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NooseLadder

NooseLadder

Free Member
Aug 16, 2011
58
3
Hi,

I've had a mssg from Google in WMT that there appears to be unnatural links to my site; and I believe they are right. I have a large number of links coming from updowner [dot] com.

Other people are seeing this problem too.

It appears that updowner have a bot (according to their FAQ page). They even tell you how to block it in robots.txt. Other people have tried this but it appears not to work.

One guy who wrote to Google complaining about it, got his site blocked!!

Anyhow, I'm in a position where I need to ask G to reconsider my site. I have sent a mssg via a contact form to the webmaster of updowner, asking for all links to my site to be removed. The whois data does not give an email address.

My site is still indexed but I am wondering if G will take any action.

Should I send a reconsideration request yet telling them about updowner or are there other things I should do first?
 
Inbound links from updowner are not going to knock you out of the rankings. If they could, then every blackhatter within 10,000 miles would be submitting sites to them for de-indexing as a way of knocking out the competition.

Do you believe you're being penalized? If so, what kind of penalty?

30 place drop - for light content sites used as Made for Adsense (often)
50 place drop - for paid links that haven't been rel=nofollow
950 - for those felony offenders, a massive drop
Sandbox - new sites with too many links too fast (often un-natural). You get to play in the sandbox awhile as they figure out if you're for real

If you search for yourdomain.com do you come number 1? If not, it signals a penalty

Does a search for site:yourdomain.com return more than 0 results? If not, it signals a penalty

You don't want/need to do reinclusion requests unless there's a good reason and understanding of the mechanics behind it. That way you can fix it first, then do the request.

Because you can't stop some site from linking to you, and thus have no way to fix it, it's highly unlikely this case fits a penalty or reinclusion request.
 
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As he said, it's not updowner that's the problem.

If you are still in the index asking for reinclusion isn't going to help.

How many places have you dropped?
 
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Links from updowner will not hurt your page rankings. Search algorithms have assigned a link influence score of just 4% to this website. This means that links from updowner will only have a minor influence on the search engine positions of the linked sites
 
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webgeek said:
Inbound links from updowner are not going to knock you out of the rankings. If they could, then every blackhatter within 10,000 miles would be submitting sites to them for de-indexing as a way of knocking out the competition.

Do you believe you're being penalized? If so, what kind of penalty?

30 place drop - for light content sites used as Made for Adsense (often)
50 place drop - for paid links that haven't been rel=nofollow
950 - for those felony offenders, a massive drop
Sandbox - new sites with too many links too fast (often un-natural). You get to play in the sandbox awhile as they figure out if you're for real

If you search for yourdomain.com do you come number 1? If not, it signals a penalty

Does a search for site:yourdomain.com return more than 0 results? If not, it signals a penalty

You don't want/need to do reinclusion requests unless there's a good reason and understanding of the mechanics behind it. That way you can fix it first, then do the request.

Because you can't stop some site from linking to you, and thus have no way to fix it, it's highly unlikely this case fits a penalty or reinclusion request.
Click to expand...

There seems to be discussions to say otherwise

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/...inks-can-get-your-site-penalized”-myth/32426/

There is also a discussion over at webmasterworld discussing this as we speak , many sites have tumbled in the rankings weeks after receiving that message, many swear blind that they have not done any link building.

However the point that Google had totally devalued Many Blog networks including BMR and Linkvine, and the bet is if you ever bought these links from those sellers using those articles posted to 10 million sites for £5 or hundreds of contexual links for the same price the chances are you have totally wiped out your backlink profile hence drop in rankings
 
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Sensationalist noise. Google devalues links it believes are 'bad', but doesn't penalize webmasters.

Negative SEO is snake oil when it comes to blog networks or any other mass-link building approach.

The only things close to negative SEO:
1) Building links to competitors to push them above someone, effectively pushing them down
2) Building links to a site based on other keywords found prominently on the site, thus changing the meme of the site in Googles eyes. This one can easily go badly by boosting the site, rather than changing its link focus

Believe what you want, but all this paranoid noise is just that.
 
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webgeek said:
Sensationalist noise. Google devalues links it believes are 'bad', but doesn't penalize webmasters.

Negative SEO is snake oil when it comes to blog networks or any other mass-link building approach.

The only things close to negative SEO:
1) Building links to competitors to push them above someone, effectively pushing them down
2) Building links to a site based on other keywords found prominently on the site, thus changing the meme of the site in Googles eyes. This one can easily go badly by boosting the site, rather than changing its link focus

Believe what you want, but all this paranoid noise is just that.
Click to expand...

Like I said, I do hope you are right.

There has been another algo change rolled out across the US and there are many reports of people getting these kinds of messages through Webmaster Tools who claim never to have used any link networks.

If any of those sites get penalised, and I don't know if they have or have not, it's probably too early to tell, then the natural conclusion would be that link spamming a competitor 'could' cause them issues.

I'll repeat it one more time to make it clear, I really hope this hasn't happened and I would normally always argue that Google wouldn't do such a thing but let's be honest, Google are no longer the whiter than white organisation they once were.

Also it is worth noting that there are some heavy hitters in the SEO industry closely watching and commenting on this recent algo change and even they are waiting to see how things play out before claiming one thing or another is happening so I think it would be a little early for anybody else to claim otherwise at this stage, especially since the recent change has only affected the US so far.
 
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A grey hat marketer friend of mind recently got that WMT notification.

He had 50 terms in the top 10-15 for B2C phrases related to his product offering (an ecommerce site).

Overnight he had dropped in rankings anywhere from 20 to 40 places across all keywords. This is NOT a fixed -20, -30, -40 or other penalty. While he was freaking out, he did the calculations and rank checking on every keyword in his profile... There is a range of degradation, not a flat rate amount.

Instead, it's a case where thousands of links he had build using blog networks over the past 5-6 months had suddenly lost all their link juice, hence the plummet in rankings.
 
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webgeek said:
A grey hat marketer friend of mind recently got that WMT notification.

He had 50 terms in the top 10-15 for B2C phrases related to his product offering (an ecommerce site).

Overnight he had dropped in rankings anywhere from 20 to 40 places across all keywords. This is NOT a fixed -20, -30, -40 or other penalty. While he was freaking out, he did the calculations and rank checking on every keyword in his profile... There is a range of degradation, not a flat rate amount.

Instead, it's a case where thousands of links he had build using blog networks over the past 5-6 months had suddenly lost all their link juice, hence the plummet in rankings.
Click to expand...

Your example is useful to know, thanks.

I would hope that everything rolls out similar to your friend's site, the only question I have is that there seems to be many people who claim not to have used any kind of link or blog networks who are getting the same message.

They are either liars or more likely have employed some SEO services from a 3rd party who have perhaps carried out this kind of link building.
 
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