might not be considered above board by Google? I'd start there and examine your clients' backlink profiles and make adjustments if needed.

[RankSurge]

I had three show up for one of our test sites. All came on 3/29. All said the same thing.

Funny thing is, while it said that we had to request re-inclusion into the index, the site remains well ranked on other terms.

This makes us think that the infractions are for getting exact match anchor text links (they were the ones that got the messages). Compared to the other organic links we earned (variations of the anchor text in the links).

So, this latest wave of penalties applies to keywords, not the site, which is a step in the right direction.

We are already anticipating what the next penalized type of link will be, and we are already actively testing.

[EugeneF]

I have access to dozens of legitimate websites and knowledge of their SEO.  One of the sites received the notice from Goggle, but had no rankings drop.   Another site had sudden rankings drop for permutations of a keyword (went from averaging position 8 to averaging position 23).

I looked into what made these sites / keywords unique.

We did not knowingly use any blog networks. (and if we had links from them, it would have been low quantity)

We had many anchor text links.  The quantity was similar or less than other website which received no penalties or warnings.

The website that received the warning did have some pure spam PR backlinks, but they were removed 7 months ago.

What seemed to make the website which received the warning unique was the high percentage of anchor text links to natural social and forum links.   The website had less than 1,000 links total.   Other websites with 2,000 to 10,000 links (and a similar to slightly larger quantity of anchor text links) received no warning,

What seemed unique about the site that received a drop for one set of keywords was that the site was having ranking problems with that keyword and a push was made to make more inbound links with that keyword. (we talking 10's of links, not hundreds or thousands.)

These sites have competition with 10,000 to 50,000 inbound links I would call "unnatural"  we haven't seen those website dropping in rank.

It seems to me that google was very upfront when they state "over optimization".  It is relational to your total link profile.

[EugeneF]

I have access to dozens of legitimate websites and knowledge of their SEO.  One of the sites received the notice from Goggle, but had no rankings drop.   Another site had sudden rankings drop for permutations of a keyword (went from averaging position 8 to averaging position 23).

I looked into what made these sites / keywords unique.

We did not knowingly use any blog networks. (and if we had links from them, it would have been low quantity)

We had many anchor text links.  The quantity was similar or less than other website which received no penalties or warnings.

The website that received the warning did have some pure spam PR backlinks, but they were removed 7 months ago.

What seemed to make the website which received the warning unique was the high percentage of anchor text links to natural social and forum links.   The website had less than 1,000 links total.   Other websites with 2,000 to 10,000 links (and a similar to slightly larger quantity of anchor text links) received no warning,

What seemed unique about the site that received a drop for one set of keywords was that the site was having ranking problems with that keyword and a push was made to make more inbound links with that keyword. (we talking 10's of links, not hundreds or thousands.)

These sites have competition with 10,000 to 50,000 inbound links I would call "unnatural"  we haven't seen those website dropping in rank.

It seems to me that google was very upfront when they state "over optimization".  It is relational to your total link profile.

[blocker0408]

Similar story here, got lots of sites, got warning ion 2 I least expected, was using some article blogs a while back, but only as part of a wider link profile. No penalty from warning, am hoping it's just a wake up call. Wish things were clearer, google needs to be more transparent.Fixing anything they don't like is also ridiculously difficult.