Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Matt Cutts tweeted: A pretty good overview of the stages of Penguin recovery:
Bring out the machete.
Sounds violent, right? It is, sort of. Let me explain.
Once your site has been inflicted by the damage of unscrupulous SEO practices, it’s in serious need of emergency services. It’s time to scrutinize your link profile, and do your best to remove any links that could be causing your website to be affected by Penguin 2.0. Here’s how the process works, described simply:
[searchenginejournal.com...]
Recovery is possible, even from something as cataclysmic as Penguin 2.0.
* I think they risk loosing further traffic, which many site-owners might be surviving on while being patient and waiting.
If you have been hanging out in a lot of blackhat forums, trading different types of spamming package tips and that sort of stuff, then this might be a more eventful summer for you
@ColourOfSpring - the article links to a checklist of things to do. What was your view about these?
Rasputin:
But I'm guessing most people here (like myself) have done nothing of the sort, but perhaps (also like me) have some dubious incoming links from very old link exchanges and directory submissions, and others they don't know where they came from. So it's clearly both inaccurate and rather insulting to say that penguin 2 only applies if we 'have been hanging out in a lot of blackhat forums, trading different types of spamming package tips'.
They're a recap of Matt Cutts quotes from the last 12 months.
Here are the steps you need to take to recover from Penguin 2.0:
Step 3. Build new inbound links using white-hat tactics like guest blogging, while abiding by proper anchor text rules with your new inbound links. [audiencebloom.com...]
>> Next ..... >
I note that Matt Cutts says
If you have been hanging out in a lot of blackhat forums, trading different types of spamming package tips and that sort of stuff, then this might be a more eventful summer for you
Rasputin:
But I'm guessing most people here (like myself) have done nothing of the sort, but perhaps (also like me) have some dubious incoming links from very old link exchanges and directory submissions, and others they don't know where they came from. So it's clearly both inaccurate and rather insulting to say that penguin 2 only applies if we 'have been hanging out in a lot of blackhat forums, trading different types of spamming package tips'.
I think you are right on the money and I am finding Matt Cutts' and Google's attitude to all of this quite offensive.
@Rasputin / BeeDeeDubbleU - this is the article writer Jayson DeMers words. Matt Cutts is endorsing the article as an accurate way to get out of Penguin 2.0.
There's nothing really new here except for SEJ's opinion on the subject of Penguin.
@turbocharged - well what's new is that it's the 3rd mention of the disavow tool application made over the last couple of weeks by Googlers, the first time it's been mentioned in relation to Penguin 2.0 , one of the only times I recall that MC has referenced how to get out of a penalization referencing a procedure to escape and restore , and it follows a reversal of previous advices of "going easy" on the disavow tool issued last Oct/Nov'ish 2012. The latter follows on the heels of an earlier thread [webmasterworld.com...] referencing MC on the use of the tool like a machete rather than going in too timidly. This is a new emphasis supported with a lot of detailed referencing and a break from policy about commenting on penalties [ even if in semantics it's no longer termed a penalty by Google].
I'd be interested to know more about the specifics of why Jayson DeMers article's could or could not work. [ just re iterating I have some concern's about elements, but I'm not for one moment saying I'm right]. Positive / objective thoughts / specifics anyone ?
I believe it's an exceptional nugget.
Step 3. Build new inbound links using white-hat tactics like guest blogging, while abiding by proper anchor text rules with your new inbound links.
If you have been hanging out in a lot of blackhat forums, trading different types of spamming package tips and that sort of stuff, then this might be a more eventful summer for you
But I'm guessing most people here (like myself) have done nothing of the sort, but perhaps (also like me) have some dubious incoming links from very old link exchanges and directory submissions, and others they don't know where they came from.
So it's clearly both inaccurate and rather insulting to say that penguin 2 only applies if we 'have been hanging out in a lot of blackhat forums, trading different types of spamming package tips'.
Step 3. Build new inbound links using white-hat tactics like guest blogging, while abiding by proper anchor text rules with your new inbound links.
Update: I asked Google's John Mueller this in a Google Hangout today and he confirmed that you do not need to use third-party tools and that Google Webmaster Tools is fine. He did say, sometimes third-party tools may help with cleaner reports but not needed.
[seroundtable.com...]
Matt Cutts wrote:
Hmm. One common issue we see with disavow requests is people going through with a fine-toothed comb when they really need to do something more like a machete on the bad backlinks. For example, often it would help to use the “domain:” operator to disavow all bad backlinks from an entire domain rather than trying to use a scalpel to pick out the individual bad links. That's one reason why we sometimes see it take a while to clean up those old, not-very-good links.
Once your site has been inflicted by the damage of unscrupulous SEO practices, it’s in serious need of emergency services.
[edited by: fathom at 11:43 am (utc) on Jun 4, 2013]
Step 5. Resubmit your site to Google for reconsideration.
Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.example.com/,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.example.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team. Of course, there may be other issues with your site that affect your site's ranking. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If you've experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site's content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you've changed the URLs for a large portion of your site's pages. This article has a list of other potential reasons your site may not be doing well in search. If you're still unable to resolve your issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team
I'd be extremely surprised that Matt meant this being done as an aftermath practice to a PENGUIN devaluation. I'm positive this is preventive maintenance not recovery steps. Once PENGUIN devalues the links they are devalued. What purpose does devaluing them again do?
preventive maintenance
...to what? To Penguin merely devaluing links? So to stop Penguin devaluing links, we use the disavow to devalue the links before Penguin devalues them? What's the point of that?
I have no idea. Perhaps it's a kind of trust building exercise / "truth commission", where Google is "prepared" to restore a site back into a higher level of trust when it removes links and/or disavows them, if it first admits to it's bad practices.
why do it yourself through the disavow tool
Recovery is possible, even from something as cataclysmic as Penguin 2.0.
Iceman88
Wanted to share my experience with the Disavow tool.
I worked with a client who was hit by a manual link penalty, received the GWT message.
We started by looking at their backlink profile using GWT/Majestic SEO and removing the ones we deemed to be 'spammy'.
It took four tries on the re-consideration request (we got rejected three times) but the penalty was lifted. This was quite recent, traffic was bouncing back to pre-penalty levels, however now they have just been hit by Penguin 2.0.
My theory on this:
I was at a recent conference in the UK and their were some ex-google guys there. He said that when spam team review a manual penalty they only look at 10% of your back links, so it could be that the set they analyse is random and on the fourth try, we were lucky to get a reasonable clean set of links and they lifted he penalty.
Clearly the algorithm can look at more than just 10% of links as well as other factors, so the overall link profile was still 'spammy' and now they have been hit by an algorithm penalty.
So did the disavow tool work? I would say YES, it was the only thing we did. [webmasterworld.com...]
The conversation that follows describes several reconsideration request attempts and further disavowing, the summary of which seems to be to go in harder to make things work, which is what the OT suggests.
Although it relates to Penguin 1.0 - it appears to be relevant to Penguin 2.0.
Iceman88 is a self confessed "lurker" [ an avid reader of Webmasterworld, not a contributer]. So a "double thank-you" Iceman88 for stepping out and contributing with this special input. These threads and post penalty analysis' only work to resolve issues when folks are prepared to share actual experiences.
Let's hope we get some more positive contributions like this to assist folks with similar stories to cross validate experiences, from any other "lurkers" out there.
Although it relates to Penguin 1.0 - it appears to be relevant to Penguin 2.0.
