There are several reasons a reconsideration request might fail. But some of the most common mistakes site owners and inexperienced SEOs make when trying to lift a link-related Google penalty are entirely avoidable.
Here’s a list of the top 12 most common mistakes made when submitting reconsideration requests, and how you can prevent them.
1. Insufficient link data
This is one of the most common reasons why reconsideration requests fail. This mistake is readily evident each time a reconsideration request gets rejected and the example URLs provided by Google are unknown to the webmaster. Relying only on Webmaster Tools data isn’t enough, as Google has repeatedly said. You need to combine data from as many different sources as possible.
A good starting point is to collate backlink data, at the very least:
- Google Webmaster Tools (both latest and sample links)
- Bing Webmaster Tools
- Majestic SEO (Fresh Index)
- Ahrefs
- Open Site Explorer
If you use any toxic link-detection services (e.g., Linkrisk and Link Detox), then you need to take a few precautions to ensure the following:
- They are 100% transparent about their backlink data sources
- They have imported all backlink data
- You can upload your own backlink data (e.g., Webmaster Tools) without any limitations
If you work on large websites that have tons of backlinks, most of these automated services are very likely used to process just a fraction of the links, unless you pay for one of their premium packages. If you have direct access to the above data sources, it's worthwhile to download all backlink data, then manually upload it into your tool of choice for processing. This is the only way to have full visibility over the backlink data that has to be analyzed and reviewed later. Starting with an incomplete data set at this early (yet crucial) stage could seriously hinder the outcome of your reconsideration request.
2. Missing vital legacy information
The more you know about a site’s history and past activities, the better. You need to find out (a) which pages were targeted in the past as part of link building campaigns, (b) which keywords were the primary focus and (c) the link building tactics that were scaled (or abused) most frequently. Knowing enough about a site's past activities, before it was penalized, can help you home in on the actual causes of the penalty. Also, collect as much information as possible from the site owners.
3. Misjudgement
Misreading your current situation can lead to wrong decisions. One common mistake is to treat the example URLs provided by Google as gospel and try to identify only links with the same patterns. Google provides a very small number of examples of unnatural links. Often, these examples are the most obvious and straightforward ones. However, you should look beyond these examples to fully address the issues and take the necessary actions against all types of unnatural links.
Google is very clear on the matter: “Please correct or remove all inorganic links, not limited to the samples provided above.”
Another common area of bad judgement is the inability to correctly identify unnatural links. This is a skill that requires years of experience in link auditing, as well as link building. Removing the wrong links won't lift the penalty, and may also result in further ranking drops and loss of traffic. You must remove the right links.
4. Blind reliance on tools
There are numerous unnatural link-detection tools available on the market, and over the years I've had the chance to try out most (if not all) of them. Because (and without any exception) I’ve found them all very ineffective and inaccurate, I do not rely on any such tools for my day-to-day work. In some cases, a lot of the reported "high risk" links were 100% natural links, and in others, numerous toxic links were completely missed. If you have to manually review all the links to discover the unnatural ones, ensuring you don't accidentally remove any natural ones, it makes no sense to pay for tools.
If you solely rely on automated tools to identify the unnatural links, you will need a miracle for your reconsideration request to be successful. The only tool you really need is a powerful backlink crawler that can accurately report the current link status of each URL you have collected. You should then manually review all currently active links and decide which ones to remove.
I could write an entire book on the numerous flaws and bugs I have come across each time I've tried some of the most popular link auditing tools. A lot of these issues can be detrimental to the outcome of the reconsideration request. I have seen many reconsiderations request fail because of this. If Google cannot algorithmically identify all unnatural links and must operate entire teams of humans to review the sites (and their links), you shouldn't trust a $99/month service to identify the unnatural links.
If you have an in-depth understanding of Google's link schemes, you can build your own process to prioritize which links are more likely to be unnatural, as I described in this post (see sections 7 & 8). In an ideal world, you should manually review every single link pointing to your site. Where this isn’t possible (e.g., when dealing with an enormous numbers of links or resources are unavailable), you should at least focus on the links that have the more "unnatural" signals and manually review them.
5. Not looking beyond direct links
When trying to lift a link-related penalty, you need to look into all the links that may be pointing to your site directly or indirectly. Such checks include reviewing all links pointing to other sites that have been redirected to your site, legacy URLs with external inbound links that have been internally redirected owned, and third-party sites that include cross-domain canonicals to your site. For sites that used to buy and redirect domains in order increase their rankings, the quickest solution is to get rid of the redirects. Both Majestic SEO and Ahrefs report redirects, but some manual digging usually reveals a lot more.
