My Website Has a Google Penalty, But I Can't Disavow Links
-
I have a client who has definitely been penalized, rankings dropped for all keywords and hundreds of malicious backlinks when checked with WebMeUp....However, when I run the backlink portfolio on Moz, or any other tool, they don't appear anyone, and all the links are dead when I click on the actual URL. That being said, I can't disavow links that don't exist, and they don't show up in Webmaster Tools, but I KNOW this site has been penalized. Also- I noticed this today (attached). Any suggestions? I've never come across this issue before.
-
At this point you can only wait to see the results of the reconsideration request and hope they provide you examples if more clean up is needed.
-
I used a software called WebMeUp...no other software shows the bad backlinks as they are all 404's now and no longer linking to the website. I have already submitted a reconsideration request.
-
Have you tried ahref? Majesticseo? cogintiveseo? to see your backlinks or just moz?
If you think you have been hit try using this https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration and see if itshows up.
-
Hi Karen,
Breaking away from the hypothesis about the penalty here for a second, but I am wondering if the HTTPS / HTTP issue is part of the problem here.
Would you be able to PM me the website in question if you are not comfortable sharing it publicly here? I am not a Moz staff member (I used to be, 2006 - 09) but I help out with Q&A as an associate.
Cheers,
Jane
-
I have all the bad links, they are all 404's now.
-
Have you looked into the Link Detox tool? It supposedly helps you find the bad links that no one else monitors.
-
Thanks Travis but there are no crawl issues
-
Have you attempted to crawl the site? If not, I would give it a little Screaming Frog. If I knew the URL, I would have done it already. : )
Sometimes crawl problems look and feel like penalties. That upward trend in pages blocked by robots.txt before the fall is making me a little suspicious. Plus, if it is a problem with crawlability - that's easier to fix than a penalty.
-
Can you pinpoint the approximate date that the traffic dropped significantly? Look for a Penguin update that's near that time frame using this page: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
If you don't see a Penguin update near your drop in traffic, AND you don't have a manual penalty, you might have another issue. Possibly a Panda penalty or just some other site health issue that caused the drop in traffic. Considering the large amount of spammy backlinks you say existed, it does sound like a Penguin penalty is likely, but it can't hurt to check that Google Algorithm Change history.
If the spammy backlinks are ALL gone now, then you're right... there's nothing you can do in regards to disavowing or manual removal. If you do have a manual penalty that was given due to unnatural inbound links, you can submit a reconsideration request and let them know that you didn't build the backlinks and they all disappeared. Let Google know you plan to continue to monitor your backlink profile and take immediate action against future negative backlinks that are found.
-
Alright...weird...the search results show some https but when I click on them I get the "SSL Connection Error"
-
There's a chance I'm wrong about this. Maybe EVERY site shows that "update" line, regardless of whether or not an https version was found by Google....
Try a "site:" search on Google for both variations.
- site:https://example.com
- site:http://example.com
edit: "if you have a website on HTTPS, or if some content is indexed under different subdomains." You'll see the "update" line if you've got multiple sub-domains as well. So that's likely what's happening in your scenario.
-
I don't have that version of the site...If I try to go to https://website I get an "SSL connection error"
-
That "update" line you posted a screen shot of means you have an https version of your website. Are you sure you've got the right version verified in Webmaster Tools? If you've verified http but not https, or vice versa, verify the other one. You might be able to see the backlinks in Webmaster Tools on the other version.
You can read more about this recent Google Webmaster Tools update here: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2337524/Google-Webmaster-Tools-Gives-More-Precise-Index-Status-Data
Update us with what you find once you look into that a bit!
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
-
Change Google's version of Canonical link
Hi My website has millions of URLs and some of the URLs have duplicate versions. We did not set canonical all these years. Now we wanted to implement it and fix all the technical SEO issues. I wanted to consolidate and redirect all the variations of a URL to the highest pageview version and use that as the canonical because all of these variations have the same content. While doing this, I found in Google search console that Google has already selected another variation of URL as canonical and not the highest pageview version. My questions: I have millions of URLs for which I have to do 301 and set canonical. How can I find all the canonical URLs that Google has autoselected? Search Console has a daily quota of 100 or something. Is it possible to override Google's version of Canonical? Meaning, if I set a variation as Canonical and it is different than what Google has already selected, will it change overtime in Search Console? Should I just do a 301 to highest pageview variation of the URL and not set canonicals at all? This way the canonical that Google auto selected might get redirected to the highest pageview variation of the URL. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SDCMarketing0 -
Google Search Listing With Feedback Link
Where can I find some information on the new Google search listing that shows a Feedback link? How does one get this type of Google search listing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marketvantageteam0 -
Link earning for local businesses who can't afford content marketing
What are some of the best ways to earn and build quality relevant links that will increase exposure to your target market in addition to assisting search rankings? I personally find that local niche directories and PR are the best ways to accomplish this without having content to "earn links"..what else works? Any interesting ideas??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Is link disavow becoming a necessary defensive strategy?
We have a large site which attracts a massive amount of link spam on a continual basis. I'm talking thousands of links every day. The reason we get so much spam linking to us is that we are an authority site in a highly spammed vertical. So, to avoid falling foul of Penguin are we fast coming to a point where sites have to constantly monitor their link profiles and disavow anything that looks remotely dodgy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jandunlop0 -
Will links still show in WMT after you disavow them?
Does anyone know a definitive answer to this? I'm thinking they will still show up in WMT links to your site? Anyone seen anything different? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Further
Chris0 -
Google is not Indicating any Links to my site
We built a new store on another ccTLD and linked to it from some of our other domains in a few locations. I am noticing that with the Google operator command "links:" we are seeing nothing linking to our site anywhere. Some things to clarify: These are not no-follow links These pages linking to our new domain are indexed The pages being linked to on our new domain are indexed This is not a flash site or heavy in JavaScript The links existed the day the site was launched so when the new pages were crawled they existed. "Site:" command in Google shows me that my new site is indexed. What could potentially be causing this? I am trying to get these newer ccTLD's to begin ranking and I understand that I need to get links going to these pages since they are fairly new (2.5 months) so I can outrank the .com in the SE's in those locales. (Like Google.co.uk)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DRSearchEngOpt0 -
How long does a Google penalty last if you have fixed the problem??
Hi I stupidly thought that it would be a good idea to set up a reciprocal links page on my website named 'links'. I did this because my competitors were linking to these pages so I though it would be a good idea and I genuinely didn't know that you could be punished for this. Within about 3 weeks my rank dropped about 3 pages. I have since removed the links and the page was cached last Friday but the site still appears to have a penalty. I assumed when Google cached the page and saw the links were not there anymore that the penalty would be lifted. Anyone got any ideas? ps. The competitor websites had broken their links pages into various categories relating to the website i.e. related directories etc. so this might be why they weren't penalized.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BelfastSEO0 -
Rel= Author : Google suggests that we include this. Can i link to my FB profile
There have been several reference on how Google is trying to build author profiles so that it can effectively measure the authors authority based on the Rel=Author. I quite liked this idea , but my site is a user generated content website. So how can i leverage this ? . One thing which i was thinking was if its a good idea to link to the customers Facebook profile , plan to collect this during sign up.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShoutOut0