Manual ban from Google: unnatural links, but where?

[serenoo]

I received a message from Google webmaster tool that says:
Google detected unnatural or artificial links that are pointing to your website. You cannot purchase link or join schema links .... Google applied a manual antispam action ... bla bla bla

Now I am penalized and I lost all the rank/traffic from Google.

But I did not purchase any backlink and I did not make any link exchange. I do not care about my backlinks I only care to create good content and ..... BAN!
I am a victim even if I see there are some strange websites that link to me from google webmaster tool.

I right submited the reconsideration request to let Google know I cannot do anything cause I do not purchase or exchange link. But now I do not know if this is the best action I could take. Probably I could use the disavow tool and then reconsiderate my website.

Please do you know what do I have to do?

[Clay_More]

I'd agree with domain:example.com

Just check subdomains. Google rightly considers realjunk.example.com to be a totally different domain than example.com

[Bones]

Just check subdomains. Google rightly considers realjunk.example.com to be a totally different domain than example.com

Is that correct?

I was under the impression that:
domain:example.com

...would also disavow links on sub-domains too, ie foo.example.com and bar.example.com

[60watt]

Google ask for format domain:example.com, while Bing WMT asks for [e-mail]

[60watt]

ooops typo
Bing likes [e-mail]

sorry!

[edited by: aakk9999 at 4:34 pm (utc) on Aug 26, 2014]
[edit reason] typo [/edit]

[Pisitkunkit]

Thank you for your suggestions.
They are helping me a lot.

[freshpaul]

Planet13 is correct. That would cover both www. and non-www.

[Clay_More]

...would also disavow links on sub-domains too, ie foo.example.com and bar.example.com

I don't recall the exact wording, but Google says they may consider disavows for a main domain. In a situation where there are both "good" and spammy subdomains, I'm inclined to disavow the specific subdomains rather than hope Google may consider the main domain.

As an example, blogger.com may have both funnycats.blogger.com and badsite1.blogger.com Google probably isn't going to disavow blogger.com and you probably wouldn't want that anyway. It's not much more work to disavow domain:badsite1.blogger.com

Foreign language sites I just base decisions on images and my impression of the site. Some are obviously not good.

The "Download Latest Links" tab in WMT will give you more complete domain and subdomain information, you can sort it and find all sorts of things.

[fathom]

Not that this means anything and maybe not the same domain but serenoo hinted 2 years ago that they had a PENGUIN problem and wasn't recovering from [webmasterworld.com...]

PENGUIN is primarily about automated detection of unnatural links where a Manual Review is about someone submitting a spam report.

[Bones]

I don't recall the exact wording, but Google says they may consider disavows for a main domain. In a situation where there are both "good" and spammy subdomains, I'm inclined to disavow the specific subdomains rather than hope Google may consider the main domain.

As an example, blogger.com may have both funnycats.blogger.com and badsite1.blogger.com Google probably isn't going to disavow blogger.com and you probably wouldn't want that anyway. It's not much more work to disavow domain:badsite1.blogger.com

That's not been my understanding of it.

This video from John Mueller discusses it, skip to around 41m 15s:
[youtube.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

Bones, thanks for that John Mueller reference.

John uses blogspot.com as an example, and unequivocally says that if you disavow blogspot.com you would be disavowing all of the blogs hosted on blogspot.com.

So he does suggest, as Clay_More also suggests for a site like blogspot, disavowing specific subdomains. But he also points out that a disavow for the main domain would be a global disavow... in the case of blogspot probably broader than what you might desire... so yes, do be careful with that machete.

[Clay_More]

Poor phrasing on my part. If you are dealing with a smaller individual domain, Bones explanation is the proper one where domain disavow should effectively "no-follow" everything including subdomains.

My attempted point, if memory serves regarding phrases, is it gets somewhat murky when dealing with major domains with many subdomains. The "may consider" phrase sticks in my mind in reference to a webmaster attempting disavow on a major domain.

[Bones]

Clay_More, you're possibly thinking of this:
[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk...]

Q: Can I disavow something.example.com to ignore only links from that subdomain?
A: For the most part, yes. For most well-known freehosts (e.g. wordpress.com, blogspot.com, tumblr.com, and many others), disavowing "domain:something.example.com" will disavow links only from that subdomain. If a freehost is very new or rare, we may interpret this as a request to disavow all links from the entire domain. But if you list a subdomain, most of the time we will be able to ignore links only from that subdomain.

If you disavow a subdomain, there's a chance Google will just disavow the whole domain anyway, if they don't trust it quite enough.

Quick edit to add, If not based on trust, that may also be due to how Google determines which elements each 'site' comprises (whether sub-domains/directories etc are related or independent 'sites').

[Clay_More]

Thanks for looking at that, but it isn't what I was thinking of.
I'm thinking it was Matt Cutts, referencing disavows are a request, not a directive, then the "may consider" mention.

As riveting as that may be, I was given a directive that painting the guest bedroom was a priority. I chose painting over searching references. While it may delay thread resolution, I'll sleep warmer tonight because of it.

[anand84]

Is there a way to cancel my reconsideration request?

If I understand right, you are asking for this because you want more time to remove the unnatural links that are under your control? If so, do note that reconsideration requests take a minimum of ten days to be looked into. So you have sufficient time to get things right on that front.

[serenoo]

Manual action to my website has been removed today.