6. Not looking beyond the first link
All major link intelligence tools, including Majestic SEO, Ahrefs and Open Site Explorer, report only the first link pointing to a given site when crawling a page. This means that, if you overly rely on automated tools to identify links with commercial keywords, the vast majority of them will only take into consideration the first link they discover on a page. If a page on the web links just once to your site, this is not big deal. But if there are multiple links, the tools will miss all but the first one.
For example, if a page has five different links pointing to your site, and the first one includes a branded anchor text, these tools will just report the first link. Most of the link-auditing tools will in turn evaluate the link as "natural" and completely miss the other four links, some of which may contain manipulative anchor text. The more links that get missed this way the more likely your reconsideration request will fail.
7. Going too thin
Many SEOs and webmasters (still) feel uncomfortable with the idea of losing links. They cannot accept the idea of links that once helped their rankings are now being devalued, and must be removed. There is no point trying to save "authoritative", unnatural links out of fear of losing rankings. If the main objective is to lift the penalty, then all unnatural links need to be removed.
Often, in the first reconsideration request, SEOs and site owners tend to go too thin, and in the subsequent attempts start cutting deeper. If you are already aware of the unnatural links pointing to your site, try to get rid of them from the very beginning. I have seen examples of unnatural links provided by Google on PR 9/DA 98 sites. Metrics do not matter when it comes to lifting a penalty. If a link is manipulative, it has to go.
In any case, Google’s decision won’t be based only on the number of links that have been removed. Most important in the search giant's eyes are the quality of links still pointing to your site. If the remaining links are largely of low quality, the reconsideration request will almost certainly fail.
8. Insufficient effort to remove links
Google wants to see a "good faith" effort to get as many links removed as possible. The higher the percentage of unnatural links removed, the better. Some agencies and SEO consultants tend to rely too much on the use of the disavow tool. However, this isn't a panacea, and should be used as a last resort for removing those links that are impossible to remove—after exhausting all possibilities to physically remove them via the time-consuming (yet necessary) outreach route.
Google is very clear on this:
Even if you're unable to remove all of the links that need to be removed, you must be able to demonstrate that you've made several attempts to have them removed, which can have a favorable impact on the outcome of the reconsideration request. Yes, in some cases it might be possible to have a penalty lifted simply by disavowing instead of removing the links, but these cases are rare and this strategy may backfire in the future. When I reached out to ex-googler Fili Wiese's for some advice on the value of removing the toxic links (instead of just disavowing them), his response was very straightforward:
9. Ineffective outreach
Simply identifying the unnatural links won't get the penalty lifted unless a decent percentage of the links have been successfully removed. The more communication channels you try, the more likely it is that you reach the webmaster and get the links removed. Sending the same email hundreds or thousands of times is highly unlikely to result in a decent response rate. Trying to remove a link from a directory is very different from trying to get rid of a link appearing in a press release, so you should take a more targeted approach with a well-crafted, personalized email. Link removal request emails must be honest and to the point, or else they'll be ignored.
Tracking the emails will also help in figuring out which messages have been read, which webmasters might be worth contacting again, or alert you of the need to try an alternative means of contacting webmasters.
Creativity, too, can play a big part in the link removal process. For example, it might be necessary to use social media to reach the right contact. Again, don't trust automated emails or contact form harvesters. In some cases, these applications will pull in any email address they find on the crawled page (without any guarantee of who the information belongs to). In others, they will completely miss masked email addresses or those appearing in images. If you really want to see that the links are removed, outreach should be carried out by experienced outreach specialists. Unfortunately, there aren't any shortcuts to effective outreach.
10. Quality issues and human errors
All sorts of human errors can occur when filing a reconsideration request. The most common errors include submitting files that do not exist, files that do not open, files that contain incomplete data, and files that take too long to load. You need to triple-check that the files you are including in your reconsideration request are read-only, and that anyone with the URL can fully access them.
Poor grammar and language is also bad practice, as it may be interpreted as "poor effort." You should definitely get the reconsideration request proofread by a couple of people to be sure it is flawless. A poorly written reconsideration request can significantly hinder your overall efforts.
Quality issues can also occur with the disavow file submission. Disavowing at the URL level isn't recommended because the link(s) you want to get rid of are often accessible to search engines via several URLs you may be unaware of. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that you disavow at the domain or sub-domain level.
