Press releases = BAD. Google webmaster tools reconsideration reply!

Hey guys. I got a manual action on one of my sites.




So I did a reconsideration request. I took down all my "paid" or "sponsored" links from various sites and told them what I did in detail.

They replied and said there are still other links and listed two.

One was a http://goarticles.com link. It was a legit article too about something my company released.

Just thought I would let you guys know. I wont be touching article sites ever again.

CosmicSoundz said:

Hey guys. I got a manual action on one of my sites.

So I did a reconsideration request. I took down all my "paid" or "sponsored" links from various sites and told them what I did in detail.

They replied and said there are still other links and listed two.

One was a http://goarticles.com link. It was a legit article too about something my company released.

Just thought I would let you guys know. I wont be touching article sites ever again.

Click to expand...

There's more to it than that.

Go articles links to approximately 15 million sites - and I hear this from 1 guy - waiting for at least some of theother 14 million 999 thousand 999 to mention something.

There is some reason why they picked this Goarticle link - but unless you tell us we'll never know what that is.
If Goarticle links was the problem they could (in side a day) scrape all the outbounds and ban the lot. Same with Ezine, alley - all of them etc. They didn't, they won't and that isn't the problem.

Hell they would have to take down just about every affiliate site and SEO promoted business site on the net.
Unless Google have messed up here (and they do mess up from time to time) that isn't the issue.
You say you took down paid and sponsored links so it's likely they were your initial problem. I reckon they were your only problem. Matt Cutts has said openly many times he has NO PROBLEM with sensible syndication and linking through sites like article sites etc.

But I keep coming back to the fact you say you removed paid and sponsored links..meaning you almost definitely got found out via them. This might even be Googles mistake here. But one you bought on yourself by using paid links. I'm not judging paid links as bad - just saying to Google they are bad if they find them.

Did you use tiered paid links - i.e is the Goarticle link supported with paid links as a second tier - I've used SAPE this way and been found out. They can trace the network

SAPE to 1st tier - 1st tier to money site.

Dunno but might be that.

Like I said there is more to this than that - either you don't know or you know and aren't telling us. But without evidence it's hard to say.

Good luck getting it shifted anyway. Manual reviews are a BAST

Scritty

Mate are you serious?

The guy gets called out for a goarticles link and then you tell him he's nuts basically?

Get real mate - my site was also hit for goarticles article and others. The days of mass spamming low quality and really pointless article directories are over.

If Google references the link like you said then you gotta work on getting those links removed. Go find a reputable link removal service and have them do the work unless you have hundreds of extra hours to do it.

The go article was about my companies new software launch. It was 100% legit.

Whose telling who he's nuts? Not me.

I'm saying there is more to it than just having an article link. Thinking that having an article link alone is the end of your site IS nuts though. There is more to it than that.

Goarticles is a PR6 site that offers ******** links (after a period of time). Good content posted there will give you (shock) a PR6 link with ******** attributes... There is no difference between that and any other PR6 link - nothing. Google doesn't mark asites by the sort of platform they are. No such thing as a bad public link - just a bad link profile.

Take TheLinkGuys point about spamming the same site type - essp those with very low quality. Getting 5000 PR0 wiki links and little else is dumb, and entirely avoidable. But getting a PR6 link from Goarticle? Great. I've got hundreds of them. Now it's harder to post content on the high PR article sites their links are better than ever. Even better since many people stupidly think that "A link from this public platform is "bad" nonsense.

The issue could be the tiered linking BEHIND the Goarticle. My hits with Sape were 2nd tier links for the most part. Google aren't stupid. Works out that powering your second tier with SAPE links is not safer at all. Posted a couple of weeks ago about a site that got hit.
Virtually none of the links were direct to the site, 80% were used to power ther 1st tier. Google saw straight through that and even told me a wordpress.com link was "bad" Are you going to tell me wordpress.com is a bad neighborhood now?

When Google infiltrate a private link network you are fucked whether you use the links to directly link to your money site or to a firest tier.
There are things you can do (lots of co-citation in your first tier so Google doesn't know what sites are benefitting from a more powerul 1st tier) but that's not guaranteed to work and diluting your power like that could be a damn expensive way to proceed.

Go article articles ranking just fine for tens of thousands of terms still. There is not an issue with Goarticles - there is an issue with the OP's links with goarticles - that isn't the same thing.

Scritty

I would place a bet that you didn't receive the manual action because of GoArticles.

The person in charge of reinstating your rankings is simply being overly aggressive. there is always a risk when you promote a website. There are no definitive rules, they are often hypocritical and illogical but that is the game we play.

You rolled the dice and it wasn't your day. It happens to us all but don't strike off article directories just yet.

gorang said:

I would place a bet that you didn't receive the manual action because of GoArticles.

The person in charge of reinstating your rankings is simply being overly aggressive. there is always a risk when you promote a website. There are no definitive rules, they are often hypocritical and illogical but that is the game we play.

You rolled the dice and it wasn't your day. It happens to us all but don't strike off article directories just yet.

Click to expand...

Basically, what he said.

