Google Spam team replied to site contact form! What do we do now?

[miozio]

We have been struggling with Panda since its first interaction in February with no results. 2 reconsideration requests failed with senseless messages in WMT. After the last Panda update we got the notice "detected unnatural links" in WMT.

We cleaned up some links pointing to the affected site from 3 of our own domains and submitted another (3rd) request.

This time the reply came sooner and straight through our site's contact form:

Hello,

Thank you for your request.

We know that perhaps not every link can be cleaned up, but we need to see a substantial effort to remove the links, and this effort should result in a decrease in the number of bad links that we see. Once you are confident that you have done everything you can to remove these links, please reply to this email with the details of your clean-up effort.

Sincerely,

The Google Search Quality Team

Due to the fact that this domain dates back to 2004, it gained thousands of links and it was difficult to go through each one. We still had to do it and "Bingo", we found a spam attack from more than 150 low quality article directories registered in mid 2010 under one name!

In January 2009 we submitted 10 different articles to Articlesbase and Ezinearticles (these are reliable article directories with editorial staff who review submitted content for quality)

And now we see our articles on those spam directories who took content from Articlesbase and Ezine. Of course nobody responded when we tried emailing them 3 times.

I responded to this message explaining everything ( as seen on those spam sites, articles were submitted Jan 2009 but the domains were created in mid 2010).
Still waiting for the reply from Google.

Possible fix.
Those articles have links to 2 different pages, so I was thinking to change the URLs of these pages without 301 redirect and delete the old ones from index. I know we will drop many many other natural links but to save the whole site we can easily do it.

Has anyone fixed similar issue due to link attack by removing the linked pages?

[netmeg]

I seriously doubt that it's a game to a couple of Google guys.

[miozio]

Let's get serious here. I was contacted this way and they were Google and they were not joking around!

Things look pretty ugly and Google's words "trick our systems into ranking sites higher" will now be interpreted as "trick our systems into ranking sites LOWER"

This is a loophole I am really worried about but I bet it doesn't work for corporate sites and other untouchables!

As per the site in question, our investigation went further and we discovered that a huge database was made for sale and is being sold aroud with about half a million of articles from different sources. I stopped resolving this issue and I will not be deleting those two pages just to please Google and it's faulty algo.

[brinked]

I have been up to date on all the ways google contacts webmasters and I have to honestly say that something just doesnt feel right about this post.

The method of contact right down to the actual messages, it just doesn't feel like this is google contacting you. My thoughts are:

1. Like most professional legit companies, they like to keep things uniform. It is rare they will start using other mediums especially when they already have a perfectly organized system to do so already.

2. I have never ever seen google be so helpful to any webmaster where suspicious backlinks were an issue. Even if google did see your backlinks profile as being less than ideal, I highly doubt they would point that out to you. They usually go along the lines of "go read our google webmaster guidelines".

3. The choice of words just doesn't feel like google. Your message is very personal and from what I have seen, google only likes to give general broad messages where you are not going to get a direct answer to your problem unless you have some malware on your site or 404 pages or something.

If google is contacting you, I would be worried because your site is under a manual review and there is usually a reason for that.

In any case, good luck with recovering your website, just dont count on google to make your job any easier.

[miozio]

I have never dreamed about having a direct email address of The Google Search Quality Team but I now do and it is legit!

[edited by: tedster at 6:17 pm (utc) on Feb 7, 2012]

[brinked]

miozio,

If I were you, quite honestly I wouldn't be trying to prove myself to any webmaster community. If you really are in direct contact with someone at google then that is more power to you and you should get them to help you as much as possible. Tell them how thankful you are and follow their advice.

People were laughing at me when I said I was making good money with a website, those laughs turned into "can you teach me how to do that?" after I bought my 3rd house.

[miozio]

Update
We managed to take this network of 147 domains off our back and here is what Google replied:

Thank you for your request.

After re-evaluating your site’s backlinks, we are able to partially revoke a manual action. There are still inorganic links pointing to your site that we have taken action on. Once you’ve been able to make further progress in getting these links removed, please reply to this email with the details of your clean-up effort. We recommend that rather than sending us the domain names of the sites that have successfully removed links, please send us the exact URLs of the pages in which the links once appeared.

