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Would you count them as spammy and disavow?

So I am going through my backlink profile and of course those random backlinks popup from spammy type sites like this which are useless. Should I worry about links that come from sites like these?

http://ppfinder.com/camy/shelvy

A business address is HUGE for local search. At least get a PO Box and use that. Its cheap.

I do not believe there really is a technical argument for this anymore because of the advancements we have now with HTML/Apache and so on. I have been developing for about 15 years and at this point it really doesn't matter. Just choose one and go with it.

Works better with CDN networks, where a domain needs to be specified (though that argument is 3 years old)

Not sure what you are meaning by "specifying a domain"?. Either way a domain has to be specified whether its www.example.com or example.com. Now the standard to specify a CDN any pretty much everything else is in this format. "//www.example.com" or "//example.com". The "//" now tells the browser to just go to that server and the server will do the rest and tell the client where they should go.

For instance say you setup your .htaccess file to redirect (301) everyone to https and www. The client only needs to worry about "//"

Ability to restrict cookies to one hostname (www) or subdomain (info. blog. promo.) if using multiple subdomains

Cookies should always be set for both just in case. You cant control how someone will type in your domain, but you can control the redirects to www.

**IT people generally prefer it **

Not true

If you ever want to support or add https://, you don’t have to support 2 sets of urls/domains

Again with just using "//" you don't have to worry about this anymore

Mindset: fewer and fewer people think in terms of typing in www before a site url, the future is heading towards dropping that anyway. Though that is a bit of a cosmetic argument….

As long as you setup your redirect, www or none-www does not matter, even if you had your domain for years before you implemented the change.

Here is the current trend

With the amount of mobile devices and how "on the go" we are the less we can type to get our answer, the better. So yes the most preferred is example.com. In fact people now will just type in the brand name/domain and let Google direct them.

All in all everyone should have a redirect to either www or none-www. All that matters to you is how do you want users to see your domain...www or none-www. Send them to whatever method you prefer. Since Google can determine the difference and you setup your 301 properly your Golden.

For the last 2 years my site tanked and I have tried everything under the sun to fix it and nothing ever changed it. I was going crazy. I just realized that I had this set on much of all my links on my site and I am wondering if this is what happened to me.

Did you say that you were effected by the same thing? Did you recover?

So I was reading this article today

https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/hidden-links/

Can setting a link to the same color as regular text and applying text-decoration:none really be considered a 'hidden link'?

Thanks man it does help. Do you think the Page Layout Update is integrated now into the mobile Friendly Update and are they refreshing as they do or is it now part of the algorithm?

I have been trying to do some research on the Page Layout Algorithm and Top Heavy Ads and much of what I read does not mention about mobile pages as apposed to desktop. I am curious if the Page Layout updates can be effected by mobile pages as well and if there is any good articles on this subject.

Also is this Algorithm been incorporated into its regular algorithm or do we still have to wait for refreshes to see the impact?

Cesar

I have over 800,000 pages total that contain duplicate content "if" that is an issue with my definitions. I would assume that Panda would slap me hard for that, again "if" that is the issue. Since I have never tried to deindex this many pages I am hoping this works and I will take a few coffee breaks waiting because its going to be a while lol

I have nothing to lose and I feel like I have tried a ton. Thanks so much

No offense man, I really want to figure out what the heck happened with my site, I really feel like I was hit from unfortunate circumstances.

My website is http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/

The duplicate content I am referring too is that I generate my definitions for words from an API provided by https://www.wordnik.com/

I do site the resource on each definition at the bottom of every page (which was required by https://github.com/wordnik), an example is http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/dictionary/word/testing/

I have never had a manual penalty from Google, I check Google Webmaster Tools all the time. I also use tools like Google analytics as well as moz.com, ahrefs.com and monitorbacklinks.com.

I used to rank for the keyword "scrabble dictionary" in the top 4 spots on average. For a long time I was #2 which was my biggest keyword traffic.

I remember when the first Panda update came out I was not hit. I notice the negative changes in my rankings after the second panda update and so on. Since Penguin was in the mix as well I cant even tell if I was hit with penguin.

I never paid or did black-hat backlinking

Again I never was hit with a manual penalty, this is 100% algorithmic

If you notice with the keyword "scrabble dictionary" my homepage does not rank for that keyword at all. Not anywhere in all the search results, where I used to rank top 4 spots.

