Disavowal and reinclusion requests timeframe

[asusplay]

Is there a timeframe one should wait before submitting a disavowal file and a reinclusion request.

What about between reinclusion requests? What is seems as "too soon"? I heard Google rejects reinclusiuon requests if submitted within a short space of time.

Also I am seeing in my link profile a lot of pages and sites which are now offline, 404, account suspended, forbidden etc. I am disavowing them anyways but how long does it take before these are flushed out of the Google link profile?

[asusplay]

? no one?

[Whitey]

I heard Google rejects reinclusiuon requests if submitted within a short space of time.

Can you reference this this to assist with commenting.

Also, do you have a manual penalty, and how do you know?

[JS_Harris]

Google rejects reinclusion requests when they still see problems on the site and/or when they feel that the webmaster didn't do everything they could to fix the problem, whatever it was.

The disavow file alone will not solve your problems, you need to actively try to get the links off the net as well. Contact as many webmasters as you can and document the results, Google wants to see some effort.

It's my guess that if you file your request 5 mins after submitting a disavow file and 100% of the links in the file are still on the net that the request will be rejected.

[asusplay]

@Whitey yes I have a manual penalty - got the unnatural links warning together with a huge drop in traffic a week later. After 2 reinclusion requests I get the "your site is violating Google quality guidelines - specifically look for links which may be unnatural or used to manipulate ranking by passing on pagerank or have been part of a link scheme..." [paraphrasing here]. 5 months on and I get a handful of Google referrals. I've stopped looking at my stats as much as possible for my own health.

Thanks @JS_Harris. I submitted the last reinclusion just after I finished with the disavow file. However as you say that didn't work, although going through over 9000 links takes some effort and took me a couple of weeks! However I am now contacting all the ones that I can (not that many spammy sites have contact details or contact forms), documenting it in the disavowal file as well as a separate spreadsheet, to present with my next re-inclusion request. Unfortunately I'm not getting much feedback of the requests I do send, and since this was all done by the SEO company I used for a year I can't help feeling it's a but of a futile exercise.

In any case there's plenty of sites which are now offline / expired etc but still show in the link profile. How long does this take to update?

[asusplay]

I heard Google rejects reinclusiuon requests if submitted within a short space of time.

It is something I read somewhere (but can't remember where sorry), about submitting reinclusion requests within a short space of time and was wondering how long do you have to wait between requests, considering that you have taken more steps in trying to fix whatever problem you think you have...whether it's a week, a month, or maybe even just days.

In both cases the turnaround time to reply to me was 5-6 days.

[Bones]

In any case there's plenty of sites which are now offline / expired etc but still show in the link profile. How long does this take to update?

You might be waiting weeks/months for Google to recrawl a page that's off the beaten track somewhere in a dark corner of the web.

That page might even then need to be recrawled a further time, just to check it is definitely offline. Then it'd take another couple of weeks for that to be reflected in GWT.

[JS_Harris]

I have sent two requests 7 days apart despite the first request being responded to with a 'no manual penalty'. I had what I thought(and still think) was a smoking gun in my traffic logs that showed heavy visiting from Mountainview and two other known human rater IPs in the 24 hours before my site took a nosedive. An algo didn't just come around after 7 years of being on top, ya know?

Anyway, I've improved the site greatly and traffic is returning slowly month after month. Quality is a cure to your Google troubles.

[Planet13]

"I am disavowing them anyways but how long does it take before these are flushed out of the Google link profile?"

Firstly, do you have a manual penalty (you were notified by google), or were you hit by Penguin, or both?

In the case of a manual penalty, if those pages that linked to you are no longer available online, then you could probably count on that knowledge being available right away to any MANUAL reviewers.

But in terms of the algorithim, it could take months for that - and for disavowed links - to take hold in your ranking.

If you submit a disavow file, be sure to mention that in your reconsideration request.

[kellyman]

I disavowed the links Google told me that were in violation and 48 hours disavowed them and sent a reconsideration and Google lifted the penalty, total 5 days

Now one thing i will say is that the links Google told me were in violation to me were good links however the only thing they included were anchor rich text links ..

So for me Google will respond and act fast nowadays the longest i waited for a reply was 6 days i then got a personal message in regard to the 2 examples, i replied to that and within 48 manual penalty lifted.

although penalty lifted i have not seen any drastic change in the serps

[Whitey]

@asusplay - would 404'ing or blocking any of your pages make sense and replacing them with new URL's?

