thms
msg:4477389 | 5:35 am on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
I just received this noticed too.. and my case is similar to yours.. my site took a hit on february and since then it recovered just a little.
I read a lot about it today and there are some reports of people receiving this notice but never lost traffic.
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SnowMan68
msg:4477500 | 1:44 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
It looks like there is no choice but to do the reconsideration request. We've already cleaned up a ton of the links, we'll have to go through again and submit the request in the coming weeks. Hopefully everything pans out for this site, it was doing well.
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norton radstock
msg:4477510 | 2:05 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
I too had this notice yesterday. I haven't even responded to a link exchange request for several years, and the only new links have been from setting up a Facebook Pages account and Twitter account connected to the site.
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Fiendix
msg:4477520 | 2:30 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
I took a hit in January and just got the info now. Confirmed with John that its the same thing. Bit messy on their side IMO..
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robdwoods
msg:4477588 | 6:24 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
@SnowMan68 generally it takes from a few days to 2 weeks for the rankings and traffic drop to follow the message. I've rec'd the message for 2 sites, one of which has never done link building. Having said that Google doesn't care whether you've done any or not. 1000s of sites are getting hit with this.
Print out all your links, go through 1 by 1, look for anything Google might not like, do everything you can to get rid of the links and document it, ask for reinclusion sending Google a link to the documentation of all the work you have done. From what I have heard you may have to "rinse and repeat" the above a few times until Google decides you've served your punishment and you can be let out.
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SnowMan68
msg:4477592 | 6:37 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
@ robdwoods
Thank you for the reply. I appreciate any insight on this that I can get. We have already started to document anything we can dig up. This is going to be a long road ahead of us I'm sure.
Generaly speaking, how big of a drop did you notice? Percentage wise? Was it mainly on the tail or the head terms?
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CainIV
msg:4477598 | 7:14 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
Some notice drops immediately (within two weeks) and others don't. It seems to me that the threshold is becoming more and more refined and customized based on the analysis of inbound links.
Severe examples of paid links and unnatural link schemes seem to suffer significant drops - much sooner, where as websites we have worked through this issue with that had one or two examples of links that might be construed as unnatural, but a host of other great branded links and brand signals, have been mostly fine for months and months.
In the end, they seem to be giving more benefit of doubt to the brand and site with a more natural link profile, and this only makes sense. I would recommend most sites consider the warning imminent and immediately start cleaning up...
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robdwoods
msg:4477601 | 7:31 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
@cainIV thanks for the insight. @snowman68 I'm not sure yet on the impact as my first notices were yesterday. Industry folks have been telling me 5-14 days for drops or no drops...
Clean up anything that looks really bad - sponsored links, incoming sitewides, and over optimized internal anchors
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jimbeetle
msg:4477619 | 8:55 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
Looks like Google's gone and changed things up again.
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. |
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More at:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/109412257237874861202/posts/gik49G9c5LU#109412257237874861202/posts/gik49G9c5LU
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SnowMan68
msg:4477629 | 9:29 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
@ jimbeetle
That is crazy news! Thanks for the link.
I still think now is the time to clean up house if you can.
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RunnerD
msg:4477630 | 9:30 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
I wonder how many people got this email. We have never bought links and we got this. Looks like scraper sites linking to us. Not sure what to do. Did not sleep last night. We have ranked well in Google for 14 years. I wonder if this is our competitors trying to harm us. Matt Cutts said don't worry, so I guess for now, we wait it out.
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SnowMan68
msg:4477631 | 9:31 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
Ditto on the not sleeping.
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robdwoods
msg:4477685 | 11:14 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
FYI, there's another round of emails going out now.
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SnowMan68
msg:4477686 | 11:20 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
Do you know what it says? Have you gotten one?
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robdwoods
msg:4477687 | 11:29 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
I didn't get any on the round this afternoon. My understanding is it's the same message, just another batch of sites is getting it.