Also keep in mind that article directories were not originally intended to provide good link juice SEO wise, but simply to serve as a hub to get your content plus link easily syndicated. People needing relevant content for their sites could just lift and re-use yours for free, meanwhile you get a free relevant backlink, and the article directory gets tons of content to fuel their Adsense ads---everybody's happy.

Only later did the idea of using the directory backlinks for ranking purposes become front and center. SEO gurus stressing "original content" everywhere also put a damper on the syndication function of the articles. In the OP's case it may have been Google objecting to using a link from a (now) devalued source, regardless of the high PR. And I agree with others who have suggested that using Google's Webmaster Tools may be a trap, that draws faster attention to manually reviewing your site precisely because of its connection to Google.

gorang said:

I would place a bet that you didn't receive the manual action because of GoArticles.

The person in charge of reinstating your rankings is simply being overly aggressive. there is always a risk when you promote a website. There are no definitive rules, they are often hypocritical and illogical but that is the game we play.

You rolled the dice and it wasn't your day. It happens to us all but don't strike off article directories just yet.

Click to expand...

This is also likely. Once they have discovered you had paid links (and your post says you used and removed paid network links) they have your number. You are under manual investigation and normal algo rules no longer apply.

PNL's are fantastic, but the risk reward ratio is huge. And the l;onger you have them the more it tilts away from you. Even the sellers say that one day they will be discovered, so no matter how far in the future that is - every day brings it a day closer

Also go articles is an article directory no? Your title says press releases, they are different things.

Also the "unnatural" part of your links MIGHT not be where they are coming from (go articles) but instead what keywords you are linking, if they are brand links or naked urls I doubt that it would hurt you much.

That's an excellent point. We always look at the doner site and blame "the site" not the anchor, the context or how it fits in with your overall link setup.

If google did have an issue I'd be tempted to say "Why - you've given Goarticles a PR of 6, they are a site that are 100% crowd sourced with content. If you have an issue just reduce their PR and tell people you don't like articles any more"

In fact Google say exactly the opposite. They say in moderation articles are fine.
I've noticed that articles that promote linking tools get cuaght for spam sometimes - also profiles created with cpanel email adresses from blacklisted sites...

The more you think the more that "It's from "Site A" so the problem is "Site A".. is just lazy thinking, spesh when Google give "Site A" a PR of 6 and loads or page 1 spots for commercial terms. Just doesn't make any sense.

Scritty

Agree... if the anchor text for the backlink is an obvious money keyword, they're going to want to see those get taken down. Once you're under this type of manual scrutiny, they're going to notice this stuff, whereas the algorithm wouldn't necessarily have a problem with it.

Source: personal experience with a client who is under a manual penalty.

Getwhatchuwant said:

Also go articles is an article directory no? Your title says press releases, they are different things.

Also the "unnatural" part of your links MIGHT not be where they are coming from (go articles) but instead what keywords you are linking, if they are brand links or naked urls I doubt that it would hurt you much.

Click to expand...

CosmicSoundz said:

Hey guys. I got a manual action on one of my sites.

So I did a reconsideration request. I took down all my "paid" or "sponsored" links from various sites and told them what I did in detail.

They replied and said there are still other links and listed two.

One was a http://goarticles.com link. It was a legit article too about something my company released.

Just thought I would let you guys know. I wont be touching article sites ever again.

Click to expand...

Sometimes these messages are a giant fishing expedition too.

Say if you respond with detailed info on how you "cleaned up". Now Google knows you were gaming the system and that domain is forever tainted, even if you get your rank back.

I've seen recent examples where people did nothing about these messages. A few months go past and they are ranking again.

Today I take all Google correspondence with a pinch of salt, never ever reply and wait things out.

If you based your livelihood on that particular website/niche/network i'd get started on a new one and make sure there is nothing linking the old with the new. Atleast you know you can be back in the top 10 in a few months whether that be an old site or a new one, hell you might even get your new site and the banned one back too! Double bubble!

im in love with some of these comments in this thread

homeys ratting off things as if they are fact

fact is google isnt playing games with bullshit article directory links. "But wait its not goarticles thats giving the penalty"

hell its not. goarticles has little to no editorial review and theres no real reason that goarticles exists than for seo reasons. thats why they were hit with algorithm updates that ruined their traffic.

they have a pr6 because of the way pagerank works not because it was manually passed out to each site on the web. so crying to google because they have a pr6 doesnt make anysense at all.

pay attention to the threads being posted and the links that google is citing. the top ones are article directories and link directories. you can cry all day on bhw about how legit the link is but google doesnt care.

they are cracking down on press releases, wordpress and site widgets, article directoires and link directories. its taken me months of removing links before i removed a manual penalty.

the game has changed and overoptimization of anchor text links isn't the reason. bullshit disavow submissions are whats to blame.

Since article directories are crowd-sourced, G can't punish the whole domain including the legit unique articles because of some bad quality shit, it will all depend on the quality(content+tier2 links) of the respective article in hand..

If you say the content is legit, then it has to be the tier2 links or else its just your bad day.