11. Insufficient evidence
How does Google know you have done everything you claim in your reconsideration request? Because you have to prove each claim is valid, you need to document every single action you take, from sent emails and submitted forms, to social media nudges and phone calls. The more information you share with Google in your reconsideration request, the better. This is the exact wording from Google:
“ ...we will also need to see good-faith efforts to remove a large portion of inorganic links from the web wherever possible.”
12. Bad communication
How you communicate your link cleanup efforts is as essential as the work you are expected to carry out. Not only do you need to explain the steps you've taken to address the issues, but you also need to share supportive information and detailed evidence. The reconsideration request is the only chance you have to communicate to Google which issues you have identified, and what you've done to address them. Being honest and transparent is vital for the success of the reconsideration request.
There is absolutely no point using the space in a reconsideration request to argue with Google. Some of the unnatural links examples they share may not always be useful (e.g., URLs that include nofollow links, removed links, or even no links at all). But taking the argumentative approach veritably guarantees your request will be denied.
Cropped from photo by Keith Allison, licensed under Creative Commons.
Conclusion
Getting a Google penalty lifted requires a good understanding of why you have been penalized, a flawless process and a great deal of hands-on work. Performing link audits for the purpose of lifting a penalty can be very challenging, and should only be carried out by experienced consultants. If you are not 100% sure you can take all the required actions, seek out expert help rather than looking for inexpensive (and ineffective) automated solutions. Otherwise, you will almost certainly end up wasting weeks or months of your precious time, and in the end, see your request denied.
"If Google cannot algorithmically identify all unnatural links and must operate entire teams of humans to review the sites (and their links), you shouldn't trust a $99/month service to identify the unnatural links."
That needs to be in red or flashing or something. It's such a obvious piece of logic that is so often missed. Thanks f or bringing it out.
I was about to post the same thing. Google still needs people at least for a few more years.
Thanks Marisa.
If you take a look at the below post you can see that apart from the creators of the penalty recovery tools, most SEO experts do not recommend using them.
It makes no surprise that amongst top most useful tools there aren't any penalty recovery tools at all but just the standard SEO tools such as WMT, Majestic SEO, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, Google analytics and OSE.
24 SEO Experts reveal their Favorite Google Penalty Recovery Tools
I'm so using that quote the next time our exec team asks our team to build an "automated disavow" tool. Sure, and once it's done we can sell it to Google since they haven't yet figured it out 100% either.
Congrats on being promoted to the main blog by the way! :)
Google will need people for longer than a few years. The thing about algo's - even the best - is that they have to be updated to reflect changes in technology and user behavior. That will always fall to humans (I hope!)
if your down website traffic due to a Google penalty. most common Google penalties are Penguin or Panda.both have similarly devastating effects on your site's traffic.how we can Identify Penalties types Panda, Penguin and Other? many Tools and Resources are available such as Xenu Link Sleuth,Ahrefs ,MajesticSEO and Google Web master I learn lot of thing in this blog. because i have no idea how collate backlink data yet Thanks Modestos
Hi Deepak,
This comprehensive guide to link identification will help you to understand and identify the types of links that are likely to be viewed as manipulative. It is these that will figure most heavily in triggering the Penguin algorithm and in the application of manual actions for unnatural linking practices.
Definitive Guide to Manipulative Links from Spamflag
Hope that helps,
Sha
Thanks Sha! for provides me very helpful information. really its very helpful for me. Thanks
Hi Modestos,
Excellent post! All of these are issues we constantly find ourselves having to explain when people call us in support.
One other mistake I see people making a lot is failing to re-check their initial crawls for links that may have come live again after initial crawls. There are a wide range of reasons we find that links come live again despite initially being dead (from unstable servers and temporary account suspensions to game-playing by annoyed webmasters, even crashed sites restored from backups!).
We'll be adding your post to the resources on our site and encouraging people to read it before they get started on their campaigns.
Sha
Hi Sha,
Thank you for finding the post useful.
I tend to recheck the link status of each link up until the very last minute before filing a reconsideration request. I think this is the only way to minimise suffering from you issues you have described. In most of these cases I find that crawler applications are the ones to blame. Those that crawl too aggressively often get blocked by web servers and if you are lucky the the request will time-out. However, in some cases the web servers may start serving a mixture of 4xx and 5xx server responses confusing web masters thinking that there are no links at all.
I am also aware that some webmasters may initially remove (or nofollow) a link but if they don't get paid as requested they might then add it back again.
