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Tag: Unnatural Links

  • Google: Those Unnatural Link Penalties Are About The Product Reviews We Warned You About

    Google: Those Unnatural Link Penalties Are About The Product Reviews We Warned You About

    As previously reported, Google handed out a bunch of penalties over the weekend for unnatural outbound links. Now, the company has clarified that this is directly tied to product reviews that violate its guidelines.

    If you were affected by this, you can’t say you weren’t warned. Beyond this being pretty much common knowledge for years, Google posted a warning of sorts to its webmaster blog last month. In that, it laid out “best practices” for bloggers and companies when it comes to the latter giving the former free products, and the former reviewing them.

    It was this post Google’s John Mueller referenced in response to people complaining in the Google forums (via Search Engine Roundtable). In one thread, he said:

    In particular, if a post was made because of a free product (or free service, or just paid, etc), then any links placed there because of that need to have a rel=nofollow attached to them. This includes links to the product itself, any sales pages (such as on Amazon), affiliate links, social media profiles, etc. that are associated with that post. Additionally, I imagine your readers would also appreciate it if those posts were labeled appropriately. It’s fine to keep these kinds of posts up, sometimes there’s a lot of useful information in them! However, the links in those posts specifically need to be modified so that they don’t pass PageRank (by using the rel=nofollow).

    Once these links are cleaned up appropriately, feel free to submit a reconsideration request, so that the webspam team can double-check and remove the manual action.

    Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable links you to several separate threads in which Mueller responds similarly, but you get the gist.

    Image via iStock

  • Is Google Ever Wrong About Links?

    In case it wasn’t bad enough that fear of Google has kept people from linking to other sites, and got them requesting legitimate links be pulled down, Google is reportedly sending unnatural link warnings to sites based on links that are actually natural.

    Is Google ever wrong about links? Does Google ever really look at legitimate links as bad? Let us know what you think in the comments.

    It’s hard to say if this is happening often, or if with 100% certainty that it is happening, but Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable appears to have found at least one example in a Google help forum thread.

    The webmaster says he received a warning in February, noting that this was “understandable” because he’s worked with SEO agencies in the past that did advertorials, and was spammed with “really bad links” by unknown individuals.

    “So we spent the last months, contacting webmasters, getting links removed and nofollowed and we disavowed around 500 Links,” the webmaster writes. “Next to that we stopped the redirection from our old domain to which there are quite some spammy links pointing.”

    “I think we have done everything within our ability, at considerable time and cost to our company, to comply with Googles guidelines,” he adds. “We have completely stopped working with agencies and we pursue a quality approach.”

    He says after his last reconsideration request was declined, Google gave the following URL as an example of one of the bad links:

    http://sustainablog.org/2013/07/furniture-recycling-endangered-animals/

    “This is a completely legitimate post and it was not influenced by us in any way,” he says. “They are writing about a campaign we are running. I have the feeling this sometimes is completely random. I am even unsure if it makes sense to take the time to actually file another reconsideration request under these circumstances.”

    He later notes that there is no relationship between his company and the blog with the “bad link”.

    Another discussion participant suggests that the “money” keyword link “Guide To Recycling” in the article, which points to the webmaster’s page, could be the problem.

    “Well the so called ‘money keyword link’ was chosen by sustainablog itself, probably because they thought it would best describe what we do,” the webmaster responded. “We have no influence on this, and we certainly have no interest in ranking for ‘Guide To Recycling’”.

    So yes, this sounds like a natural link, at least from this side of the story.

    Interestingly, the person who suggested the “money keyword” issue said the same thing happened to one of their clients – also in the furniture space.

    Schwartz suggests the webmaster is “better off disavowing the link, and also finding links like it,” and doing the same for them. This might be good SEO advice, but it also highlights a possible issue in webmasters being forced to have Google ignore legitimate links.

    If this is really what’s going on, it’s pretty sad.

