After 7 Reconsideration Requests - no manual spam actions found

[gozames]

Hello, I was working 9 month to remove manual spam link penalty I was getting negative answer and after 2 month of last request I have removed many links documented everything and really was working without rest and at last after 61 day from last unsuccessful request I have sent my efforts and I have got this answer "no manual spam actions found", no traffic change nothing happened, so my question is what now what should I do and what this email means ?

Thanks a lot

[tedster]

Other here have reported similar things. The key to understanding is that many ranking demotions are done by algorithm today and they are not manual... even things that used to require manual action.

[edited by: tedster at 11:32 pm (utc) on Apr 26, 2013]

[Andem]

gozames: Did you make your reconsideration request in your native language or in English?

[gozames]

English :D and I'm sorry for my English, I'm not quite good :) but I have worked with request over 2 days

[gozames]

I know that manual actions becoming algorithmic, I have heard about this but in my case should I wait for traffic to increase or for my penalty to reapplied, I have read about it at seroundtable, so I'm really disappointed I'm was working so hard and this means I have done nothing, my traffic is low and actions may be reapplied, except two even more months of very hard work ?

[Andem]

I think what you're experiencing is what many members here have been complaining about lately regarding loss of traffic. They have clearly stated that there are no manual actions taken against your site. It sounds like you're just not ranking well because their algorithm doesn't find your site useful for either visitors and/or Google themselves.

I'm not saying your site isn't useful, but they don't see the same value in it as you do.

[Shai]

Have you received an unnatural links message in the first place?

[petehall]

As far as I am aware if you did not receive a notice the action was algorithmic and unless you can figure that out its game over unfortunately.

If you did receive a notice, I have read some manual penalties get re-applied after a set time period, so it's possible you asked in between. Although if you've asked 7 times I think this is unlikely.

[gozames]

I have got notice in august, and also received 7 responses to my request with this subject "Site violates Google's quality guidelines" but for last request they told "no manual spam actions found", I know that normally if penalty removed google sending messages something like "manual spam action revoked", It's very strange to me I had manual spam actions

[Robert Charlton]

I have got notice in august...

How did the notice in August describe the problem?

[gozames]

Don't know, I have got notice in august then Unnatural inbound links message the I had 7 unsuccessful reconsideration requests and last response was no manual spam actions found

[1script]

The "unnatural links" message was not manual, hence they may technically be true when they say "no manual action found". I know how frustrating this is (been there) but in their quest to make as much money expending as little human effort as possible, they have created a monster that can automatically hand out penalties no less harsh than manual ones and yet MC's team does not have to look at them or know it was handed out. Since a human didn't hand it out, no human looks at it throughout the whole process, and the result is a limbo in which the only hope is that automatic penalties [seem to] expire with time. How long - nobody knows.

I can imagine a combination of manual and automatic penalties can exist where a human removes the manual penalty but the automatic one continues. Ironically, the result may be that your G traffic after "the manual action was revoked" may be *less* than when you had an actual manual penalty. I now have two sites that have become completely dead (as far as G is concerned) for more than a month after I received "revoked". Go figure...

Anyway, if anyone here can advise how quickly an automatic penalty that might have resulted from "unnatural links" can expire, this might be your best hope of understanding your situation.

[jimbeetle]

1script, what do you mean by "automatic" penalties? Or do you mean algorithmic?

Unnatural links penalties are manual, have an expiration date (but can be reapplied at any time), need a cleanup, maybe a link disavow submission and a reconsideration request.

A site that doesn't fit the algorithm will always run afoul until whatever is wrong is fixed, and then maybe not until any special algorithmic bits are rerun.

[gozames]

I had manual penalty and was unsuccessful to revoke it, but after last reconsideration request I have got this answer "no manual spam actions found" before this request I was getting this answer "Reconsideration request for xxxxxx.com/: Site violates Google's quality guidelines"

[1script]

@jimbeetle: regarding the automatic penalties, calling them "algorithmic changes" only because they don't require human interaction would be a misnomer. I think we can make an assumption that Google runs their business as a stable system ("stable" in the sense of the control theory applied to a large system i.e. one that does not oscillate out of control). If so, having a site drop from 10,000UV/day to 100 UV/day overnight sounds like a feedback mechanism (since it's a computer system, we'll call it an algorithm) running amok. You would not design your feedback algorithm to make such drastic changes - you will never balance the system like that. It has all the hallmarks of manual input overriding the feedback. MC and his team cannot look at anything other than the most egregious or the most prominent cases. Since we know that Google is really skimpy on actual "real" human labor, the only other thing that can cause this kind of a drastic change would be the site tripping some kind of a per-set (manually!) tripwire. In other words, it kicks in without human interaction but has nothing to do with ranking algorithm.

I don't know, perhaps it's splitting hairs with terminology, but in my mind the "algo" is the set of software that is responsible for natural ranking of sites (i.e. positioning in SERPs relative to each other) and everything else would be either a promotion or a penalty. I never heard of Google nepotism (though it's not impossible) and so that leaves up with penalties. Manual would be something that came as a result of MC team member action (and that's what they are referring to in "manual action revoked") and for the rest I cannot think of another term but "automatic penalty".