Modestos
Hi Modestos,
I think all of us who work a lot with penalties are most likely doing the same thing, but it is a mistake I see a lot of our less experienced customers make often. Mostly because they do an initial crawl of all unnatural links at the very beginning and discard any that are shown to be dead in an effort to just make the job they are facing smaller.
When those links are only temporarily inaccessible, not including them in the reconsideration effort can turn out to be a simple, but costly mistake.
We've also seen webmasters use every trick in the book to make it difficult for crawlers to see links on pages. These also include tricks like adding a temporary redirect to:
1. a page that mimics a 4XX or 5XX page until email stops arriving, then removing the redirect
2. a home page that mimics a parked or expired domain, suspended account etc, again just until the email stops.
...and the list goes on ;-)
There are days when we have a little chuckle and raise our mugs to the ingenuity of these webmasters before shaking our heads at the amount of time they've spent on their latest trick ;)
Life is never boring! 8D
Sha
I agree.
No crawl should be trusted 100% unless verified. Just take all "dead" links reported by one vendor's crawler and re-check them with that of another vendor - you won't believe how many of those "dead" links aren't dead at all.
With regards to the tricks you've described, why do you think webmasters would spend time on this? What would they gain?
Mostly it's about stopping people sending them email because they are sick of all the requests to remove links. When they use temporary redirects it is because they want to stop someone emailing, but don't want to take down the whole page because other people are still paying them for links.
Then there are those who are very angry about the whole situation and want to hit back at people they believe have spammed their site in the first place :(
Many of these webmasters are literally being hit by the avalanche over and over, every day. It's no garden party for them either and I can understand that there must be days when frustration outweighs everything else.
Sha
Modestos,
Having been involved in a handful of reconsideration requests, I can attest to the degree of frustration felt while trying to manage the process. What I've found most commonly is SEOs are willing to cut as deep as possible to remove dangerous and potentially dangerous links, but clients will often fight them on how far they can go. They tend to have a wait-and-see attitude, which, at best delays the request, but in many cases lengthens and worsens the process.
I'd be surprised if SEOs don't email this to clients as a way of quieting the pushback they so often receive.
RS
Hi Ronell,
I think cutting as deep as possible isn't always a good solution because it could result in long-term ranking and traffic loss. On the other hand, going too thin will stretch the time duration of the entire process and result in significant higher costs.
In my experience most clients want to get rid of the penalty as soon as possible and I haven't had any wait-and-see cases. As long as you are confident about the suggested strategy they should trust you - in the end of the day they come to us for expert advice because they need our help. I think it is the SEO's responsibility to make clients aware about the pros and cons of each available option so clients can then decide which option they prefer. If clients want to be in charge of the entire SEO strategy and you are 100% sure this strategy is doomed to fail you should let them know as soon as possible and even consider pulling out. Otherwise, relationships where there is no trust can end up being very frustrating.
I certainly talk to a lot of people who are stuck between a rock and a hard place because they have identified the problems, but are instructed by higher level "experts" that they must do as little of the work as possible. These are mostly in-house people and those who are instructing them are the people who were responsible for crafting the "tricks" that were used to create the problem (or the CEO who paid for someone else to do that).
In some cases there are agency people who also have a problem with this, but again the problem generally stems from their inability to accept that the methods they used to build those links are not acceptable to search engines. (We need to reiterate this - Google is not the only search engine that has a problem with unnatural linking, just the only one to make it a focus)
As a Penalty Recovery Specialist, making your approach clear before you accept the client is important. If a client insists that you "peel the onion" at the outset, all well and good, but you can be sure by the time you get to the third unsuccessful reconsideration request they will have conveniently forgotten who made that choice. Before you know it, you will be wearing the blame for the failures and things will become way more urgent in a heartbeat.
When we agree to handle full service campaigns for people we make it clear from the outset what our approach will be. If they are the type of client who having gotten themselves into a sticky situation, still wants to run the show, then regretfully we are not the right company for them.
Sha
I am agree with you Modestos ! if we Submit a successful reconsideration request in webmaster Tool Manual Actions. so how many time Wait for the response and can we Repeat if the issue is not resolved or the reconsideration request was denied
An article by putting images MOZ competition (AHERFS). I did not expect xD
Great post Modestos. :)
I think that some reconsideration requests fail by random chance. I know that seems like a silly statement when we know that all reconsideration requests are actually seen by a human being. However, we're pretty sure that the webspam team members get a random sample of unnatural links to review to see whether or not you've removed links. The sample that they get on one recon may be different than on a subsequent one.