Since I have been hit so hard I have nothing to lose so I have "noindex" 100% of each word definition, sentence example's and quotes which even though those are not copied (except for definitions) I did that just in case. This equates for about 90% of my site's pages indexed by Google.

I have changed my site design to equate for the "refresh" ranking factor, I have desperately comb through my site 1,000,000 times trying to figure out what happened, I have disavowed link 10 fold and nothing seems to affect my rankings. At this point I will try anything...I have nothing to lose.

Here is 2 scenarios

Scenario 1

Lets say I have a site with a ton of pages (100,000+) that all have off site duplicate content. And lets say that those pages do not contain any rel="noindex" tags on them.

Google then decides to de-index all those pages because of the duplicate content issue and slaps me with a Panda penalty.

Since all those pages are no longer indexed by Google does the Panda Penalty still apply even though all those pages have been deindexed?

Scenario 2

I add a rel="noindex" to all those 100,000+ off site duplicate content pages. Since Google sees that I have decided to not index them does the Panda penalty come off?

What I am getting at is that I have realized that I have a ton of pages with off site duplicate content, even though those pages are already not indexed by Google does me by simply adding the rel="noindex" tag to them tell Google that I am trying to get rid of duplicate content and they lift the Panda penalty?

The pages are useful to my users so I need them to stay.

Since in both scenarios the pages are not indexed anyways, will Google acknowledge the difference in that I am removing them myself and lift the panda ban?

Hope this makes sense

Sweet thanks man

I am integrating your mozscape API into a project of mine and I am in need of seeing if I can send and return a variable with an associated call.

For instance when I am sending some batch URL's I am requesting the [upa] and [pda] back. I am also requesting the [uu] (canonical URL) but it always seems to come back blank. So the issue I am having is if I send a batch of urls to the API how do I know how to associate a [upa] or [pda] with a link?

My thoughts are if I could send a ID with a link and return that ID back then I know how to associate the [upa] or [pda] with that particular link.

Anyone know?

Couldn't find anything in their guidelines about it, I noticed a good way to get people to follow you is to favorite their tweets. Can there be to many according to twitter?

Im not here to say this is concrete and should never do this, and please if you disagree with me then lets discuss.

One of the biggest things out there today especially after the second wave of Penguin (2.0) is the fear striken web masters who run straight to the disavow tool after they have been hit with Penguin or noticed a drop shortly after.

I had a friend who's site who never felt the effects of Penguin 1.0 and thought everything was peachy. Then P2.0 hit and his rankings dropped of the map. I got a call from him that night and he was desperately asking me for help to review his site and guess what might have happened. He then tells me the first thing he did was compile a list of websites back linking to him that might be the issue and create his disavow list and submitted it.

I asked him "How long did you research these sites before you came the conclusion they were the problem?"

He Said "About an hour"

Then I asked him "Did you receive a message in your Google Webmaster Tools about unnatural linking?"

He Said "No"

I said "Then why are you disavowing anything?"

He Said "Um.......I don't understand what you are saying?"

In reading articles, forums and even here in the Moz Q/A I tend to think there is some misconceptions about the disavow tool from Google that do not seem to be clearly explained. Some of my findings with the tool and when to use it is purely based on logic IMO. Let me explain

When to NOT use the tool

• If you spent an hour reviewing your back link profile and you are to eager to wait any longer to upload your list.

• Unless you have less than 20 root domains linking to you, you should spend a lot more than an hour reviewing your back link profile

• You DID NOT receive a message from GWT informing you that you had some "unnatural" links

• Ill explain later

If you spend a very short amount of time reviewing your back link profile. Did not look at each individual site linking to you and every link that exists, then you might be using it WAY TO SOON. The last thing you want to do is disavow a link that actually might be helping you. Take the time to really look at each link and ask your self this question (Straight from the Google Guidelines)

"A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee"

Studying your back link profile

We all know when we have cheated. Im sure 99.9% of all of us can admit to it at one point. Most of the time I can find back links from sites and look right at the owner and ask him or her "You placed this back link didn't you?" I can see the guilt immediately in their eyes

Remember not ALL back links you generate are bad or wrong because you own the site. You need to ask yourself "Was this link necessary and does it apply to the topic at hand?", "Was it relevant?" and most important "Is this going to help other users?". These are some questions you can ask yourself before each link you place.

You DID NOT receive a message about unnatural linking

This is were I think the most confusing takes place (and please explain to me if I am wrong on this).

If you did not receive a message in GWT about unnatural linking, then we can safely say that Google does not think you contain any "fishy" spammy links in which they have determined to be of a spammy nature.

