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.
-
Stephane - in my opinion, you're right to be confused.
This question demonstrates PERFECTLY the stupidity Google has perpetrated with this latest round of unnatural link notifications.
Up until now, Google has clearly stated that if you get one of these warnings, your rankings are going to be impacted and you must take action. I know - I was in the room at SMX Advanced in June when Matt Cutts stated exactly that.
Now Cutts and Google are backpedaling and saying "actually, just because you received the warning, doesn't mean we are actually going to take any action - you may or may not need to do something about it. and you have no way of knowing unless and until your rankings tank"
I've always respected Matt a great deal, but this last round of notifications and his explanation of it (for better transparency) are absolute bullshit and rather than clarification, have just horribly muddied the already murky waters.
For what it's worth, here's what I would recommend
- go ahead and clean up any obviously spammy links you may have acquired, assuming there are any (but don't panic & go overboard)
- keep careful documentation of your clean up efforts
- do NOT submit a reconsideration request - at this point there's nothing to reconsider as your rankings haven't been affected
- make sure you're tracking your organic search traffic volume and rankings carefully so you can spot any drops as soon as they happen
- continue to try to acquire good-quality, varied, natural links from other good websites (to help offset any questionable links)
- if you see any significant rankings drops, then submit your reconsideration request with the documentation of the link cleanup work you've done (and including the links you haven't been able to clean up because they're outside your control.)
The link warning won't go away because it's just a message that's been sent and can't (to my knowledge) be recalled, but if you do in fact have spammy links and clean them up, you "shouldn't" see any future effects on your rankings - but you'll have no way of knowing. You'll just have to sit and wait to see.
Paul
-
Donnie, I agree with your sharing that link. It is perfect for Stephanie's question. However, I disagree with your conclusion.
For many site owners, the message is a warning. I would advise all site owners to clean up their spammy links, but especially those who received this warning. They MAY be penalized in the future but there is no reason to submit a Reconsideration Request if the site is not penalized.
The link you shared quotes Matt Cutts:
If you received a message yesterday about unnatural links to your site, don't panic. In the past, these messages were sent when we took action on a site as a whole. Yesterday, we took another step towards more transparency and began sending messages when we distrust some individual links to a site. While it's possible for this to indicate potential spammy activity by the site, it can also have innocent reasons. For example, we may take this kind of targeted action to distrust hacked links pointing to an innocent site. The innocent site will get the message as we move towards more transparency, but it's not necessarily something that you automatically need to worry about.
If we've taken more severe action on your site, you'll likely notice a drop in search traffic, which you can see in the "Search queries" feature Webmaster Tools for example. As always, if you believe you have been affected by a manual spam action and your site no longer violates the Webmaster Guidelines, go ahead and file a reconsideration request. It'll take some time for us to process the request, but you will receive a followup message confirming when we've processed it.
-
Yes you should these affects will not take place until a few month from now however they will take place. i would highly recommend fixing the issues and asking for a reconsideration: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-links-warnings-15461.html _read this article. _
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
-
Negative SEO & How long does it take for Google to disavow
Following on from a previous problem of this sweetandsavorymeals completely dropping from index, we have discovered that 150+ spam, porn domains have been directed at our pages (sometime in the last 3-4 months, don't have an exact date). Does anyone have exerpeince on how long it may take Google to take noticed of a new disavow list? Any estimates would be very helpful in determining our next course of action.
Link Building | | sathoiue80 -
Does google flag bad back links
where would we go identify the links that are bad is there a way to get a list of each individual link not just the site and number from the site
Link Building | | CostumeD0 -
What is the importance of root domains linking to your website in Google's rankings? I notice our competition has a much higher number on keywords I'm analyzing. Thank you!
I've noticed our competition has a much higher number of "root domains" linking to their page than we do. Is this simply a result of more websites linking to them? How long does it normally take to build up these numbers/rankings? (I'm assuming it's a concerted effort, which I'll be researching.) Thank you!
Link Building | | mjfinet0 -
How to fix algo penalty
I believe I've received an automatic penalty for over optimization so my question is --- instead of removing or changing the anchors of inbound links can i get an automatic penalty removed simply by adding more links to make the profile appear more natural? The site only has about 30 domain level links pointed at it now
Link Building | | jmckiernan86_gmail.com0 -
Google Reconsideration Response Time
Hi all, 3 of my websites have received a massive hit from Penguin/Panda due to exact phrase links. I have had all the links changed so that they are completely different, and submitted a reconsideration request to Google. Would anyone be able to tell me roughly how long it takes to get a response from a Google reconsideration request? Thanks, Anthony
Link Building | | AnthonyHall0 -
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 -
Google Webmaster Tools Message regarding unnatural links - how to respond
I acquired a small website which was subsequently hit by Google Panda for unnatural links. Since the previous owner was involved in the link building, I'm not sure what to look for. Here's the message I received from Google: ** Message from Google ** "We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass pagerank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results. If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request. ** End Message from Google ** I'm not sure how to locate "unnatural links" when there are so many pointing to the site. For example, are there specific domains I should look for that are known offenders? Or, should I look for sites that are using obvious anchor text that seems orchestrated? Any insights would be appreciated on creating an action plan. Jerry
Link Building | | JerryCharles0 -
When is Google going to sort their act out?
I work with a couple of clients in the finance and debt area. I've been doing loads of work examining the link profiles of the commercial sites at the top of the rankings and 70% of the links I am seeing are low value directories and sites obviously built for links with multiple outgoing links to completely unrelated sources! When I examine the other links their isn't enough value in them to outweigh what looks to me like very obvious and spammy low quality link building. Why can't Google see what I'm seeing - it's so obvious? I know there are multiple factors at play but links like these should offer no value or get a site penalised (isn't that what Google tell us) but these sites still seem to be ranking because of them rather than despite them!
Link Building | | SearchEngineRescue0