Webmaster Warnings?
-
Hi!
If I have ANY issues at all with my site will Google send me any type of warning? Or will I just begin to lose position? I seem to read alot of people hit with the "unnatural link" warning, I was just wondering if there was any other warning they may notify us with if need be.
Thanks!
-
I would think that those numbers could greatly vary. Sometimes a pile of links in WMT can come from weird sources like askives.com. If someone does a websearch on askives and your site is related to their search then all of a sudden there can be 100 new links that appear to your site and they can be gone with the next Google crawl.
You really can't analyze a traffic drop properly until you've got a good amount of data...like more than a day.
-
that is directly from webmaster TOTAL links. When using OSE the total links are much lower.
-
Interesting...how are you aware that you lost 100 links today? What tool did you use?
In losing links, the number is not important...but the quality is. If I lost 100 links because I deactivated a forum signature I wouldn't be too worried. But, if I had a single link from CNN that got taken down that could be devastating.
-
I actually did notice a drop in links, I lost around 100 today, is it possible that was the issue? How would you analyze this to get back were you were? I am in a VERY competitive market, huge companies with huge budgets rank on page 1 for a high % of keywords. I was happy with my lower traffic keywords. Very concerning to lose traffic like this.
-
I wouldn't get too worried about a one day traffic drop...you could speculate all day long about what the issues could be.
A few possible reasons could include:
-a hosting outage
-problems with your analytics code
-accidental noindexing of page(s)
-malware - (check your site at www.sucuri.net).
-loss of a good link or two
-a competitor has surpassed you in the SERPS
In other words, we don't always have to jump to the conclusion that we've been affected by a penalty when there is a traffic drop.
-
Hello!
I have no warnings at all from Google, traffic is down for some reason for me today, Ive never really ranked great for exact keywords Im targeting, but broad long tail was great! Its seems to all really slowed down today? I keep Mozcast up all the time and it doesnt look like there were major changes today from google. What could explain the traffic drop on my long tail broad?
Any help greatly appreciated!
Thank You
-
There are a number of warnings you can get in WMT. Sometimes they will warn you that your wordpress is out of date. I've also seen warnings that tell you you had a possible site outage. (I got that one when my hosting company was down for a morning.)
The scary unnatural links warnings come with a yellow caution sign next to them which tells you they are very important.
-
30% is quite a big drop, but e-commerce sites are more vulnerable to such fluctuations. Obviously, if it stays this way, then it wasn't a fluctuation. Also, yes, they do inform you of issues with duplicate content.
Here's a post on link penalties...
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012
-
Seems to be down around 30% today , It is an E-Commerce, large site. If there was a problem with Dup content would they notify me also?
Thanks so MUCH!
-
It depends on the size of the fluctuation and what your site is about.
-
Is it normal for traffic to fluctuate like this? Is it possible I was hit with a penalty? Or is this normal for a newer website? 1.5yrs old?
-
It's under settings in the left navigation menu. It's pretty easy to set-up.
You're welcome!
-
Typically how do you setup it up? I usually check webmaster daily, I was just a little concerned as I saw a slight drop in traffic today.
Thanks!
-
Well, if something's wonky, you will receive an internal notification (in Google Webmaster Tools). If you want to receive email notifications, you can enable that in the settings and you can choose to receive all kinds of notifications or only critical ones.
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
-
Links Removed from Site but not Google Webmaster Tools
I have a new client who has been fighting to get past an unnatural links penalty. One of the biggest reasons behind it was that they paid to get a followed link/ad on a blog network, well this ad ended up being a site wide link which ended up giving them thousands of back links within a few days. After getting the owner of the blog network to remove the link i manually spot checked a handful of pages and used screaming frog to crawl looking for a link referencing their site. From what i can tell they are all gone. However they are still in Google Webmaster Tools as well as Google's index and it has been a couple months since they have been removed. Does anyone have any advice on getting them removed from Google's entities even though they are already off of the website? Thank you in advance,
Link Building | | kchandler
Kyle0 -
Anyone seeing a big drop in links showing in Google webmaster tools?
Over the last week I have seen a big drop in links to us showing in Google Webmaster tools. The links are still there on sites that rank well including some from National newspapers. However the link count has dropped from over 4000 to less than 40 on approx 5-6 sites. Ranks etc are staying the same its just a bit of a strange thing as they still show in Majestic and Open site explorer.
Link Building | | tempowebdesign0 -
Is anybody else noticing a dramatic change to their 'links to your site' section in Google Webmaster Tools?
Hey,
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate
Over the last six months or so we've been going through our backlink profile and cleaning up links from poor quality sources. Week by week there have been small changes in our Google Webmaster Tools 'links to your site' section to reflect this. I logged on this morning however and there has been a dramatic shift in the information displayed. Pretty much every bad link has been removed from the list including sites I know for a fact are still linking to us as they didn't communicate at all to our removal requests. Additionally, rather than showing the top 1000 links to our site as it used to, WMT is only showing 73 linking domains. The remaining 73 domains are good natural links from high quality sources. I'm guessing Google are just in the middle of an update and that the remaining linking domains (including the bad ones) will reappear shortly. This isn’t a request for advice or help but I’m just curious as to whether anybody else is seeing anything similar?0 -
Why Would Google Webmaster Tools State More Links Than Details Show?
I am trying to clean up links. I've gone into webmaster tools and it reports that I have 216 links from a particular domain. When I click thru to get details it reports all the links point to 1 page, then when I click on that page it only reports 1 inbound link. The links are coming from a directory site which appears to have been penalized. OSE doesn't report any links from this domain. Should I be overly alarmed? How can I determine what is correct, and whether I should take action (the site wants to charge me to remove each url). Thanks in advance. Alan
Link Building | | rmsmall0 -
Drop in "Links to your site" in Google Webmaster Tools
Last week I noticed a substantial drop in "Links to Your Site" in Google Webmaster Tools on several of my websites. Upon further investigation the reduced links were from our sister sites. It appears that Google has reduced the number of links they are counting from links in our headers and footers from these sites to our main websites. It is not affecting our rankings or traffic. Is Google doing some clean up with what they are showing in webmaster tools for links from related, owned sites? Any cause for concern?
Link Building | | tdawson090 -
Got Google Warning But No Penalty - Should I Ask for Reconsideration?
I got the following warning from Google yesterday: "Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to [...] We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results. " But my website didn't lose any traffic or ranking so far. Anyway, I'm currently cleaning up my link profile. My question is, since the website didn't seem to have a penalty, should I still submit the website for reconsideration once the clean up is done? If I clean up my link profile, would that warning just go away? Should I avoid a manual review of my website? Thanks for your help.
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.loveandlucky.com/
On FEB I got a message on my Google Webmaster Tools saying "Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.loveandlucky.com/" How can I know what inbound links Google considered as unnatural? thanks.
Link Building | | cardif0 -
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links ...
Hi, We recently got "the message" from Google about unnatural links for two of our 50 sites. Ranking has dropped significantly since, we did not take any action to remove the links. All our 50 sites were managed by the same SEO company but only two got this message. We are in the process of understanding the best ways to deal with this situation, but currently there are two main approaches we can detect: Remove the links, resubmit for reconsideration Ignore the message and do not do anything, if you do something it is actually like admitting you did something wrong, and Google can not prove that you did... Any insights on what approach we should adopt? Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | jid1