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Dreaded Unnatural Links Email

by Steve25
18 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi,

First time poster but long time reader, so please be gentle.

We recently had the dreaded unnatural link email from Google and I was wondering if anyone on here could clear something up?

Google have mentioned two sites which have duplicate content on them pointing to our site, however I have been advised to contact every site with a certain phrase pointing back to our site and get them to remove the link.

Some of the links are from a link builder we outsourced work to a few years ago and are on blogs and some are in the form of blog comments.

My question is, is there really any point in contacting these other sites? They are in different languages to mine and some are on free hosting.

The advice has come from an SEO company and they have also told me to contact the hosts to get the links removed.

Would a host really care about a link on a site they host that wasn't linking to anything illegal?

Thanks

Steve
#dreaded #email #links #unnatural
  • Profile picture of the author outwest
    So supposedly google will restore rankings if these backlinks are removed?
    hmmmmm
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve25
      Originally Posted by outwest View Post

      So supposedly google will restore rankings if these backlinks are removed?
      hmmmmm
      The hmmmmm is exactly what I thought.
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      • Profile picture of the author Steve25
        I'm not moaning about Google, I've been doing this long enough to know that search engines will do what they want.

        But I want to put my efforts into something that will work not a futile exercise to make an seo company look like they know what they are talking about.
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        • Profile picture of the author ThatAblaze
          If your site is not a huge offender big G will probably restore your site after some number of months. They seem to do a review every 30 days on their own and those who pass get reinstated. I think that when you "resubmit" they do the review then rather than waiting for a full 30 days.

          It sounds very possible that your site may be on the borderline. Some natural link building by you personally could push it up into the green all by itself. Go find a blogger in your nitche and get him to talk about you and link to you.

          You can ask people to remove links to your site, and some of them will. If those sites are already identified as damaging your profile then it would be a good idea to ask. Not every offensive link has to be removed for big G to reinstate you, just enough to shift the balance out of the "unnatural" area.

          I just think that what they are not telling you is that your link profile can get more natural by either removing unnatural elements, or by adding natural ones. Do whichever is easiest for you until you hit the magic number and this all goes away (until the next update of panda).
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by outwest View Post

      So supposedly google will restore rankings if these backlinks are removed?
      hmmmmm
      Yes its called a reconsideration request and people have had the penalties removed. The problem is going to be getting them removed though. A web hosting company has no authority to go into a site and remove links. If the OP cannot get the webmasters to remove the content ( and many won't because they have no interest in having to go back to old post and pages and remove them) then forget it.
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  • Profile picture of the author options
    This is the sort of thing what really gets me..

    What happens if your site goes viral and somebody posts a link back to your site to recommend it?

    I wonder how many links google has on duplicate content sites?

    Google are just trying to hard and it's not going to work...
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    I wouldn't bother contacting any other webmasters, I'm 99.9% sure most won't respond (I wouldn't) especially If those links were spam.

    If your guy built spam links & those links have stuck for a few years, you can pretty much bet the webmasters of those backlink sites/pages don't care about anything, including their own sites.

    I wouldn't waste my time.

    Also, is the duplicate sites from your own original site/content, or are you scraping other sites content without permission? Sounds like your leaving out part of the problem.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve25
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      I wouldn't bother contacting any other webmasters, I'm 99.9% sure most won't respond (I wouldn't) especially If those links were spam.

      If your guy built spam links & those links have stuck for a few years, you can pretty much bet the webmasters of those backlink sites/pages don't care about anything, including their own sites.

      I wouldn't waste my time.

      Also, is the duplicate sites from your own original site/content, or are you scraping other sites content without permission? Sounds like your leaving out part of the problem.
      Essentially the guy wrote a number of articles and had them put on loads of blogs and article directories, but they weren't spun very well (well to be honest they were ****). So there are loads of the same articles around on other peoples sites pointing to our homepage. The duplicate content isn't on our site.

      The one thing I have left out is that this only seems to have hit our homepage. But the guy did do a lot of linking to the home and left out the 000's of other pages.

      We're an ecommerce site and we don't even use the suppliers descriptions, instead we write everything ourselves, so no duplicate content issues on site.
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  • Profile picture of the author stephenwaldo
    Without speaking as to whether it would actually help or not, there's no denying that it WOULD be a waste of time. As has been said, webmasters of those types of sites aren't the type to respond to a request like that, much less take action.

    I think you'd be lucky to get a .5% response rate, or in other words 1 out of 200 links removed.

    If Google didn't make this recommendation in their letter and it was a third party, then it sounds to me like an SEO company that doesn't really know what they're doing. Especially if this is their primary recommendation, since the task would be virtually impossible to complete.

    Honestly, from the many similar accounts I've read you're best bet is if you handle Google like you did your parents when you were a teenager - The way to get "un-grounded" is to tread carefully and say you're sorry =)

    I would say spend a month or two doing slow and steady promotion the way Google wants you to do it (naturally). Then if you're still nowhere to be found, send an empathetic message to the review team explaining your official recognition and subsequent remorse for your sinful SEO ways. Also explain what you're going to do to make it better both right now and in the future.

