Have i got a manual action on rankings?
-
Hi guys, so recently Google released the 'manual actions' tab under 'search traffic' in Google webmaster tools.
Recently hit by panda i checked this and got:
"
Unnatural links to your site—impacts links
Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole."
However was this not the message before saying it was not a complete manual ban, just affecting a few bad links?
I was hit badly in the rankings but still have some good terms and traffic is not that bad still from organic non-brand.
I have fixed many of the bad links (horrible articles submissions that went out of control in 2009) - do i do a reconsideratikn request? i have disavowed the bad links that are left 3 weeks ago? so do i wait to see if disavow works or do a reconsideration request?I was sure this was like the message sent out before which meant it wasn't that bad for your site, just a few links ignored?
Any advice much appreciated, thank you.
-
Many thanks all for your responses and advice.
I am going to give it another 2 weeks, but i believe a reconsideration request is in order.
-
I just saw this in the Google Webmaster Tools help section:
If you see this message on the Manual Actions page, it means that Google has detected a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to your site. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
If you don't control the links pointing to your site, no action is required on your part. From Google's perspective, the links already won't count in ranking. However, if possible, you may wish to remove any artificial links to your site and, if you're able to get the artificial links removed, submit a reconsideration request. If we determine that the links to your site are no longer in violation of our guidelines, we’ll revoke the manual action.
This was on the following page: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604772?ctx=MAC
-
I haven't seen that specific message from Google before, so I'm just giving my best guess, but I would say it wouldn't hurt to do a reconsideration request. I don't know if it will do any good since it sounds like Google is just devaluing some links, but the worst Google would do is just respond saying there was no need for the request.
Something to keep in mind, though, is that fixing the link situation isn't going to get the rankings back. The whole point of Penguin was that sites had rankings Google didn't think they deserved, so they sought to deal with the spammy links. Those links get devalued and the site no longer get's the authority boost from them. If a manual penalty has been applied, getting that lifted will help, but it will not put the site back where it was in the rankings.
Think of it this way. If you had 100 authority points, but 40 of them were from spammy links. Google comes in and devalues those spammy links and slaps you with a 40 point penalty. So, now your site has lost the 40 points from the spammy links and another 40 points due to the penalty. The site has 20 points. So, you clean up the links and get the penalty lifted. That still only puts the site back to 60 points, not the 100 points from before. The missing 40 points are just gone because those links have been devalued. The only way to get the site fully back to where it was is to just work to build authority naturally through good content and good service.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
I have already removed 119 domains manually and kept records, theres about 40 left i just cant move. I have kept a record of all of this and i like the idea on your site to upload the details of this to google docs to include on the reconsideration request - thank you for advice.
So basically I feel we got hit because a bad seo agency did article submissions on mass for the same anchor text which got ditributed over and over again, giving us a non-brand term with huge amounts of referring links. I have been working hard to sort that and stop replications from awful scraper type sites also.
I just do not know what is for the best here, i have disavowed 3 weeks ago, perhaps i should give it until end of August and if no luck on rankings I will do a reconsideration request explaining all of this and hope they value us once again.
-
Hi sounds like a rough situation,
I remembered watching this longer Matt Cutts video when we had the same sort of problem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA, and i think he mentions a couple of minutes in about using the disavow links tool which apparently can take a couple weeks, but then mentioning that you have current links you would like to disavow in your reconsideration request text
Hope this helps
James
-
Hi I would recommend using a tool called Remove'em by Virante
http://www.virante.org/Virante is a Company that is endorsed by Moz http://www.removeemThat way when Google gets your the submission request you will simply be able to have a very complete record of every webmaster you attempted to contact whether or not they contacted you back and what occurred. This is crucial Google will not let you out of a penalty by removing links in the manner in which you are speaking that cool actually is to remove links from the search engine view is the way Google shows the web sight to people when it's queried. It is not for actually link removal in the manner were speaking about here to relieve for a penalty. I hope I've been of help.Sincerely, Thomas
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
-
Why would our client's site be receiving significant levels of organic traffic for a keyword they do not rank for?
We have a client that has received 100+ organic visits for the keyword 'airport transfers', yet the site does not rank in the top 100 search results for this keyword. We have checked that it is not untagged PPC traffic. Truly baffling. Can anybody help?