If you would like more specific advice, we suggest you post in our Webmaster Help Forum, where members of the webmaster community may be able to help you: [google.com...]

Sincerely,

The Google Search Quality Team

[seoskunk]

This sounds like someone having some fun at your expense. Maybe its the fake matt cutts........

[tedster]

It sounds quite legitimate to me. Google has been putting some effort into improving the clarity of their communications with webmasters lately and this has the "ring" to it.

[lucy24]

If you would like more specific advice, we suggest you post in our Webmaster Help Forum, where members of the webmaster community may be able ...

A Forums post is "more specific" than a personal e-mail? Definitely wonky.

[tedster]

Many of these emails are boilerplate, Lucy - in fact, writing up more "granular" boilerplate has been a big part of their recent upgrade. The Google forums are monitored by Google employees who sometimes give very helpful input. We've quoted a number of those Google employee posts here because they share information that's not available any other place.

[anallawalla]

I too question the "inorganic" language used and this continued use of non-WMT email channels. If anyone bothers to use that word, it means AdWords in a Google context and I have never seen any suggestion from Google that ads pointing to pages affect their organic ranking.

Why not go into WMT and ask for confirmation of those conversations?

Put up a video response to a Google video (if allowed) asking for a definition of inorganic. That will get someone's attention.

[Savanadry]

Of course there is the possibility that miozio was lucky enough to have his reconsideration request looked at by someone who actually used / uses his website and took a personal interest in it's recovery as they knew it was a good website.

[Marketing Guy]

Also begs the question why the requests aren't going via WMT? Surely an organisation like Google wants a paper trail for its external communications - emails, WMT, forums all do that - submitting a contact form on a random website doesn't.

Next step in the "how to screw your competitors" guide - pretend you're Google and get them to take down their own backlinks! ;)

[miozio]

And we partially recovered!

[londrum]

didn't google say once that a competitor cant do anything to damage your ranking? -- implying that however many dodgy incoming links you've got, they are simply ignored.

if google are saying in this email that his rankings will only improve when he succeeds in removing the links on those unrelated sites -- sites which aren't even within his control -- then it seems that a competitor can easily screw with your rankings after all.

[miozio]

The backlinks they don't like now are the exact same articles spread among hundreds of blogs taking content from directories. The same 10 articles that went spinning without my control. I can presume that there is a flag on these articles, wherever they pop up, they will be considered spam! We took care of the directory network but the progressive multiplication continues and it's impossible to catch up.

[miozio]

implying that however many dodgy incoming links you've got, they are simply ignored.

Someone from Google probably said that but the Spam Team doesn't think so. There is no common agreement at the plex. We all know that Google's feet are twisted in separate directions and they are still able to jog pretty well.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Penalties are supposed to apply to the sites with the links on them, and the link juice is supposed to be neutered. Am I understanding correctly that you believe Google is asking you to clean backlinks on sites you don't own?

That's a slippery slope, it would mean anyone could embark on buying shady links for their competition.

[miozio]

Google is asking you to clean backlinks on sites you don't own?

I wish I owned those sites, I would take them down immediately.

[ohno]

didn't google say once that a competitor cant do anything to damage your ranking? -- implying that however many dodgy incoming links you've got, they are simply ignored.

if google are saying in this email that his rankings will only improve when he succeeds in removing the links on those unrelated sites -- sites which aren't even within his control -- then it seems that a competitor can easily screw with your rankings after all.

AFAIK they do STILL say that, how can anyone have any control over who links to them?!

[Content_ed]

This discussion makes me wonder if it would be smart to get rid of huge numbers of spam links to a single page by 301'ing them back to the jerk who created them. I wonder what Google would make of it. I know there are a couple of expendable pages on my site that were added to the blogroll of some real spammy bloggers trying to link a good neighborhood. Resulted in a couple tens of thousands of lousy links.