It still feels like, works like and has consequences of the "manual action" but unlike the actual "manual action" has no actual recourse.

[makin]

@1script: are you saying that unnatural links penalty message is automatic and don't require a manual action to be removed?

Three months ago I have been noticed about unnatural links/buying links. Today I'm already with the penalty.

Actually, I'm writing my 7th reconsideration in three months. I had about 560 domains pointing me and I have removed about 60% of my links contacting and using the disavow tool. My traffic have been drop about 40%. I had a brandname.

Any tips for the next letter? I always got the same automatic answer.
200 links/domains in the disavow tool is too much? The link in the disavow tools count as link removed? How they interpret it?

Thank you so much.

[1script]

@makin: the message is obviously automated and I do believe the penalty itself, at least since after penguin, is also automatic.

Be careful about admitting to too much sin :) 40% drop these days can come from *anything* - it does not necessarily have to be some Earth shattering black hat technique. Besides, three months between the notice and the drop hint at those two being unrelated. I did have a site receive the "unnatural" notice and not lose any traffic, so chances are your traffic issue may not even be related to the notice.

560 domains pointing to one is something I never heard of and have no experience in dealing with. If you said 3, I would say, have them all authenticated with WMT (using DNS TXT record) and move them to the destination domain properly i.e. via WMT-> Configurarion -> Change of Address
But I would have no idea how to scale that to 560 - sorry.

As far as the number of links (domains?) in the disavow file - there are rumors that noone actually looks at those at the present. They kinda sorta just gather information at this point. So, I would assume it does not matter much how long is your list, they just want to see as many of those bad links ACTUALLY removed. Not disavowed but really removed. I was only successful when I was able to actually remove large proportion of bad links. Well, in my case many bad links were transient and the sites expired, so the links were gone.

Good luck!

[makin]

I think that my traffic drop is related to the notice, because I stopped growing up once I got the notice, and then I started to dropping positions for my main keyword.

On the other hand, maybe I have deleted some good links that have dropped me some positions. Is very hard to detect what google interpret for unnatural links...and if you make lot of mistakes, it can destroy your website.

About the disavow links, I think this is my problem. I can not contact to the webmaster of these links. I tried to call them and no answer...If google is not counting them as removed links.. I think that I have a big problem... because there I have a lot of "unnatural links". I think that I have to insist about it in my next reconsideration.

Thanks!

[jimbeetle]

@makin: the message is obviously automated and I do believe the penalty itself, at least since after penguin, is also automatic.

No, they are two different things. As I said above, the unnatural links penalty is manual. Penguin is algorithmic.

The unnatural links penalty needs a link cleanup, a disavow submission and a reconsideration request.

The best current treatments of the subject are The Difference Between Penguin and an Unnatural Links Penalty (and some info on Panda too) [seomoz.org] and Q&A With Google's Matt Cutts On What To Do If You Get A Manual Penalty [searchengineland.com].

[1script]

@jimbeetle: the seomoz article is rather nice and detailed but it takes one (hell of an) assumption and just runs with it. Unnatural links penalty is equated to receiving the unnatural link notice and is labeled "manual" without much evidence for it (anecdotal as always with G). I have observations and have seen people post theirs in the comments to the article that contradict that assumption.

1. I do have a site that received the notice and nothing at all happened to its traffic. Commenters to the post reported the same thing. It's hard to call it a penalty.

2. Unnatural Links notices have been issued en-masse just before Penguin, then started to come more random. Mass actions like this are not really compatible with manual anything. I see no mentioning anywhere that MC team worked overtime from early March to late April 2012

3. My own experience in moderating spam and low quality content of a large number of sites leads me to believe that true *manual* action in general has to be exceptionally rare. Simply because it does not scale well and Google needs everything they do to be scalable to the max.

So, I not convinced the issue is as settled as the author of the article makes it to be.

[jimbeetle]

So you're just disregarding the searchengineland interview with Matt Cutts?

[1script]

So you're just disregarding the searchengineland interview with Matt Cutts?

That interview is just about any manual penalty for which you received a notice which is supposed to be 100% of the time as of late. I guess I should consider myself lucky that I haven't broken any rules lately since I've never got any notifications other than the "unnatural links" last year. So, these "unnatural links" are not addressed specifically in the interview except in this interesting quote:

... especially after last year’s mess of sending out unnatural link warnings that caused panic, then further confusion, when Google said they could maybe be ignored.

The seomoz article addressed "unnatural links" notice specifically and I thought took some liberties with assumptions.

Anyway, not to turn it into a pissing match, but it looks to me like the logic works out to be like this:
Recently (since early 2013) if you did get *any* manual action, you will get a notice. But the "unnatural links" notice does not specifically mention manual action (it goes like this: "notice of detected unnatural links to xxx") so it may still be a response to an automatically tripped filter or some such.

[Dot_Media]

1script: I agree, that SEOMoz article should not be taken as a definitive guide by any means.

gozames: can you get into your webmaster tools account and paste; the original message, the reply to your first reconsideration request, the final reply to your last reconsideration request?

that might shed more light on what is happening. also make sure that you line up your traffic drops with past Panda and Penguin updates and see if those correlate at all.