Google Roll Out Another Wave Of Link Warnings

Alex, does nofollowing unnatural links rid any form of algo penalty – may are simply removing left right and centre – is this really the way to go?

*many (excuse the typo)

Hi Ed,

Looking at previous examples there have been arguments for both methods, obviously Google are looking to prevent links that are designed to stem Pagerank as well as manipulate search engine rankings, so I don’t see any reason why placing nofollow on a number of the links that you have would not be a positive step.

My advice would be to take a look at your backlink profile and be honest with yourself, does your link look like it is natural or have you placed the link on a site with the intention to ‘game the system’ and increase your visibility?

Clearly if you have received one of these warnings, there is something that is not ‘natural’ to the way that the Google manual check has seen your activities and so you need to look to clean that aspect of your SEO up as quickly as possible.

Removal of links is a void choice when trying to clean up your profile but it can be just as time consuming as trying to have nofollow attributes added to the links that are pointing at the site, so i guess this is a matter of choice.

I know that if you are one of the many that have bought links prior to this message, it will be hard to think that you are having to delete what you have paid for but that is exactly what Google are looking to achieve in order for you to no longer think about going down that route.

Good luck with the clean up and remember, previous instances have given about 10 days before ranking drops have been noticed, some seeing their money terms drop out of the top 500 from a number 1 spot, so remember that you are racing against time so be honest, prompt and direct with the process.

So I guess I’ll head over to Digital Point, buy one of my competitors a load of cheap crap irrelevant links, all using the same anchor text.

I think we are about to see the rise of nastier black hat strategies.

Bob, fiverr is cheaper !!!! Maddening that Google wont recognize this issue. I am sure its only a matter of time before a well known SEO does a real case study to show just how easy this is to do now.

Going through the latest link additions in GWT, I see links being added left and right that are beyond our control as well as links getting “found” this month that were placed several years ago. To be honest, I think this is just Google padding their bottom line by driving sites to Adwords to cover the difference after penalties. It is kind of like getting a ticket in the mail one day for any time in the past 10 years that you illegally parked somewhere.

Google knows that people are incentivised to get found in the listings. This is the same reason that they are do this: http://bit.ly/LCusuV, which to me is anti-competitlve and bad for the store that focuses on audio equipment, and has the best chance of really informing buying decisions. Instead, why wouldn’t they list local stores where you can go in and hear the speakers and talk to an expert. Or list stores on the internet that have really good information for persons looking for the best quality speakers.

Since Google knows that people have been incentivised over the last 10+ years to get to the spot that Google places as a premium as well for their ads, they know that probably the majority of most business oriented websites have participated in some type of link trading, directory listings in the past. Since they can just say, “We see bad links and are going to penalize you lest you spend countless hours doing the almost impossible task of cleaning them up”, they give sites no recourse. They know that these businesses rely on the internet to get new business.

Which leads me to my last point, If they know that businesses have been incentivised over the past 10+ years to rank well on Google, and to get to the top of Google you had to have links, and many businesses rely on Google to put food on the table, this creates a win-win for Google at the expense on the small business. Google knows that the business either needs to do the nearly impossible task of contacting neglected directories or buy ads. Google is incentivised to not give businesses a break because the longer that the business is in the crapper rankings-wise, the longer they will be buying ads to make up the difference.

Google has over a million servers, and has the processing power to understand the patterns of the internet. Many directories and spammy networks have folded due to Google’s recent updates. I think this is a great thing and I would love to never see a single comment spam or crap website again. But I cannot believe that Google needs people to clean up bad back links. These directories will fold by themselves as people gain the knowledge that the links provide no value and people stop paying their server costs.

I have always seen Google as a shining light of mission over profit. I want Google to be successful and I admire the benefits that they have added to society. I think that they need to be more understanding and less rigid in their dealing with small businesses. Google was a startup with a great idea that took off. Today, I want other startups (outside of the tech sector as well) to be able to get the big ideas out and not be crowded out by big brand websites with the resources to monopolize Google’s ad space. I also want Google to deal fairly with small businesses who have been fighting for that nut like all of us, to not be kicked around by the guise of idealism.

The ironic thing in all of this is that Google is the worlds largest content scraper and paid link directory. I can put an ad on Google with whatever anchor text and sales verbiage I want. The scale of Google makes them a useful directory to the world’s information, but in the end, that is what they are, and that is what they are punishing others for listing on.

Alex, I’m not questioning the validity of what you’re saying about rankings suffering around 10 days after a GWT warning, but to help me convince senior management of the need to move quickly (we’ve just received a warning) could you point me to a few other credible sources that support the existence of this timeframe?

James the blog I am talking about got the unatural links pattern and approx 10 days later all traffic was gone. So it is very real the problem is not too many people want to publicize that they got the alert. So yes if you don’t act quickly you willl have a headache in two weeks. Look for sitwides as well another site got the alert when we cleaned the sitwides it came back. Also look for too much anchor text change to naked URLs where you can. Good luck

Following the first penguin one of my own sites dropped like a stone. Our blog which is part of the site had been driving excellent traffic it all dissapeared. Our blog posts were ranking on the sites that had scraped us, and we were gone. We first removed the RSS feed from the site to stop the scraping. We then filed dozens of DMCA requests to Google. Google has yet to remove all the duplicate content and the blog traffic is far from where it was before the drop. However, there are no new incidents of scraping and the new posts we put up rank. Some of the old ones that were scraped still only appear if you search in quotes and in blog search. We have got about a third of the traffic back and now check for duplicate content on an ongoing basis. The action by Google proves they have no way to recognize the originator of content and its shameful with their wall to wall PHDs that they have not worked it out and are now penalizing legitimate sites for actions they have no control over. Of course the scrapers that ranked for our content were loaded with adsense.

