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Hi James,

Google's Disavow Tool is not a first line of defence, but the last.

Matt Cutts made it quite clear when releasing the tool that Google still expects webmasters to make a "good faith effort" to remove as many links as possible before using the Disavow Tool.

If you read Dr Pete's post using the link that Smart Lock Solutions provided in their post you can see this. If you have not seen the video from Matt Cutts about the Disavow Tool, you can watch it and read some views on the release of the tool here.

The only way to confirm whether a manual penalty has been applied is to lodge a reconsideration request. The webspam team will respond to a request, either advising that there is no manual action in place, or that a penalty exists because the site violates their search quality guidelines.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi James,

My immediate response would be DO NOT place any reliance on the presence or absence of an unnatural links warning from Google!

I have clients who never received an unnatural links warning of any kind and were actually suffering impact from a manual penalty. The penalty was not revealed until I decided that we needed to lodge a reconsideration request because something more than Penguin was going on there. Sure enough, the message that came back from the webspam team was that the site had a manual spam action in place.

Since our company developed the rmoov tool, I have been responsible for customer support and spent many hours talking to site owners who are trying to clean up their backlink profiles. During that time I have heard from many, many other site owners that have big problems with no unnatural links warning message received. A number of these have also found on lodging a reconsideration request, that they have a manual penalty applied to their site.

Basing your assessment of what is happening on whether or not you have received a message from Google is a big mistake, and unfortunately one that is being made by way too many people

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi there,

Thanks for participating in the survey

You're absolutely right - with such a long history there are always going to be some dodgy links that turn up without you having any idea what motivated those webmasters to do that.

Already some interesting insights coming out of the survey. Looking forward to sharing the results.

Sha

Hey Dino64,

Welcome to SEOmoz!

Sha

That's awesome!

I happen to know you have at least 1 follower apart from your son!

Have a great day,

Sha

Hey Robert,

Thanks for participating.

I have a feeling there might be a few surprises to be found amongst this data...early results already showing that Google's Disavow Tool is getting a real workout, while the Bing tool seems very unloved.

Good to catch up,

Best

Sha

Thanks for helping out!

Looking forward to sharing the results.

Sha

Hi,

There is so much opinion out there about Link Removal and Google's Disavow Tool, but it's really hard to get hold of reliable data about what people are actually doing in this area.

Through my involvement in rmoov, I've become really interested in participation and cleanup rates when it comes to Link Removal campaigns.

So, I've put together a quick survey aimed at getting a real indication of what is happening out there. The survey is here

The recent introduction of Google's Disavow Tool has opened up another area I'd  really like to understand more, so there is a question on this included.

I'd love to pull together a blog post with a decent snapshot of participation, success or failure for those trying to remove links and hope Moz Members might help out by answering this quick survey.

Sha

P.S. I'll update this post once results are available for those that are interested.

Hi JW,

There are lots of reasons you could be seeing links like this.

I have seen entire websites with hundreds of pages suddenly appear with links to a client's site and even been able to find references to a competitor amongst the hundreds of harmful linking URLs. While this was ringing every "negative SEO" bell for me initially, after careful investigation it became obvious that it was in fact some random person who decided to capitalize on a valuable niche by creating a site using hundreds of spammy articles that had since been deleted from directories by my client and their competitor...

Webmasters have long tried to get exposure for sites by adding links and clicking them or injecting referral data into server logs in the hope that curious site owners will click the referral link to check out the referring site.There are also quite a number of posts out there suggesting that linking out to quality sites can help rankings...as a result there are also people out there with poor sites who are trying to use this to improve their situation.

Most important of all, it is well known that data offered by Google through WMT is notoriously out of date ... I have seen several instances where newly surfaced links have been in place for more than a year.

If there is a mantra to adopt when working on link removals, I would say it is "nothing is ever as it seems".

Hope that helps,

Sha

...and neither did my first link removal client, but the penalty was revealed when I insisted that he needed to lodge a reconsideration request.

I have heard this story repeated over and over while talking to rmoov users over the past few months...I am quite sure there are way more people out there who are under a manual penalty than anyone realizes.

I have my own theory as to why this has happened, but that's probably for a blog post some time.

In a nutshell, I absolutely agree with Ryan's take on the subject except for one thing...hard earned experience does not in any way amount to bias.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Serge,

Well it's not impossible to get to use Pro for free!

If you spend some time helping out others here in Q&A and can earn 200 mozpoints in a month, SEOmoz will credit you with a free month in the future to say "Thank you" for your contribution to the community

It does take some time and generosity, but you do get repaid in kind.