    Be patient and be careful and you shouldn't have trouble in the long haul. If nothing works, then perhaps this is the signal for you to turn full-force to paid advertising =/

    Hope somethin' in there helps!
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      I have talked to a lot of people who have received these messages, and the one thing they all had in common so far is that they had forum profile links pointing at their site. I would bet you do too.

      And to be honest, I think Google hates spun content (poorly or otherwise) far more than any kind of syndicated content showing up on different sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author jdooley13
    Duplicate content on other people's sites with a link to your site shouldn't hurt you. After all, that is the entire purpose of article directories. If duplicate content with a link back to your site was a problem, then no one would ever post an article on Ezine or the other directories hoping that it got syndicated somehow.
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    • Profile picture of the author Black Hat Cat
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      Originally Posted by jdooley13 View Post

      Duplicate content on other people's sites with a link to your site shouldn't hurt you. After all, that is the entire purpose of article directories. If duplicate content with a link back to your site was a problem, then no one would ever post an article on Ezine or the other directories hoping that it got syndicated somehow.
      "Shouldn't" and "don't" are two different things. It doesn't matter what the purposes of article directories are, lol. Article directories don't make the rules for Google.
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      • Profile picture of the author jdooley13
        Originally Posted by Black Hat Cat View Post

        "Shouldn't" and "don't" are two different things. It doesn't matter what the purposes of article directories are, lol. Article directories don't make the rules for Google.
        So, what you are saying is I could copy and paste all of the content on your websites and post it to the various article directories (with a link to your site, of course) and get google to penalize you? Really?
        There are thousands and thosands of people who have websites linked to from article directories and from the syndiation of their articles. They don't seem to be complaing about penalties.
        I can't imagine the war that will break out if google actually starts penalizing people for having duplicate content on the web with links back to their site. With the automated software available, someone could have your content on a thousand directories in a day.
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        • Profile picture of the author nicktyler
          Originally Posted by jdooley13 View Post

          So, what you are saying is I could copy and paste all of the content on your websites and post it to the various article directories (with a link to your site, of course) and get google to penalize you? Really?
          There are thousands and thosands of people who have websites linked to from article directories and from the syndiation of their articles. They don't seem to be complaing about penalties.
          I can't imagine the war that will break out if google actually starts penalizing people for having duplicate content on the web with links back to their site. With the automated software available, someone could have your content on a thousand directories in a day.
          This is bad news if it catches on. I beleive in allways playing fair but when livelyhood is at stake it might be best to get in the first punch?:confused:
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve25
      Originally Posted by jdooley13 View Post

      Duplicate content on other people's sites with a link to your site shouldn't hurt you. After all, that is the entire purpose of article directories. If duplicate content with a link back to your site was a problem, then no one would ever post an article on Ezine or the other directories hoping that it got syndicated somehow.
      That's what you think isn't it? But no, Google gave me the urls of 2 sites with articles on them, pointing to us.
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  • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
    Is the sky falling now and are people are saying back links can hurt a site and if so are we all now open to completion shutting us down one by one, do not worry about building good seo, instead take the opposition out at the knees ?

    tin hat on the real star war starts here ?
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve25
      Originally Posted by tryinhere View Post

      Is the sky falling now and are people are saying back links can hurt a site and if so are we all now open to completion shutting us down one by one, do not worry about building good seo, instead take the opposition out at the knees ?

      tin hat on the real star war starts here ?
      Up until this point I would've said that back links hurting you is total rubbish, but I do believe the days of bringing down opposition could be upon us.
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      • Profile picture of the author Steve25
        Thought I'd give you an update.

        I recveived this this morning from the big G:
        Hello Stephen,

        Thank you for your follow-up and the work you have been putting into contacting webmasters.

        We have re-evaluated your case, and unfortunately there are still many inorganic links pointing to your site. At this point, we believe we've evaluated these links appropriately, and no further action from us is required. Please note that we try to be granular in our actions, which are intended to discount inorganic links while preserving organic recommendations.

        Regardless of who created the links, in order to protect the quality of our search results, we have taken action to reduce the trust of inorganic links to your site. Webspam techniques such as link schemes attempt to trick our systems into ranking sites higher than they should, which can affect our ability to provide high-quality search results to our users.

        We know that perhaps not every link can be cleaned up, but in order to deem a reconsideration request as successful, we need to see a substantial good-faith effort to remove the links, and this effort should result in a decrease in the number of bad links that we see. You might consider reaching out to the webmasters of the sites with the inorganic links on them. For advice on how to go about contacting them, read (sorry can't post links yet)


        Once you are confident that you have done everything you can to remove these links, please reply to this email with the details of your clean-up effort.

        Sincerely,

        The Google Search Quality Team
        On the positive side at least they are giving us a chance.
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