I think you are right on the money!

I received a notice to a site that never had any link building done (it’s very old) and the only bad thing in it’s link profile was scrappers.

Very lame for Google…

@Fionn Downhill sounds like an absolute mare – and happens all too often – I guess we’ll stay tuned to the new machine learning google – they certainly are ramping up the game and keeping things interesting.

I ventured on to your site – was it the blog associated with http://www.sycara.com?

Interested to learn more about what your platform has to offer – what’s the USP compared to most SEO packages / applications out there?

Ed no not that blog one of my own sites in the recovery industry. Happy to tell you more about the tool how can I get hold of you I am on fionn.downhill (at)gmail.com. I can give you the info on the actualy site that got hit too don’t want to post it publicly.

@Alex Graves I’ve not received warnings personally – but there seemed to be a huge outcry online today.
I just wondered why everyone would remove the links and not just ‘nofollow’ them as at least if you’ve bought it you’ll get some benefit albeit if not insane traffic then a little brand awareness…

I’m not linkbuilding in the Money niche myself but have been studying the serps and question in some niches: Who won’t get a penalty? If every single site within a set of highly competitive KWD serps (as genuine businesses that offer good services) are guilty of buying links….then….who…do…google…actually…rank????

I’ve seen all the main players buy links in one way or another whether it be text links or links disguised within flash ad widgets – if all of these footprints (and apparently widget / footer / site / theme credits are next on the agenda) then surely Google should kick their own butts for gaming us with linking back t them using G+
????

My argument is that widgets are for userability purposes – yes a credit is given and yes this credit is deserved for:

A.) hosting the essentials involved in bringing it to the masses
and ~
B.) offering userability experiences that can be shared!

What are your opinions on link ‘footprints’ that may or may not contain the same anchor text?

To me it’s like a simulated digital holocaust of web properties and capitalist endeavours, but that’s just my personal opinion.

Hi Ed,

Well personally i think that flash widgets and banner placements that are created in order to hide the look of a hyperlink within a site, without actually doing so, is a practise that Google are becoming more aware of and as you say, without having been caught up in such antics, it is hard to say that penalties and drops have already been associated with them.

I do think that Google are looking for new ways to be able to establish just how legitimate a placement is on a site but fail to see an automatic methodology that they could follow at the moment, but that could be why i’m not a Google employee within their development labs?!

Obviously we know that Google have the capability to be able to follow links and try to associate them with sites, after all this is the way that we know that their crawlers work but trying to establish whether these placements have been placed naturally or artificially will be a challenge that Google have to face, getting that wrong could be a big shake up within the whole of the internet advertising aspect.

I’m not sure whether I can agree with Google looking to spark a holocaust of web properties but I can say that owning a successful website has become much harder than it was back in 2005, the advancement and requirements that Google expect are much higher and whether these are right or wrong in their battle to show the best search results is still to be seen.

Yes that is correct one of my consulting clients using the widegets got burned.

Hi Alex…
I read some of the post on Warrior forums and i have seen people saying their traffic gone up, after they recieved the messages.. If that’s the case what does that mean.. And after Matt Cutts message on google plus, i think its created more confusion….I have also read a post on searchengineland that now directories are charging them to remove links… Directories can add any link they want and can take money to remove the links… This is leading to a whole new business venture for spamming industry… Don’t you think directory or cheap blog owners will start linking on money keywords to the site and would demand for money… Leave competitors aside, this is a serious threat to all business

Hi Tauseef,

This is the first that I have heard of directories trying to charge to have links removed as we have always had the mentality that those style of links aren’t worth the lack of control or any form of positive value unless they are some of the larger sites such as DMOZ or Yahoo Directory.

If you have proof that sites are looking to charge you to remove those links, I would take that evidence and forward that to Google in order to make them aware of the situation, i’m sure that they will not condone the extortion tactics that these sites would be looking to profit from.

Here is the link, take a look

http://searchengineland.com/link-directories-want-us-to-remove-your-links-pay-us-128237

So if you receive a warning message and your rankings increase, assumably that means your competitors have been even naughtier than you…. 🙂

Checking your backlink profile specifically your site’s anchor text distribution is really important. Tools like ahrefs, Raven Tools, majestic SEO, and Open Site explorer can help you find links pointing to your site whether they are bad or good links. Diversify your anchor texts within your link profile by using a mix of exact match, branded terms, and URL can help you minimize aggressive anchor text distribution.

Hmm. This sounds pretty serious. I don’t like the thought of being penalized for the actions of someone I can’t control. I’ll have to take some time and see if I’ve been scraped.

Thanks for the warning.

Google is creating a great confusion on our part due to changes in its search algorithm. Google periodically sends warning about unnatural links. Yet the manner by which Google determines “unnatural” is still a big question. Google advises us to create quality content, but can hardly protect us from possibility of poor links being directed to our site by our competitors.

Precisely, what is the point of creating great content when a competitor can come along and point dozens of “unatural links” at your site and take you out. Google has to come out with its disavow links tool for this insanity to stop.

Google Roll Out Another Wave Of Link Warnings

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