Reporting & Analytics | | mrdavidingram0 -
Does a Manual Penalty Affect Other Sites in Same GA Account
Hello Mozzers, I was a bit foolish a couple of years back when first getting into the game, and employed a dodgy agency to do some SEO for me on some sites. Fast forward to this year, and the two sites in my Google Analytics account have been hit with a manual penalty. I decided to ditch the websites and move on, so removed them from my GA account, webmaster tools etc and will simply let them die a death. My question is, do you think this would affect how easy it would be to rank other websites within my GA account? Does anybody have any views on this? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Marc-FIMA0 -
Lost rankings after disavowing links
About two months ago, I received an unnatural inbound links message from Google. Then I disavowed 58 (the worst ones) and now I can see that right after the date I submitted my disavow file I'm losing rankings. What would you suggest? I don't really want to revoke my disavow file because it has totally bad links. I have this idea to build 58 links from high quality sites (instead of the 58 I disavowed). Do you think it'll work faster (if at all) or I just need to remove my disavow file?
Reporting & Analytics | | VinceWicks0 -
Local site rankings have dropped off first page but Universal went up.
My site was performing first page locally on 6 of 20 keywords, and universally on 3 of 20 keywords. We started a link building campaign and optimization about 3 weeks ago. When I looked at the rankings today I was happy to see that 16 of 20 keywords were in the top 20 rankings universally, but not happy to see that only 1 of the 25 words were ranking locally now. I lost my local ranking on 5 very important keywords. I realize that you can not rank first page for both local and organic but its as if I traded my first page local ranking for a universal ranking that appears lower on the page. Maybe someone could point me in the right direction.
Reporting & Analytics | | whmgatx0 -
What will you do when seeing the rank and traffic are dropping?
No black-hat SEO strategy was adopted, so we suppose it's not a penalty, but ranks and organic traffics are dropping. What will you do in this situation? And how long it takes for you to make sure it's not a normal flux, but something wrong happens on your site? Thanks in advance
Reporting & Analytics | | JonnyGreenwood0 -
Can't figure this ranking out..
Hi, This is puzzling me. I've been in the second/third position for a week or so for my best keyword. That is for Google US unpersonalized, which is the one that brings more traffic, as far as I understand. It can't get MUCH better. Well, I can be first, but second and third position is really awesome in my case (highly competitive keyword according to SEOMOZ PRO). Then, why on earth my traffic for that keyword was 8 times better a year ago?? I mean, a year ago I received an average of 800 visits per day and now I can barely reach 90 visits per day being in the second / third place. Visits can't increase from 90 to 800 just for increasing one spot. I've never seen in my stats such drop in my rankings. I thought that due to google updates my site was sent below the 20th position or something. But my I was shocked today when I saw that I still have the second/third position Am I crazy or this looks wrong? The page title and description that shows in google hasn't changed, so people looking for that keyword are seeing the same as one year ago. It is not a seasonal or time sensitive keyword. My best guess is that people are now always logged in and results are personalized. Don't know much about personalized results but I don't think you can optimize much for those. If that's the case, then how on earth can we optimize a page if everybody is using personalized results? Is there a way to improve your rankings in those cases? Thanks, Enrique
Reporting & Analytics | | enriquef0 -
My rankings are up and down like a Yo-Yo. Any ideas why?
One of the companies that I work for sells the latest smartphones. It ranks fairly well for key terms in an extremely competitive field. Recently the rankings of one particular handset have been extremely erratic and do not follow the pattern of other products, I am wondering if anyone can offer some insight as to why this is happening? When the handset was first announced, it ranked fairly well (20th). This is good when you bare in mind that it is an ecommerce site competing with top tech sites. Prior to release, the ranking gradually declined to 33rd. I believe this may be due to reviews being publsihed (as a result of review handsets being sent out prior to release) as Google has started to favour reviews and news updates. I have seen a similar pattern with other handsets, reviews and news are favoured by Google prior to release, but once the product is available, my rankings rise and remain on the first page provided that links are still coming in. However, the rankings of this handset dropped from 27th to below 50th upon launch. The next week the ranking rose from >50th to 7th, dropped to below 50th again the following week, rose back to 9th the week after and has now dropped again to below 50th. These are by far the biggest changes in rankings I have seen on a week to week basis. The page has a strong link profile in order to achieve such a high ranking in the first place. With this being the case I have no idea why ranking can drop off so much in the space of a week? Update: I forgot to mention initially that I have the variant listed twice, one for each colour variant. All content is the same apart from the colour being altered in the appropriate places. This has not been a problem in the past, but perhaps it is due to recent changes to Google algorithm?
Reporting & Analytics | | pugh0 -
Is 10 Keyword Targets for Page Rank too many?
My client has selected 10 keywords that they want to rank on the first page of Google for. Is 10 keywords too many to try and rank for? I have heard that you should focus on top 5 keywords instead.
Reporting & Analytics | | dseasterling0