17 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
17 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Unnatural Links Statement From Google: Does this clear anything up?

by FuriousStyles
13 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I am interested to hear fellow Warriors interpretation of the recent statement from Google regarding the Unnatural Links Pointing To Your Website message. Does this clear anything up with regards to the speculation of a penalty? (I wonder)

A Google spokesperson emailed this statement:

The majority of the increase in messages to webmasters is not due to messages about links. Rather, Google recently started sending messages to sites even for egregious or "blackhat" violations of our quality guidelines. The vast majority of the increase in messages is thus due to expanding the types of messages we send, not because of more warnings about links.

It is true that actions on link networks have been more visible lately, but there's an important disclaimer to that. Google has been able to trace and take action on many types of link networks; we recently decided to make that action more visible. In the past, some links might have been silently distrusted or might not have carried as much weight. More recently, we've been surfacing the fact that those links aren't helping to improve ranking or indexing.


Taken from here Google Sending Warnings About "Artificial" Or "Unnatural" Links
#clear #google #links #statement #unnatural
  • Profile picture of the author FuriousStyles
    Originally Posted by FuriousStyles View Post

    More recently, we've been surfacing the fact that those links aren't helping to improve ranking or indexing.
    There is absolutely no mention of the fact that these links can harm your ranking; only that they will not improve it.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5965422].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      If they suspect you are doing bad things to shmooze their
      system, they will deindex the site.

      IMHO, unnatural links are a boatload of links that suddenly
      appear on low level places, like forum profiles and
      blog comments. And, all have the same lame spammy
      anchor text. 1,000 links in one day with the anchor text
      of, oh say, "make money online." That's junk. Just replace
      that phrase with your favorite crapola text.

      It's also about percentages, which is why google says
      they can't hurt you for the most part. If you have 100
      great links, scattered among high PR sites from basically
      good links or link bait, then it's going to take quite a bunch
      of dumb links.

      Also, let's not forget your site and it's history. If you have
      an authority site, less likely for anyone to hurt you. Your
      reputation precedes you.

      People with lame, crappy, dumb, stupid, spammy sites,
      complete with no reason to exist other than adsense,
      are more likely to be hit.

      The craziness comes in when people swear their site is
      just the $#Itz. Well, it aint. Google does not need your
      site. So they can't figure out why google does not like their
      spammy, scammy, wordpress, hunk of junk, with flowery words
      and no substance. Oh but it's unique! So friggin what? I do
      unique things in the toilet each day...and flush em down.
      A la google...

      searchengineland has their own agenda...

      Paul
      Signature

      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5965735].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author kaedus
    Another reason the unnatural link message will appear is due to a negative link velocity. A lot of people received it when ALN and BMR and other networks were deindexed. All of the sudden they lost a lot of links. It triggered the letter.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5965780].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author kindsvater
      Maybe the point is not to clean up paid links, but to force webmasters to ID themselves and disclose their data to Google.

      If X can buy some links pointing to Y's domain, causing "unnatural" links, Y only has an opportunity to learn about this and ask for reconsideration if they participate in Google's webmaster tools.

      If Y doesn't, then no notice, and they just sit there wondering why their rankings dropped.

      .
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5966287].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by kaedus View Post

      Another reason the unnatural link message will appear is due to a negative link velocity. A lot of people received it when ALN and BMR and other networks were deindexed. All of the sudden they lost a lot of links. It triggered the letter.

      That doesn't mean losing links triggered it. It is more likely that having links on those networks triggered it.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5967636].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Barak Hullman
    Did you use BuildMyRank? I got nailed for that.
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5967134].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author dp40oz
    Good share. Basically what I figured. Not much has changed, now they're just letting you know about it.
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5967253].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author FuriousStyles
    I am 2 weeks in from receiving the notice & have experienced no drop in rankings (still #1) - I am not saying that a penalty is not coming but so far I have yet to experience it!

    Yeah sure we had BMR, but we also had many great organic links - I will update this thread if indeed we experience more than just a drop due to lost links.

    We have deleted all unnatural links that we have control over (about 3/4 of the links I would consider unnatural).

    This is definitely not a one penalty suits all situation; as if it was we would all know by now exactly what that penalty was (-50 etc).
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5967995].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Great thread Furious. I had begun wondering this. Besides the deindexing ocassions there might in fact be no new penalty and all the talk of negative SEO was overblown. We are seeing some people not falling and we see others tanking.

      Most of us experienced know by now that the Google algo is layered. In other words Google doesn't look at just one factor. Onsite has several factors then theres off page and now there are a few social signals.

      Okay so what if a site for whatever reason had a bad onsite factor (need not be in regard to article quality for human readers but something else or additional H1 tags title etc) and the only thing really keeping google from dropping the hammer on it before was the links. SO then the links are taken away and the site drops BUT now it always had the onsite factor that would have tanked it even more without the links and now that they are gone (no longer counted) the site now gets hit with that as well.

      It would look like a penalty but would be hard to distinguish from just the full correction of the algo. in programming this would be a conditional and might look like this (just using regular english here not programming syntax)

      IF A (lets say this is links)= 0
      and B (lets say spelling mistakes) = 10
      then let C (dampening effect) = -10


      Well the site had ten spelling mistakes (just an example not saying spelling mistakes are at the root of this) but it had 50 links so it never got the dampening effect to it s ranking. the links protected it

      BUT now the links are gone the two conditions are met and the dampening (lowering of ranking power) kicks in.

      Looks just like a penalty but its actually been part of the algo all along. It also could be conditional on the other sites in the serp if they meet a certain set of conditionals in google eyes.
      Signature

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5968289].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author FuriousStyles
        Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

        Great thread Furious.
        Thanks Mike, and pleased we agree (I've read a few posts on this subject over the past week & I can see you are not a man to disagree with)

        With Google releasing so much at once it is impossible to tell the exact reason for some sites tanking and others remaining - the only certainty is that there is not an across board penalty triggered by receiving one of these emails. I specualte that at most it is a conditional filter as Mike suggests.

        I do not think that Google is about to allow negative SEO - especially when it is probable that they can detect & discount unnatural / low quality links easily & I would suggest that those with BMR, forum links, directory links & article directory links from pages / websites with little authority are the ones that have tanked (with no other authoritative links)....

        Is it possible Google just changed / wiped out the weight given to links from low quality sources?

        Google wins - no negative SEO & No spam! Hell lets even throw an email out to those we have detected so they realize that spamming wont help their websites rank & they might stop doing it faster.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5969334].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author savedbyhim01
    I always thought that Google would not penalize you for links coming into your site, but that they would for links going out to your site (to garbage sites). That makes sense because you can't control who links to you.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5968747].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Like I said from the beginning, ignore the message & rebuild links.

    If a money page is still indexed, who cares what they do with the old network backlinks.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5973126].message }}

Trending Topics