    It does, however, come at a time when independent reports are finding strong correlation between Google+ and authorship and search rankings. You have to wonder if links are simply starting to play less of a role in Google’s algorithm than in the past. Even if they are still playing a role, it’s possible that they’re not being given as much weight. Following a recent Moz (formerly SEOmoz) report about +1s and rankings, Matt Cutts set out to “debunk the idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings.” But if you think about +1s like links, it’s not necessarily link quantity that really counts either.

    There’s also question about whether Google is going to continue to update Toolbar PageRank. It’s not the same as pure PageRank, but it’s still a de-emphasis, if they’ are in fact killing it.

    Either way, Google has been changing its wording related to link guidelines, putting out multiple new videos about “unnatural links” and suggesting webmasters use nofollow on more types of content.

    Do you think Google is capable of making mistakes like this? If so, do you think it happens often? Share your thoughts.

    Note: This article has been updated from its original form.

    Image: ThinkStock

  • This Google Video Talks About Unnatural Links TO Your Site

    As previously reported, Google has put out seven new videos about various kinds of webspam. Last time, we looked at one about unnatural links from your site. This one is about unnatural links to your site.

    Once again, it’s pretty basic stuff, as Google is including these videos in its documentation about webspam.

    “If you’ve gotten this message, it basically means that we have seen enough low-quality or spammy links to your site that it’s affected our opinion of your entire site” Google’s Matt Cutts says. “We don’t like to take action on sites. We prefer not to, but we have to protect users.”

    Google essentially wants you to contact the sites that are linking to you, and have them take care of them (whether that means removing them, nofollowin them, redirecting them or whatever), and submit reconsideration requests.

    If that doesn’t work, use the Disavow LInks tool. As we recently discussed, not everyone thinks this is working well enough.

  • Google Discusses Unnatural Links (On Your Site) In New Video

    Google has put out seven new Webmaster Help videos about various types of webspam. I’m not sure how long ago they were recorded, but they all just hit the GoogleWebmasterHelp YouTube channel, and feature Matt Cutts, and in some cases, Cutts and other Googlers.

    Here’s one on Unnatural LInks.

    It’s mostly pretty basic stuff about the difference between natural and unnatural links, but Google is using these videos in its documentation for its quality guidelines, so that makes a great deal of sense.

    “The good news is that this is something that is fixable,” says Cutts. “It’s fixable by you relatively easily, if you decide to commit to it.”

    Sandy, the other Googler in the video, notes that removing all the unnatural links is not always the best option, as they only ask that they don’t pass PageRank. This, of course, means nofollowing or redirecting through a URL that’s blocked by robots.txt.

    Cutts notes that he’s a big fan of the removing all the links approach.

  • Even The BBC Can Get Unnatural Link Warnings From Google

    This seems to be proof that Google does not favor big brands of major media outlets when it comes to obeying the quality guidelines. Even the BBC has been getting unnatural link warnings from Google.

    A representative from the organization posted in a Google Webmaster Help forum (as noticed by Search Engine Roundtable):

    My URL is: www.bbc.co.uk

    I am a representative of the BBC site and on Saturday we got a ‘notice of detected unnatural links’.

    Given the BBC site is so huge, with so many independently run sub sections, with literally thousands or agents and authors, can you give us a little clue as to where we might look for these ‘unnatural links’.

    Later in the thread, he adds:

    Yeah the problem is that the site is so big, and has so many agents, that something stupid might have been done, but without being given a clue to what or where, it is kind of hard to track the culprits down and ‘advise them to be a better web citizen’. I have certainly been involved previously is stopping people before they do something ‘unwise’ in relation to the site.

    Of course, I’m not saying someone connected with the site has done something naughty, just that it is a possibility.

    He says he sent a reconsideration request, and explained the situation to Google.

    At SMX West, earlier this week, Google’s Matt Cutts made a point of saying that big brands are penalized often. Of course, we recently saw UK flower site Interflora get penalized, though that didn’t last long.