Are links that were undeserved, but now are. still counted?

A site had lots of quality links, but didnt deserve them

[richinberlin]

OK, Here is the scenario.

Site A created some content about a topic.
1000 "useful" articles.
They did lots of HARO link-building and got some great rankings.

Then Google said. "Wait a minute... your site content... is not good. People really don't value it."
All rankings gone. I'm talking, 100,000 a month in traffic, down to 0.

I've done a backlink check, overall, no pattern of link buying, and even the Haro sites are not selling links. Links, is not the problem. Its a content quality problem.

Now, I have no problem solving the content quality issue... but... I am curious whether Google will go.

"OK, you now deserve those links, your content is great. Good job. Here is your rankings back." or..
"OK, good job, nice content... but you got those links when your content was terrible, so I can't trust them. You are fine to proceed, but it's Ground Zero for your links, I will not value your historical links."

Seeking anyone with data, not just a hypothesis.
No lectures on what should have been done. I'm the new guy, not the original.

[anallawalla]

I'm not sure if anyone will share "data" with you, but there is really no solution. Google released the Helpful Content Update and pages that were deemed not to be helpful were demoted.

[richinberlin]

Yes. I know the cause. That's not the question. Do you have any information relating to the question?

[tangor]

"OK, you now deserve those links, your content is great. Good job. Here is your rankings back." or..

"OK, good job, nice content... but you got those links when your content was terrible, so I can't trust them. You are fine to proceed, but it's Ground Zero for your links, I will not value your historical links."

Flip a coin.

Historically g never gives back what it takes away--- or if it does the give back is -90% of the original.

The subject line kind of explains it all, just remove "but now are" for how g might move forward.

[aristotle]

Those backlinks are associated with the old content. I don't see why google would transfer them to totally new content. Besides, since those backlinks were "built", they probably wouldn't be worth much anyway, even if they were transferred.

[richinberlin]

Backlinks can be built, and be 100% fine. I push my articles out on social, email sites about their usefulness of them and ask for links, I answer requests for source materials from journalists and recommend stats provided in my articles etc. It's not link buying, its link building. By itself, there is nothing wrong with that. There is zero link buying done on this site. Just the former webmaster managed to convince their pages were good as source pages(they are) but Google now says they are not helpful(they aren't)

I was looking for someone with specific experience with this.

Happy to spitball theories, I have my own, but was hoping someone had done it and could report on the results. 15 years ago when I was more active here under a different name, that's what we used to do.

Anyway, I am going to give it a crack, I will be back in 6-8 weeks with the outcome to share with the group.