[Planet13]

@ kellyman:

"although penalty lifted i have not seen any drastic change in the serps"

I am sorry to hear that :(

You know, I have been raking my brains over the last month or so in regards to Penguin and manual penalties.

Basically, everything I have heard from a REAL GOOGLE PERSON (Matt Cutts or John Mueller) is that:

1) It is more likely for sites that are ACTIVE about removing links and disavowing to escape a manual penalty more quickly than a Penguin slap...

2) Sites that have a manual penalty might ALSO have a Penguin slap, which would take longer to see recovery than a manual penalty.

In google analytics I have advanced segments for different LENGTHS of keyword phrases two-word, three-word, four-word, five-word, and I think one for six-keywords or more.

It might be good to try that and see whether there is movement for, say, keywords that are four or more words in length.

I am guessing (and this is only pure speculation) that you might see recovery for long tail quicker than for single- or double-keyword phrases.

[asusplay]

@Whitey I have recently been thinking about that. I was thinking about making those targetted pages return a 410 error. The SEO company was targetting a few pages so it wouldnt be too difficult to make them 410 and come up with some new related contact for the sections I would need to replace. I had read that making pages return a 404 or 410 is like disavowing the links that point to it. However what would I do about the many links that are pointing to the homepage? That's the stumbling block

[Planet13]

@ asusplay:

Yes, google's John Mueller has said that pages that return a 404 or a 410 would be treated similarly to a page where the links have been disavowed.

"However what would I do about the many links that are pointing to the homepage? That's the stumbling block"

Ideally, disavow them and have them removed. This is what you should be doing for ALL the bad links that point to your site's pages, EVEN IF YOU REMOVED THE PAGE.

Here is what I did / would do:

1) Disavow any questionable link.

2) Remove pages that had only bad links and put the content onto a new page.

3) Contact webmasters and ask them to remove those bad links to my site (keep accurate notes and copies of your emails to - and responses from - those webmasters.

4) You may have to wait until those pages that you removed are no longer showing in google's SERPs. That might be overkill, but if you have been submitting reconsideration requests too frequently, then maybe a little patience would be appreciated by the reconsideration team.

I don't have any proof, but judging by what the people who HAVE recovered from manual penalties or penguin have experienced:

1) New links will not be as effective at flowing page rank to your site as they would have been had you not had a previous penalty / been penguinized

2) Your site MIGHT be watched more frequently by the good people at google.

[asusplay]

@Planet13

That's what I am doing. As well as disavowing the links, I am now contacting as many sites as I can. The problem I am having is that:
1. A lot of spammy sites do not have any contact information, and no contact showing in the whois.
2. I am having to submit many of the requests via web forms so I can't actually keep evidence of what I have sent. Just keep a record which I am commenting on the disavow file.
3. Of the many requests I have made, only a handful have replied saying that the link / page has been removed.
4. The worst of it is I am seeing someone spammed hundreds of blogs with comment spam on one particular day with a link to my site. I doubt the SEO company would have done this so I believe it was the work of a competitor. MOst of the sites that the blog spam is on doesn't have a way to contact them.
5. Being affected by the unnatural links penalty I wouldnt be surprised if Penguin wasn't at play too.
6. Personally it is taking it's toll. 8 years of hard work reduced to rubble and I feel it is all futile since I cannot get most of these links removed and even if the penalty is removed I have also been reading many reports that rankings and traffic doesn't come back anyway. I don't want to give up just yet, but I wonder whether it might be time to call it a day.

[Planet13]

I know this is a lot of extra work, but:

"1. A lot of spammy sites do not have any contact information, and no contact showing in the whois."

Mention that in the reconsideration request. Include a link to the whois page so that someone can see that the contact info is not listed.

"2. I am having to submit many of the requests via web forms so I can't actually keep evidence of what I have sent. Just keep a record which I am commenting on the disavow file. "

copy the URL of the page that the contact form appears on and (possibly) the confirmation URL page after you submit your request.

"4. The worst of it is I am seeing someone spammed hundreds of blogs with comment spam on one particular day with a link to my site. I doubt the SEO company would have done this so I believe it was the work of a competitor. MOst of the sites that the blog spam is on doesn't have a way to contact them."

Make sure to view those links and see if they are followed or nofollow. If they are nofollow, then I would imagine that you would have less to worry about. Usually blog comments are nofollowed by default in MANY (if not most) blog platforms.

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I am really sorry to hear it is taking a toll on you. I know it is taking a toll on me, too. But at the end of the day if your content is killer, then you could pack your bags and move to a new domain. It would suck big time, but it is like as they say, "Growing old sucks, but it is better than the alternative..."