Look forward to seeing your around in the future.

Sha

Hi 858-SEO,

First, for the disclosure: RMOOV is developed by our company.

Now, the significant difference between the two products is that Remove'em offers automated advice on which links you should remove based on anchor text, metrics comparison etc.

When developing RMOOV we made the deliberate decision not to try to tell people which links they should remove because we believe that accurate analysis is paramount and should be carefully managed by a human.

Once the analyis has been completed and users have a list of URLs they wish to remove, that list can be uploaded into RMOOV, which then manages the entire process of finding contact information, creating and sending customized email, recording and tracking responses and reporting on campaign activity. The tool allows users to make Notes on domain status, update domain information via csv upload, mark contact methods unavailable etc.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Anderson,

Just took a very quick look at your source code and my first reaction would be that there is something "unique" happening with the naming within your site structure

To be more precise ... you have multiple instances like this in the code:

http://www.tile-pompanobeach.com/sites/tile-pompanobeach.com/files/logo.png

since the keyword you are targeting for that page is tile pompano beach, it is not much of a stretch to think perhaps the repetition could be an attempt to manipulate rankings.

Given that you are saying rankings have plummeted to as low as page 10, I would guess that the repetition of your keyword term (exact match domain) in the source code is being seen as keyword stuffing.

It would be interesting to know exactly when the rankings went into freefall, but my guess would be perhaps around the end of April.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Stephanie,

Sounds like a situation where you really need to go straight to the Help Team and get them to take a look at the specific domain to diagnose the issue.

I would start at the Help Hub and click the big pink button.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Brian,

The popup where you choose who to share with when posting on Google+ has an option that says something like "email this post to X people not using Google+" ..it is usually checked by default on mine. Maybe this has something to do with it?

Sha

Hi SEOscar,

Your question sounds very much like a feature request that should be highlighted for SEOmoz staff.

If you go to the Feature Request page and add it, staff will most likely see it more quickly and you can check back every now and then to see if there is any news.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Broadbeach Media,

Nice to hear that people were recommending RMOOV - just a quick update - the free trial option is now Free Basic membership, which is 1 Campaign at a time.  Some SEOmoz TAGFEE rubbed off!

Sha

Disclosure: rmoov was developed by our company's Software Division

hmmm...I went looking on your profile to see if you had listed a URL and having run your domain through Open Site Explorer, I can see that it is very likely that the bulk of your problems are coming from your site's external link profile.

Here are a few more blog posts that might help you to get a clear picture of things:

Penguins, Pandas and Panic at the Zoo by Dr Pete Meyers.

Anchor Text Distribution: Avoiding Over Optimization by Geoff Kenyon.

Bad Backlink Checking by Richard Baxter

and for something a little less intense, but that can help immensely if you are trying to get a picture of your own situation, Link Removal Flowchart by Bob Meinke.

Hope that helps,

Sha

P.S. The Google Algorithm Change History can also be very useful in checking whether changes in site traffic, rankings etc coincide with changes at Google.

Hi Sorin,

There are a couple of very comprehensive blog posts that will give you some very good information on identifying and removing problem links. Both talk about issues and successes.

The first of these is Identifying Link Penalties in 2012 by Ryan Kent.

Ryan also provided some very detailed information in this Q&A thread.

The second post that provides real detail on a recovery is How W.P.M.U. Recovered from the Penguin Update by Ross Hudgens. As you will see from reading all of these, recovery will be heavily influenced by the actual elements that have contributed to the problem.

The most critical part of a recovery is in accurately identifying the issues that are contributing to the problem...one big thing to remember is that Penguin came accompanied by another Panda. I have seen instances of people making the assumption that they were hit by Penguin, when in fact Panda finally caught up with them. This is not to say that your problem is not from Penguin, but to emphasize that you need to make an informed analysis and be sure of the real issues before going down a path.

If you are unsure where to start, then you could post the site URL and those here can take a look and give you their thoughts.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi bewoldt,

If the change in domain authority has occurred with today's Mozscape Index update, it is most likely that the change is a result of the reduction in the number of links crawled this time around. This just means that the links are not calculated because they are not included in the crawl, but of course, they are most likely still there.

Rand has explained the difference in the latest Mozscape numbers in this post.

Something else that may impact your domain authority may be link removals as some people have undertaken in the wake of Penguin. If you haven't been actively removing links prior to June, then it is most likely just the change in index size.

Hope that helps,

Sha