Unnatural Link Notice [Google Fail]

[jacksonlin]

This is so funny and it's obvious that Google really is just bluffing now.

I got 2 unnatural link notices for my sites.

I was very interested to know which ones, since I have removed webmaster tools from all my sites a few months ago.

So I log into my site, I look and see there are NO sites in my webmaster tools listed (as I have deleted them all).

Then I look at the sites that apparently have "unnatural links".

To my amusement, those sites were "dead" failed projects that I stopped linking to over 2 years ago.

So I don't know what Google is on about, because any link I would have received would be 100% natural.

This proves that they are really grasping at straws and trying to scare you.

Their algorithm is not as ninja as they want you to believe.

[Monkey Jones]

That is flippin Hilarious!

I just received a notice myself. The site had obviously been penalized back in December without notice. I did a re-inclusion request and they claimed they hadn't done a manual penalty. Now, they send me that notice. LAME!

[OmarNegron]

haha....thats funny. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah I just ignored their message.

-Omar

[paulgl]

I have not updated one site in over a year.
Still near the top of SERPs. Does that
mean I have a dead site? If a site
is still indexed, it's not dead. Why
not take the site offline? That'll show
that mean ol' google!

They just had record profits, again.

Sure, they have no idea what they are doing...

Saw Hunger Games. Many, many mistakes and
miscues and WTF moments. They have no idea
how to make a movie. They must be the worst
movie makers in the world. That movie won't
last. It sure won't make a profit.

Paul

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by jacksonlin

Then I look at the sites that apparently have "unnatural links".

To my amusement, those sites were "dead" failed projects that I stopped linking to over 2 years ago.

So I don't know what Google is on about, because any link I would have received would be 100% natural..

umm you kind of gave yourself away

"those sites were "dead" failed projects that I stopped linking to over 2 years ago"

so you therefore had unnatural links no matter when they were placed

and then you say

"any link I would have received would be 100% natural.."

no the ones where you created the links would not have been natural. So you haven't proven anything is a scare tactic only that you think if unnatural links are pointing to your site you ought to have a statute of limitation on them.

[Dellco]

I really think many more people ought to be raising the issue with Google at their official forum, but I'm not holding my breath. That's because the majority of sites that got that message would never stand up to closer scrutiny.

That said, what Google is doing is very underhanded; they are simply covering their asses (legally) by sending out those messages. They meant to drop kick a lot of sites to pave the way for their version of the internet all along.

It's a convenient way to dispose of a lot of garbage without having to worry about the consequences. Good sites that got caught up in this are considered collateral damage.

It's up to people to decide whether they can live with/put up with this nonsense or not.

[adriel97]

I sometimes wonder if the ppl at Google really know what they are doing these days. I believe that they just like messing with us.

[wayne nunn]

I believe that we are going to see a lot of these notices and that automated linking tools are the cause.

Google is probably looking a linking patterns and frequencies, this and the ratio of link types will enable them to identify the truly natural link patterns from those that are created with bots of some type.

[Slaughter]

Google is going crazy now. They are favoring just the fortune 500 companies and their sites.

I got the notice for one of my completely WH site. No BH or even GH backlinks.

[Dellco]

I am sure Google projects that eventually by years end, a lot of the crap (in their eyes)...will have sunk down the index, and the cream will rise to the top (naturally by themselves).

It's a very effective but crude method to get rid of the dross. They will just let the webmasters sort it out, fight it out, and grovel before them....

The messages are just to cover their asses legally. They will be sending out millions more of such messages I believe.

Grim. This is like ......Brave New World.

[radivoj]

I am on Google webmaster forum every day and I see that people posting message every 10,15,20,30 min complain that they receive message for "unnatural" links and their site ranking drop significantly.. the issue with those "unnatural" links penalty is that your site mostly drop on page 5+ which is 50 penalty and no matter how many good links you get to the site you can't pass page 5 until they lift up the penalty,as I know over 900K sites has been penalized so far for "unnatural" links and their ranking drop I think they will penalize a few more millions sites...

[Monkey Jones]

Originally Posted by Slaughter

Google is going crazy now. They are favoring just the fortune 500 companies and their sites.

I got the notice for one of my completely WH site. No BH or even GH backlinks.

I agree they are going crazy. I also received this notice for a white hat site for a brick and mortar business that is an authority in its field. The site is 9 years old. There were links built through normal article marketing early on, but since then the links are from other related authority sites. It fell from #1 for the main keyphrase to #9. I wouldn't even know where to begin addressing the issue?