So if you did not receive any message yet your rankings dropped, then what could it be?

Well it's still your back links that most likely did it, but its more likely the "value" of previous links that hold less or no value at all anymore. So obviously when this value drops, so does your rank.

So what do I do?

Build more quality links....and watch you rankings come back

Its all about relevancy IMO. The closer you can get to the niche with that particular page the better. Remember the entire site does not necessarily need to be related to your niche (of course it does help if it is) as much as the individual pages do. The reason I say that is I have a hard time finding full site related niches who are not my competitors. Of course I am not going to be able to get a link on their sites, so I have to find those 1 pagers (usually news, blog and such) that happen to be perfect for my niche.

So if you are going to place that link on a particular page, try and make sure the relevancy is a perfect match (The higher the relevancy, the higher the impact). I have learned that when links are placed at the end of content they tend to not have as much of an impact (especially in forums, blog comments, etc...) the only reason I say this about the end of content is because I no longer will place links at the end of anything, only in the middle of text. Of course make sure that its relevant and helpful to the readers and make sense. You don't want to place links just to place them.

Also remember that Google still loves anchor text (yes even post penguin :)), but you really have to evaluate how you are placing that text in the link. Try and take yourself out of the SEO mode (I know I have too) and really think how you would link to that page and with what anchor text. Be as natural as possible when writing and make sure it makes sense. I tend to write my content first then I pick the most relevant text to highlight and place my links there.

Many times people make the mistake of thinking about the link before the content. Write your content whether its a blog comment, forum post or whatever and make sure the comments relates to the question. Then after you have answered the question ask yourself if a link is really necessary. If not, then don't place a link. Which I know is hard to do sometimes, but honestly that's what spam is all about. If anything most profiles have the ability to place a link to your homepage to them. Just make sure that's in place and leave well enough as it is.

I personally don't place percentages to my anchor text to my brand name. I just write the content and look at the best place to place my link and do that. Naturally it tends to be my brand term, but sometimes it's text like

• this article
• about this site
• check this link out
• freakin awesome tool

Yes even misspelled words, because naturally I will write them like that and I know that Google understands that too.

If I learned anything its that because of the amount of SEO I know I tend to gravitate to keywords and subconsciously tend to use them too much OR it causes me to write content that can be somewhat un-natural. I don't mean to do, but it just seems to happen. What I started doing was asking friends of mine to write my content for me. I tell them the subject of the page, verbally tell them the keyword without letting them know that's the keyword and let them write something for me. 99.9% of the time, it will be extremely natural flowing content

I stuck with certain rules

• Rewrote Content
• Only added keywords to Title, Description, H1 and First paragraph (long tail)
• Added Sitemaps
• Contact Us Pages
• Increased Social Media
• Added Mailing List
• Added more quality backlinks

And the most important (that I felt) was leaving the disavowed tool alone.

I never received a manual penalty for any of my sites, I simply dropped in ranking after Penguin 1.0. Because of this obviously Google did not see anything sneaky with my back links so I most likely suffered simply a devalue of some of my back links from other sites which brought me down. So I figured I needed more quality back links to build myself back up. Took a while, but that seemed to fix it because I am ranking for keywords I have not seen since Penguin 1.0. I'm not as high as I was before.

Also I studied all my back links and the keywords used. I figured that since I ranked for those terms at one time, I tried to figure out which back links devalued and what keywords were used and tried to replicate it. If some were to spammy then I just branded them, otherwise I created new links (quality) with similar anchor text

Why not change it to the way Google is displaying it? Maybe they like that better

There is no definitive answer to that question from what I believe, as in Matt Cutts specifically saying "Don't do that" but there is a great sentence in the Google Quality Guidelines that can totally answer that question.

In the Google Quality Guidelines it says

"Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

Now ask yourself that same question regarding Forum Signatures and spammy anchor text links.

If Matt Cutts himself asked you "Why did you add those links on your signature? for the users for for SEO? If you can truly answer that question "for the user" then do it. If you even hesitate or find yourself justifying your answer then don't.

Adding nofollow to those links? I personally would suggest it

Quality Issue's I am assuming is referring to things that are violating Google quality guidelines which a list of them can be found here.

Would it be possible to post a copy of the email to see exactly what it said? That might give us a better idea what kind of message it is and we might be able to point you in a better direction.

Unfortunately Google's messages are broad, but they do it that way on purpose.