Unnatural Link Penalty

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lingy21

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Hey

So i've just gone into my webmaster tools to find out one of my sites has been hit with an unnatural link penalty, however from what i can see it is still ranking in the serps at the same positions it was pre penalty, I was wondering how quickly does this come into affect before my site ends up in the middle of nowhere?

Thanks
 
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Check if the penalty is site-wide or partial.

If it's just partial match then just a portion of your site will be affected.

Normally, when you receive the message, the effects should have already been done.
 
How do i check whether its partial?

Its actually happened on two sites (one i dont really care about) and they've both got links from the same network of blogs which kinda makes me think that specific network has been targeted.

Thanks
 
I'd get a different webmaster tools for each site, if one of them fucks up then others won't be affected. One SEO got 50 of his clients penalized because the sites were all under the one account, I forgot the details but its best to be on the safe side. Its on SER somewhere.
 
Yep, exactly. I know about a few cases the message arrived earlier than the penalty, but normally, it should be in effect when the message arrives. Partial penalties, especially if the (sub)page affected isn't he mainpage, often don't show much effect in overall rankings. To idenfity the subpage (and links) in question, have a look for unusual drops on page level. More about partial penalties: http://www.vervesearch.com/blog/partial-match-manual-penalty-for-unnatural-links/
 
starki said:
Yep, exactly. I know about a few cases the message arrived earlier than the penalty, but normally, it should be in effect when the message arrives. Partial penalties, especially if the (sub)page affected isn't he mainpage, often don't show much effect in overall rankings. To idenfity the subpage (and links) in question, have a look for unusual drops on page level. More about partial penalties: http://www.vervesearch.com/blog/partial-match-manual-penalty-for-unnatural-links/
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That's the thing i think this is only partial but the pages that it would apply to no longer exist anymore, I deleted them a while ago as all my other pages are either ranking at number 1, haven't moved at all or have moved up in the past week.

I guess even though its potentially a partial penalty i should still go and disavow all of those domains? Or could that potentially attract the google team to look further into it?

Thanks
 
As I understand it this penalty applies to the links from your site, not to it. So it doesn't affect your site's ranking but will affect the ranking of sites you link out to.
 
Well after further inspection i found this:

Capture.jpg

As both sites have been affected with this penalty its definitely come from the PBN service i used ages ago when i first started out, reckon its just worth disavowing the links and moving on or should I attempt a reconsideration request and potentially risk further inspection?
 
Got similar email from my previous company. You won't feel the effect yet but soon you will as traffic will start declining. After a month or so, we were hit and the site was no longer visible on top 10 pages of Google. If you value the site, I recommend you to start disavowing links that you think are low quality.
 
better to disavow the links before the site gets totally flushed off of the SERPs.
 
vitarank said:
better to disavow the links before the site gets totally flushed off of the SERPs.
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I've disavowed the domains/links i'm just wondering whether its a good idea to go through with the reconsideration request or will they look into my site further?
 
Thats rough mate. Keep us updated, I'm curious to see how your disavowing works and how long Google takes to respond. Theoretically you could be put back in place within a few weeks. I've heard of people who regained rank in a couple months.
 
ThopHayt said:
Thats rough mate. Keep us updated, I'm curious to see how your disavowing works and how long Google takes to respond. Theoretically you could be put back in place within a few weeks. I've heard of people who regained rank in a couple months.
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Well thats the strange thing, there has been no decrease in rankings, the links that it targeted actually go to dead pages on the site now so nothing has gone down.

Gonna wait it out a week and see if anything else changes though.
 
No point sending in a reconsideration request if rankings still thesame....and the request will be declined anyway if sent so quickly after getting the message. Never seen that particular message before so hopefully you wont be affected as the links only were targeted and you say the pages deleted anyway.

Did you use a service here on BHW?
 
Yeah it just seems they've devalued the crappy links, hopefully it wont impact me any further.

Yeah i did, back when i first started SEO I kinda went for the cheaper blog post option, definitely a mistake on my behalf but you live and learn.
 
What you were doing earlier for link building,stop for few days and later start with a new high quality method.
 
For a reconsideration request, only disavowing is not enough. In contrast to algorithmic penalties/filters like Penguin, manual actions for unnatural links always require actually removing a significant part of these links.

I personally wouldn't do it, for a simple reason: As long as the pages the PBN links pointed to are gone and aren't (important!) redirected internally via 301, but showing a 404 or 410, they are dropped from the link graph anyway and can't do any harm any more. Sending a reconsideration request always means someone actually looks at your site and links, further inspection, so in case you built any new PBN links in the meantime for example, it's a really bad idea.

Take this message as a warning since it means the PBN you were linked from was busted! If you linked more of your sites with the service, it would be a good idea to disavow them before this penalty may hit them. If the penalty didn't hit so far, removal isn't required and the disavow will do the job.
 
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starki said:
Take this message as a warning since it means the PBN you were linked from was busted! If you linked more of your sites with the service, it would be a good idea to disavow them before this penalty may hit them. If the penalty didn't hit so far, removal isn't required and the disavow will do the job.
Click to expand...

This is good advice. Pay attention to where your penalties are coming from, and consider what other sites you have linked to from those sites. Also, now would be a good time to double check your PBN IP records to see if you have accidentally done anything that could "leak" from those targeted ones to other PBN sites. For example, if you've linked to your money site from multiple PBN sites on the same IP.
 
lingy21 said:
How do i check whether its partial?

Its actually happened on two sites (one i dont really care about) and they've both got links from the same network of blogs which kinda makes me think that specific network has been targeted.

Thanks
Click to expand...

You should be able to see if specific keywords have been burned on the site.

If so get working on a new site...
 
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