How Long for Penguin Recovery if All Links Were Removed at Once?
-
Hi, I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on length of time before a Penguin recovery can take place, assuming you removed all the bad links at once? I have a client that has a Penguin penalty, with all the bad links pointing in to a domain, which then redirected to theirs. So, I simply had that domain removed and it now returns a 404 instead of redirecting to the main site. Now all of the bad backlinks do not pass through.
All of this happened at once about 5 weeks ago. I was glad to discover such an easy solution, but am wondering how long something like this would take. My initial thought was it would take 2 or 3 months to see recovery, but I was hoping since the issue was fixed so quickly, recovery would be faster. Any experience with Penguin recoveries with all spam links removed (less that 100 links) at once?
-
Assuming that those are the only unnatural links the site had, there's a good chance that when Google refreshes the Penguin algorithm again the site will once again look clean in the eyes of Penguin and be able to rank again.
However, if Penguin refreshes soon, there is a chance that not much will change as Google needs time to revisit each of the offending linking domains and recognize that they are no longer linking to you (even if it is through a 301). This is why some sites need to sit through two refreshes before they see a recovery.
Keep in mind as well that the site has to have good links in order to see a recovery. If the previous rankings were only supported by the equity that came through the 301 (prior to getting affected by Penguin) then you might not see much improvement once Penguin refreshes.
Gary mentioned that the next Penguin refresh is probably going to be in the next two weeks. I don't know that anyone knows that for sure...I'm thinking that this is a guess as it has already been seven months since the last refresh and historically the longest Google has gone between refreshes is 6 months. I agree that it makes sense for Google to do it soon, but it still could be several months if that's what they decide to do.
-
Yes, it may likely also have something to do with the sitewide.
It also sounds like you aren't being told the whole story, by your account.
-
Hi Gary,
The fact that it is just one site makes me question if the one site was an old penalized version of the site that they tried to 301 their way out of?
Not likely, they're two separate businesses. I really have no idea who redirected that site to the current site in question (nor does the owner). All I know is the owner says "they used to use that site"... when I saw the site was penalized and that all the bad links pointed to this other site, I quickly stopped the link flow from the bad site to the current site.
Are some of the other links bad but you don't believe they are?
No, they just have a handful of backlinks from local directories like merchant circle, etc. They're all the complete norm.
I do wonder though if it has anything to do with the sitewide footer link they have linking back to the SEO company that had gotten them into this mess (also, this particular link is "keyword -rich")
-
Gary brought up a pretty good point. "So I do wonder if there are more than just that issue. Are some of the other links bad but you don't believe they are?" - Gary
I dealt with one situation where many link farms and a particularly spammy domain were pointed at the site overnight. That tripped the Googles BS detector. When I dug into it, I found so much more had happened throughout the years. The initial disavow I proposed would have cut about 50K links if memory serves. The client looked at a few and stated they had paid 'good money' for some of those links and disavowing/removing them would be crazy.
Suffice to say, the process never went through and they kept on 'guest blogging'. (Writing on someone else's site every once in a while and the 'guest blogging' you hear about today are generally two different things.) They kept on 'not recovering'. I check from time to time.
A case of typical manipulation, in my experience, usually involves thousands of links at the least. Your mileage may vary. Without knowing the domain, I can't go into much detail.
-
John Mueller from Google has stated many times that the algorithm must first detect that those links are now either removed or disavowed. then you would need to wait for a Penguin refresh, which is probably going to be in the next 2 weeks and only runs every 6 months.
The fact that it is just one site makes me question if the one site was an old penalized version of the site that they tried to 301 their way out of?
Otherwise bad domains normally would not pass the bad links on to the domain. this was talked about in great detail many times in the past as a negative seo tactic where people would buy bad domains and point them at their competitors. Google put a stop to that very quickly.