PS - Now Amazon is taking the #1 spot and some publicly traded LARGE companies are following. They used to not even come close.
Looking at WMT all the links are from other authority sites, or small niche blogs referring to the site. Some of the sites have numerous links due to blogroll links etc., but they are wordpress.com blogs and in my opinion aren't doing anything wrong.

[socialbookmark]

It seems that many websites are receiving it and as the number of websites received this message increases, this problem and the importance on this message on ranking websites will be reduced because its going to become a common problem for all websites and as it becomes common, it has no effect on rankign sites because all sites have it

[jacksonlin]

I think you'll find this thread very interesting:

How Google Makes Liars Out of the Good Guys in SEO | SEOmoz

[opensky]

Got the notice 3 weeks ago for an aged site. An seo co had posted some spun content without telling us on ALN, but this makes up only a small part of our links. Now all rankings have dropped. Is there some way to remove the ALN links, the link builders wont reply. We didnt have a clue this was happening. Seems really unfair. Is it worth asking for reconsideration? How long do these types of penalties last?

[Monkey Jones]

Originally Posted by opensky

Got the notice 3 weeks ago for an aged site. An seo co had posted some spun content without telling us on ALN, but this makes up only a small part of our links. Now all rankings have dropped. Is there some way to remove the ALN links, the link builders wont reply. We didnt have a clue this was happening. Seems really unfair. Is it worth asking for reconsideration? How long do these types of penalties last?

Did your rankings rise due to these ALN links? Did your rankings fall further down they they were prior to this link building?

ALN got hit hard so most of your links are null due to residing on de-indexed blogs. A good chunk of the blog owners have removed the de-indexed sites. For the ones who haven't they probably won't be paying to renew deindexed domains so those links should disappear in time.

[opensky]

Hard to know if ALN caused rankings to rise much anyway, but we are definitely worse off now than we ever were. WOnder if ive definitely got a penalty and if so how long it will last. Is there any point asking for reconsideration if you cant get the links you didnt even post, removed?

[bnetwork]

Originally Posted by Dellco

The messages are just to cover their asses legally. They will be sending out millions more of such messages I believe.

Lulz, I've been saying this for a good few weeks now. People still believe that Google are just trying to "scare them". Suuure - because huge corps work that way.

[brandon2664]

It seems that I'm in the 1% that still believes negative seo isn't real.
My site got knocked down 2-3 weeks after the message for 2 keywords I backlinked the crap out of.

Google just devalues links. They don't penalize. I think they look a lot more about time on site and bounce rate than ever before.

My idea to come back:
1. Get visitors to move around my site
2. Get visitors to spend more time on site.
3. Get visitors to buy product.

[jsherloc]

@brandon, you might want to check out some of threads mentioned here:

you read this yet?

In my 5 or so years of IM I have seen plenty instances of negative SEO happening, but people for whatever reason want to believe that Google is capable of "looking out for the small guys" in this regard.

I have not seen many public/private instances of this being the case, but I have seen many public/private instances where the "typical" webmaster/company gets screwed over with absolutely no professional clarification offered or legitimate avenues suggested to attempt to redeem themselves. Instead most companies and webmasters are fed vague suggestions on how to move forward that seem counter-intuitive to real world linkbuilding effects. In fact, I'd estimate the majority of forum posts on forums like here at WF have to do with these types of instances of bad experiences with Google, lol. BUT, do not get me wrong, a large portion of websites/companies/webmasters that go through these negative experiences ARE producing content that Google simply does not want in their index. HOWEVER, there is still a large portion of websites/companies/webmasters out there producing AMAZING relevent useful content that get screwed for various vague "reasons" and unknowns.

And the whole "only negative press stands out" rebuttal doesn't really fly IMO, because they've had over a decade to change their business practices in a few simple ways that seemingly could prevent a lot of this abuse rearing its head now...

For starters, how about real customer support for average webmasters? Ya know, the webmasters' sites and content that Google wraps their ads around? Anyone ever try getting legitimate answers from folks over at the Google Webmaster Help Forums only to be insulted and talked down to by some "Level 9 Million" Google fanboy that is not actually a Google employee? I get it, it IS an issue of scale...but IMO Google of all companies HAS the ability to scale a customer support system of some sort, I mean c'monnnnn.

What other company of this magnitude would simply "pass the buck" to "experts" that seem to get off on the illusion of authority? Reading through some of those webmaster help threads is seriously disgusting...not sure how they've been allowed to treat folks in that manner for so long. Some threads are helpful and some contributors there ARE helpful, but the vast majority of those threads are useless endeavors that assist no-one in the end and only further spread FUD among the public.