How to find artificial or unnatural links in OSE?

[dennis.globalsign]

Hi,

I just got a message from Google Webmaster Tools telling that there are "artificial or unnatural links" pointing to one of my subdomains, and that I should investigate and submit my site for reconsideration.

The subdomain in question has inbound links from 4K linking root domains. We are a certificate authority (we provide SSL certificates) so the majority of those links come from the site seal that customers place on their secure pages.

We sell certificates to a full spectrum site types, from all sizes of ecommerce sites to .edu, .gov, and even adult.  That said, our linking root domains have always been a mixed bunch, which tells me that these offending links were recently added.

Here are my questions:

1. Is it possible to slice my link reports with some sort of time element, so that I can narrow the search to only the newest inbound links?
2. How else might I use OSE to find these "artificial or unnatural links"? Are there any particular attributes I should be looking for in a linking root domain that might suggest it's seen by Google as "artificial or unnatural".

Any help with any aspect of this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Dennis

p.s. I should probably state that I've never bought links or participated in link schemes.

[RyanKent]

Are there any particular attributes I should be looking for in a linking root domain that might suggest it's seen by Google as "artificial or unnatural".

The first item to check would be your site seal. How exactly is the backlink created for the seal? I would presume it is an image link from the seal. Be sure there is nothing which could cause a penalty in your site seal. If you sincerely have not purchased links or performed any shady tactics, a coding issue with the seal is a likely cause of the warning.

A prime commonality to look for in OSE is the anchor text. Adjust the 4 filters at the top of OSE as follows: followed + 301d, only external links, pages on this subdomain, group by domain. Perform the search on the particular subdomain which received the warning. These settings will reduce the list to the links which are most meaningful to you, and in this case the ones which could reasonably cause an issue with Google.

Next, download the CSV file from the OSE link, then sort by the "anchor text" field. If there is any anchor text used repeatedly, investigate the links. There should be a natural variation in the anchor text such as "SSL", "SSL cert", "SSL certs", "SSL certificates", "purchase a SSL certificate", etc. If a high percentage of links all use the exact phrase, it may trigger a flag.

Once you complete your research, take any corrective actions necessary then report back to Google with the results.