So I do wonder if there are more than just that issue. Are some of the other links bad but you don't believe they are?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Gathering links
There are numerous "Ultimate Guides" to linkbuilding, outreach, etc., and they are all written to teach you the art of linkbuilding. The only thing these guides don't tell you is that following them takes a massive amount of time and doesn't guarantee to get good links at all. We're all in online marketing, and maybe we online marketeers are familiar with linking to other websites, posts that we like, etc. and maybe that's why we can write these guides but in other niches it really doesn't work that way 🙂 I'm wondering what techniques/tactics/strategies you guys are using in less straightforward niches to get quality links to your blogposts. To give you an idea, we launched an article a couple of weeks ago targeting a very competitive keyword. The article got shared over 100 times on LinkedIn/Twitter/etc. and already ranking pretty good, but REAL backlinks are still missing. How to get people to link to that article?
Link Building | | jorisbrabants0 -
Should I be taking a gradual approach to link removals?
Quick background: My parents run a travel company and have seen their google ranks drop dramatically in the last few years (usual story: they employed an SEO agency, saw good results to begin with, and then a massive decline in their rankings post-Penguin). Over the last few months I've been working to remove as many of the spam links pointing to their site as I can. However, as I've been doing so, our keyword rankings have been declining even further, not improving. This time last year we were bottom of page 1 for one keyword, then we suddenly dropped to page 5 around Nov with the Penguin update, and now, since I started cleaning up our backlinks, we're no longer in the first 20 pages - we've vanished. Similar situation for other keywords (though not as dramatic) I've been pretty careful to only delete links that are clearly spam (article directories, forum signatures, spam comments on blogs with a keyword-rich username linking to our domain etc). It may be that some of these links were still helping us, but I'd be surprised - they were pretty obvious cases of spam. My question: Is it normal to see this sort of decline at the start of a clean-up campaign? Does google see a sudden decline in the number of links, spam or otherwise, as suspicious? I've devoted weeks already to trying to work on the problems affecting my parent's website, and the situation just seems to be getting worse and worse! Do websites ever recover from a severe Penguin hit?
Link Building | | mgane0 -
Linking between properties
I own 3 domains. One is my blog, one is my photography business site, and one is my graphic/web design site. They are all hosted on the same VPS account. I link between each site. Also, since the links are either in the nav, footer or sidebar, all pages from one page link to the homepage of each other. Is this an issue for SEO? Should I not be doing this? Would it be beneficial to use a no follow link instead if I'm to keep them?
Link Building | | studio35design0 -
Root Domain Link for Affiliate's Link
It seems my affiliate link: http://www.hrmsplugins.com?partners=21 is not being considered as a "root domain" backlink when this link is used on their website. Is there a reason for this?
Link Building | | delphia0 -
Paying to Remove Links?
I emailed a directory asking to have my link removed and they responded that it costs $20. Does anyone have experience paying to remove links? I would never do this on a mass scale, but for individual links is it worthwhile or a waste of money?
Link Building | | theLotter0 -
Following Penguin, what is the best practice for a web design agency placing a footer link in client sites?
For years we have included a 'Web Design by ...' link in the footer of all client websites designed by us. However, following the Penguin update, it seems that this legitimate practice could now be penalised. Should we be removing those links from our client's sites? There are tens of thousands, all with similar or identical text! For future client sites, should we avoid these footer links altogether? Or maybe limit the link to a single page on each site?
Link Building | | LewisJenkins691 -
Remove links after Penguin?
My site did not get hit. I am worried that Google will come back and get me for those anchor-text links I built a while back. They are of low to medium quality guest posts. Should I remove my old low-quality links? What about those on sites and pages that have been deindexed by Google? Any point in removing those? I know we can only speculate at this point, but would really appreciate some opinions on this. Has the trend in the past been a slight rollback after a big algorithm update like this? Or could we expect to see more and more sites being penalized? -Mathias
Link Building | | mathiasppc0 -
SEOs and web developers frequently leave links to their site in the footer of their clients' sites. Does this negatively impact the site with the links?
Does this provide any SEO value to the receiving site? Has anyone experienced problems doing this?
Link Building | | KatMouse2