Or maybe we should all get together and 301 those links to Google, or to Matt Cutts old blog. Maybe that would get their attention:-)

[ryankent]

Hello All,

I wanted to jump in regarding this topic. In fact, this thread is what led me to register at WebmasterWorld :)

There seems to be confusion regarding Google's method of contact. Miozio made an error stating Google contacted him through his site's contact form. He corrected that error in his 3rd post stating "I checked the logs, message came straight to e-mail not contact form, sorry! " To the best of my knowledge, all communication with Miozio on this topic was via e-mail with the Google Spam Team.

The reason I am involved with this topic is I am an SEO who is working with a client who received a letter from Google which is almost identical to the one Miozio received. I am confident the letter is authentic.

I have worked with numerous clients to remove Google penalties. This instance is the first time I was contacted via e-mail from the Google Spam Team. I can copy/paste the letters but the wording is certainly authentic. The timing of the letters is shortly after I filed Reconsideration Requests via Google. The first letter even detailed the issue and stated "In addition to this email, you may also receive a notification in Webmaster Tools regarding the outcome of your reconsideration request." The next day, I received the response in WMT.

TL;DR - I wish to share my opinion that Miozio's account of the letter's received from Google's Spam Team is likely authentic.

Ryan Kent

[edited by: tedster at 4:11 am (utc) on Feb 9, 2012]

[phranque]

This discussion makes me wonder if it would be smart to get rid of huge numbers of spam links to a single page by 301'ing them back to the jerk who created them. I wonder what Google would make of it.

the only way "links to a single page" could be redirected back to the referrer is if the HTTP Referer header was provided with the request and googlebot won't be providing that information.
in other words, when a search engine "follows" a link it's not the same as a visitor clicking that link in their browser.

[jsherloc]

@Ryan, as in the OP's example, were your clients asked to remove links from sites that they had no control over?

How exactly does that work, if so? How can a webmaster be penalized for something they have zero control over?

THIS is the type of thing that really needs to be clarified ASAP in this crazy Post-Panda world.

Maybe I am just being pessimistic, but it seems like Google would have come out and said clearly that competitors cannot hurt you with direct linking...yet it always seems like a vague answer they give in relation to this topic...so maybe they don't want to come out and tell us that competitors CERTAINLY can "spam" our sites, draw attention to them, and eventually take them out. Scary stuff...

[tangor]

I want to know what the "affected site" is. The OP's or a spammy neighborhood linked to FROM the OP's site? Makes a big difference.

[ryankent]

@jsherloc, yes the client is being directly asked to remove links from sites they do not own.

@tangor, the affected site is my client's site. My client's site has been penalized for the manipulative links pointed to their site.

Once the penalty issue has been resolved, I will share the details of this experience so all webmasters can benefit. Our present focus is the removal of this penalty. The client presently does not rank for their own domain name. For all keyword searches the site ranks dead last.

[graeme_p]

Google's guidelines now say

There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index.

Other recent threads here (such as this: [webmasterworld.com ] have suggested that it is possible to harm low ranking competitors by creating lots of spammy links to their sites.

[lucy24]

it is possible to harm low ranking competitors by creating lots of spammy links to their sites.

Forgive the stupid question, but... if they're already low ranking why do you even need to harm them?

[jsherloc]

@graeme, do you know how recently that change in wording happened?

I think graeme is suggesting more along the lines of "possibly lower quality/a newer website that isn't aged and doesn't yet have any SERP authority/probably smaller in size/probably makes money via the website's advertising methods rather than directly selling something etc"...not necessarily "lower ranked".

The problem is, that could describe just about every "small business" online. So that doesn't make me feel any better...lol

[tedster]

Over the years, I've been asked in to help with a few sites that said they were wrongly penalized because of spam links. Funny thing, after some time went by I learned that they actually had placed those links - or at least hired someone else who had.

In addition, I know of two cases where someone went after their competition with spam links and had absolutely no success at all.

I'm not saying that wrongful penalties can never happen - but Google apparently does have some decent safeguards in place. And in those cases that I was close to, they were required to make a very solid effort at clean-up before they were eventually let out of the penalty box. (Not so easy to do if someone you hired went crazy with a blog spam script.)