Manual Spam Action Revoked... Finally!

[sbrault74]

Just got this:

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.

We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www. for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Previously the webspam team had taken manual action on your site because we believed it violated ourquality guidelines. After reviewing your reconsideration request, we have revoked this manual action. It may take some time before our indexing and ranking systems are updated to reflect the new status of your site.

Of course, there may be other issues with your site that could affect its ranking without a manual action by the webspam team. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If your site continues to have trouble in our search results, please see this article for help with diagnosing the issue.

Thank you for helping us to maintain the quality of our search results.

Sincerely,

Google Search Quality Team

[Jantaro]

Congratulations!

I am sure getting the manual penalty revoked involved some hard work. Keep us updated on how long it takes for your search performance to improve.

[MarieHaynes]

Feels good, doesn't it!

I have two reconsideration requests in the queue right now waiting for a response.  I keep refreshing WMT all day long to see if "Message(1)" is going to appear.

Congrats!

[Perfect007]

Congrats Man. You are one the few lucky guys who has done this.

[PremierBusinessCare]

How long did it take you to do this?

How many RR's did you submit as well?

[sbrault74]

It took me about 50 to 60 hours to go through approximately 6,800 links. What a f*cking pain.

Here's how I did it if ever it helps someone:

1. I gathered all the back links from the following sources:

• Google Webmaster Tools (Sample Links + Latest Links)
• Link Detox (http://www.linkresearchtools.com/)
• ahrefs.com: Make sure to include sitewide links and nofollow links too (you can't be too careful)
• opensiteexplorer.org

2. I merged all the backlinks into one single Excel spreadsheet and removed the duplicates.

3. I uploaded the backlink list in CSV format into Link Detox (http://www.linkresearchtools.com/). It verifies if the links are still there and gives you back lots of details about each link like text anchors and the destination url.

4. You will be able to export 3 reports from Link Detox: Healthy Links, Suspicious Links and Toxic Links. Merge all 3 in one single spreadsheet.

5. I identified the obvious links first by sorting the Link Detox spreadsheet by anchor text. You can easily spot the exact match anchors.

6. Next, sort the spreadsheet by destination URL. You know the URLs to the pages you've spammed

7. Finally go manually through all what's left. Have fun!

8. When you're done putting all the bad links in another spreadsheet, rerun the Link Detox report by uploading the full link list as well as the list of links to disavow. This will allow you to see what's left and if you forgot anything.

I identified about 1,500 bad links from nearly 1,000 unique domains and emailed each of them when possible (about 300 - 400 emails sent).

It took two reconsideration requests before the penalty was finally taken off. The first time, I only used the links found in GWT and Link Detox. The second time around, I used ahrefs.com and opensiteexplorer.org also. I found about 100 more links the second time.

[sbrault74]

I should also add that when submitting the reconsideration requests, I explained everything that's been done, from the SEO services / softwares used to build the links to everything you did to clean it up.

I included the full list of back links in a Google Docs spreadsheet as well as the list of disavowed links. I also printed all the emails I sent in PDF format and uploaded that as well to Google Drive. I shared both documents and included them in the reconsideration request.

Don't forget: the Google team will not open documents from anywhere else than Google Drive.

[PremierBusinessCare]

Great work, I don't think you're so lucky, perhaps a bit but it appears you did what was necessary to clear your link profile many would shy from as it's laborious and difficult. But not impossible.

Excellent feedback from you, so many thanks. I've gotta go through the process for a client very shortly.

[BeytzNet]

Hi Stephane,

You are now 2.5 months over. Are you back up? Is it truly over?

On that note, how long did it take you from the penalization to the RR approved?

During the penalization, did you have pages de-indexed?

Thanks

[sbrault74]

To sum up things, the site has pretty much gone to hell since so I'm abandoning it.

Don't waste time an energy recovering from a penalty, it's faster (and more profitable) to build a new website from scratch.

[BeytzNet]

Wow. These are very unfortunate news...!

Can you please PM me the old site.
I'm on the same dilemma... I got the approval but nothing happened.

We already spent so much time on it that if in fact we had done what you suggest we could have been way better off. But it is an old site so we hope for the best.
I do know that I need to fix many other things but still...

Thanks

[sbrault74]

Well think of it: If you keep your old site, you'll have to clean it up first and then start building links again almost like it's a new site. And nothing guarantees that it will be ever successfull as it once was. Chances are, it will never be.

If you start a new website, you'll also have to build links again but you won't have to clean it up first. You'll also get to monitor your link building campaign so that you can keep your link profile clean.

So no matter if you keep your old website or build a new one, you'll have to build links and that will take the same amount of time.

My advice to you is to start building a new website and keep cleaning up the old one for a while but try to minimize the lost as much as possible. If the old site ever gets back on track 100% before the new one gains traction, just redirect the new site to the old one. If the new one gains traction and starts getting profitable, kill the old site or whatever but don't redirect it to the new one to avoid passing bad link juice.

I think it's best to play it safe.

[Chris.Menke]

Hi Stephane, I'm wondering if you've seen any rebound at all since the penalty was revoked back in May?