First attempt at manual penalty removal fails - all example links provided by Google not in Majestic, GWT, Ahrefs, LinkDetox, or OSE.

[NicoleDeLeon]

Hello all,

I am trying to recover a site from a manual penalty.  I already submitted once.  Here's what we did. We took the link profile from webmaster tools, majestic seo, ahrefs, link detox, and ose.  We manually looked at every link to exclude good links.  Then used a tool to run the removal campaign.  Submitted a disavow file and reconsideration request.

Google came back with a denial.  When I looked at the three example links that Google provided, they were definitely spammy (forum profile and comment spam).  But none of them were in any of the original csv downloads from GWT, Ahrefs, Majestic, OSE, or LinkDetox.

What can I do?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[mediawyse]

Ouch, I just lost my entire response to you so unfortunately, this one won't be as detailed.

What you described is common. Google doesn't provide a full backlink view of your links and I've personally experienced what you've experienced, receiving sample links that are not referenced at all in the Google link download I originally worked from. To combat this, use multiple sources: Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer, Google Download, Ahrefs, etc. I then take these links and import ALL of them into the Link Detox tool over at www.linkresearchtools.com. The tool does a fantastic job of auto-sorting the duplicates for you. Do this so you work with a larger sample going forward.

Unfortunately, now that you've been denied Google won't even consider looking at another recon submission for at least another 3-5 weeks. Take that time to run a more complete link sample then refine your analysis around the sample link classes and anchor texts they provided. Finally, the standard for Unnatural Link Manual Action removal campaigns is high: think 70%. So try your best to remove as much as you can. What you can't, make sure to DISAVOW at the domain level and link to both your Disavow File AND your Link Pruning Sheets within your next Reconsideration Request.

Good luck and if you remember nothing from this answer remember this going forward:

Golden Rule of Link Building: "Any link on which YOU can control the placement and or anchor text rich nature, is an UNNATURAL LINK."

I hope this was helpful.

[NicoleDeLeon]

Thanks for responding.  I actually did exactly what you suggested the first time around.  I pulled from every available source including Majestic, GWT, OSE, LinkDetox, and Ahrefs. I was only able to achieve a 52% removal.  But I ran it for a month and contacted some webmasters up to 9 times.  I did disavow at the domain level and linked to both the disavow and link pruning sheets within your the request.

And again, the link examples that came back were not in ANY of the tools and sources used.  So my question is, how do I obtain a more complete link sample.

[mediawyse]

How do you obtain a complete link sample indeed. You really can't. Even the best programs may show only 25-30% of your entire profile at any one time (and in some cases only 15%). According to Google, all you are "supposed" to need is the export from GW Tools, that's clearly not the case.

Unfortunately, if you are only at 52% removal on your existing links that's not nearly high enough. I'd personally recommend trying again to get that number up, on your existing links, but make sure to run a NEW download from GW Tools regularly, they appear to be updating that bi-monthly now so new links are probably already in your account.

Keep working and consider adding www.linkrisk.com into your analysis as well. That's another pretty good source of links and it does a good job of sorting the links into suspect classes for you so also very helpful.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

[MarieHaynes]

I find that this is really common for sites that have utilized low quality forum and spam comment links.  Google will often come back with example links that are in the index but nowhere to be found in any of the backlink checkers.  I usually find though that with some creative thinking you can find more of these links to try to remove and disavow.

Look for patterns in your forum links.  For one of our clients, the forum links given to us by Google were all Russian forum profiles all on a phpBB platform (I believe...can't remember all of the details right now.)  We did some Google searches like the following:

inurl:user/profile "keyword"

inurl:user/profile "username"

"powered by phpbb" + "keyword" <--This only works if you have a relatively unique keyword or username

"powered by phpbb" + "username"

Of course, these are just examples though.  You may need to be more creative in the searches that you do.

Similarly, we will often get example links that are press releases and not in our backlink checkers.  You can search for text from your press releases in quotes to find more.  This also works well if you have used boilerplate author bio text for low quality articles.

I believe that the reason why Google wants you to find these before they remove your penalty is that these links will hurt the site in the Penguin algorithm if not removed.  It is unfair that these links are not in WMT, but the work must be done to try to find them.

One other thought is to ask your client if they have a list of known links that were made.  This may seem obvious, but I've had a couple of cases where clients were able to contact the offshore linkbuilding firm that made links for them and suddenly we have a list of hundreds of links that we can deal with.

Best of luck!

[NicoleDeLeon]

Okay, interesting.  One of the example links provided isn't even in the index apparently.  Also, I am trying the following search, but I think I am doing something wrong because I am getting zero results back.

inurl:member -site:clientsite.com + "keyword phrase" + link:clientsite.com

I am trying to find pages link to my client's site, that are not on my client's site, that have member in the url, that use keyword somewhere.

What am I doing wrong?

[MarieHaynes]

One of the example links provided isn't even in the index apparently.

I've had that happen to me before.  I usually explain in my reconsideration request that this example is no longer in the index.  But, I also try my best to see if I can find similar indexed links that I have not dealt with.  Usually there are others there.

For your search, don't use the link: operator.  Google's link operator does not work well.  The rest of your search should work well, but if your keyword phrase is a popular one then you'll have to be more creative.  Have they used the same username in profiles?  That would be something to search for.