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SnowMan68
msg:4477692 | 11:34 pm on Jul 20, 2012 (gmt 0) |
Okay, I thought maybe they were clarifying or updating webmasters.
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robdwoods
msg:4478227 | 6:05 pm on Jul 23, 2012 (gmt 0) |
FYI, Matt just announced that Google will be resending messages to previous recipients detailing which situation they are in, either getting a notice that dodgy links are pointing at your site, or you've been a naughty link buyer and you are going to get slapped.
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SnowMan68
msg:4478240 | 6:49 pm on Jul 23, 2012 (gmt 0) |
Here is the new message....
We've detected that some of the links pointing to your site are using techniques outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
We don't want to put any trust in links that are artificial or unnatural. We recommend removing any unnatural links to your site. However, we do realize that some links are outside of your control. As a result, for this specific incident we are taking very targeted action on the unnatural links instead of your site as a whole. If you are able to remove any of the links, please submit a reconsideration request, including the actions that you took.
If you have any questions, please visit our Webmaster Help Forum.
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robdwoods
msg:4478243 | 6:59 pm on Jul 23, 2012 (gmt 0) |
I'm still unclear as to whether "very targeted action on the unnatural links instead of your site as a whole" means the links are targeted, or that parts of the site, but not the whole domain are penalized. I'll watch my analytics to see if traffic for any specific page drops. It would be great if others could follow suit. I don't like the "entire site" loophole in the verbiage.
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CainIV
msg:4478342 | 5:21 am on Jul 24, 2012 (gmt 0) |
I would say if I were to have to interpret this message, that G is trying to say that they would normally inflict the actions of those unnatural links across the entire domain - aka lowered domain trust score, resulting in lost rankings likely at many levels.
Instead they are simply discounting the links themselves and not the domain score...
just my 0.02
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MaxPowers
msg:4480635 | 6:06 pm on Jul 31, 2012 (gmt 0) |
It seems the first-round Penguin sufferers were penalized for their 'indiscretions' according to G.
The second round 'offenders' have more or less had the links de-valued, so some loss of link power would be expected, but no major harm. Fix the links if you can (contact the webmasters of those sites), but Google understands that not all webmasters will respond. Google says if they charge you to remove the links, let Google know and they will use their own special brand of justice on these sites (paraphrased slightly).
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jasonpoxxon
msg:4555835 | 12:44 pm on Mar 17, 2013 (gmt 0) |
Hi all,
I received this message on the 14th March much to my disarray!
I noticed an instant drop that day in rankings but nothing catastrophic:
e.g.
4 > 7
7 > 12
18 > 24
8 > 10
etc.
The website is 10 months old and has what I would describe as a very clean post-penguin link profile:
- 61 linking domains, only three KW anchored links in total
- Good, relevant websites linking
I believe I have identified the cause for this message:
I sponsor two websites (same WM) that are great sites, relevant and good for branding by association.
The WM put a list of a few links in the sidebar under a headline: 'Sponsors'
Our links we dofollow and said:
"Thanks to OurName LTD"
I contacted the WM immediately after this message as I suspected this might be the problem and asked her to add 'nofollow' to the links, which she has done.
She also said another one of her sponsors got a WMT links message - so further indicates this was at the minimum part of the problem.
I am unsure whether I should inform Google of this action or just leave it and proceed as normal now.
Those who got this message back in July 2012 - Did you see drops? If so, how long after? What did you do?
Would really appreciate any thoughts! It's been a stressful weekend!
Thanks,
J
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jakebohall
msg:4576280 | 7:57 pm on May 21, 2013 (gmt 0) |
@ jasonpoxxon
I would leave things be and see what happens. If you notice the site is continuing to drop, then you can reach out to see if there has been some manual penalty.
Considering the drops seem pretty minimal, and some of them kept you on the first page, I would assume it is something algorithmic. If you see things continuing to fall, I would pull a copy of my backlink profile and see if all your incoming links match up to what you would expect.. basically checking to see if someone is hammering you with spam links.
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