I've had several reconsideration requests where we have been extremely thorough and still failed and the example links we got were all truly natural links. Now, usually when someone says to me, "The example link was a natural link" I tell them a few things:
-Even if that link is natural, it's probably indicative of a pattern. Look for other unnatural links like this.
-Make sure that you've disavowed correctly. For example, did you just disavow on the url level? There may be similar links in your profile that you haven't properly disavowed.
-Is it *really* natural? Maybe you thought it was a good link but really it was a paid link that you, as the penalty worker, were not aware of.
In my clients' cases though, I was really certain that these were natural links. Several times now I have replied with a reconsideration request that explains that there is nothing more we can do and that those links were not self made. And, in every case the penalty has been lifted.
My concern is that if it is this difficult for me to get a penalty removed (and I have removed a large number of penalties) how is the average small business owner who purchased some bad SEO supposed to do this?
Thank you Marie.
Your statement about the "random chance" for failed reconsideration requests isn't silly at all. I've had very similar experiences with some very thorough reconsideration requests failing for no apparent reason. To make things worse, the example links provided by Google aren't always helpful and can easily leave one in the dark.
How many times I've come across meaningless example links such as nofollow or links from disavowed domains? In one example the provided URL didn't include any links at all - just a brand mention!
Surely an organisation with Google's technical capabilities could (and should) be more helpful when dealing with these requests that can be so critical to some businesses. Definitely, the current process needs to be more streamlined with better direction and more transparency from Google's side. Otherwise, small business owners stand no chance getting a penalty removed.
I'll have to agree loudly here too. I've got a client where dozens and dozens of sample links in the manual actions list are ALL returning 410 (gone forever) and have been doing so for months, and GWT still shows those examples. Sigh.
We haven't had to deal with this yet but we're bookmarking this guide for the future. Awesome job, Modestos!
Great insights. I think the biggest takeaway from this is that unless you are 100% sure what you're doing, you should seek out professional help. Mistakes can be made in the process that will ultimately leave things worse off than they were to start.
Great post, Modestos!
I do question however whether you need to go beyond the links from Webmaster Tools. I've not seen an example yet where Google in a rejection pointed to a sample that was outside the list downloaded from GWT. I've only done 8 manual penalty recovery jobs, but, I've had 100% success at this point, and some of the clients had pretty massive amounts of really spammy backlinks.
Good to see Sha commenting on this article...rmoov rocks! It's a fabulous tool for manual penalty recovery work.
I agree here. I've handled a few manual penalties with 100% success rate and for each of them the key to getting the Reconsideration Request approved was solely based on the links that were detected in GWT versus other tools like Ahrefs, Majestic, Open Site Explorer, etc.
I've had experiences were the example links weren't available in GWT. Also worth bearing in mind that:
Combining data from as many datasets as possible is the most effective way IMO.
Hi Jason,
On the subject of where to go for data, I have seen more people fail because they have relied solely on the data from Google Webmaster Tools than people who have succeeded by doing the same thing. That said, it does happen.
To be honest, I have seen a fair amount of evidence that this comes down to a combination of three things: pure luck; size and type of backlink profile; and type of penalty. Of course, following thorough process and providing great documentation is always going to help.
Regardless, our approach at rmoov is always to get the best data available and do the best job possible. After all...if we were able to remove a penalty, but leave some percentage of questionable links in play our client would always be at risk with new iterations of Penguin, changes to the quality guidelines and even just competitors with a penchant for publicly outing their competition.
Sha
Hey Michael!
Thanks so much. Glad rmoov is helping get the job done for you 8D
Congratulations on clearing those penalties.
Sha
Thanks so much for this! Last year, my Facebook groups were full of panicked website owners wondering how to submit a successful reconsideration request. Most of the small bloggers, with limited SEO expertise, ended up making their entire site nofollow just to appease Google. Thanks for this actionable list - I'll be passing it on!
Thanks!
"Most of the small bloggers, with limited SEO expertise, ended up making their entire site nofollow just to appease Google."
This won't have any impact if trying lifting a links-based penalty as discussed in the post.
It helps if the penalty is for "unnatural outbound links" - a lot of bloggers, who allowed massive amounts of guest post on their sites, saw nofollowing their in-post and in-author bio links as the only sure quick-fix to the sudden attack/penalty.
The penalty is still link-based, yet it refers to on-site quoted external links.
Great Post, Modestos:)
Hey Modestos,
Google penalty has always made an exasperate situation for me. There were situations when multiple reconsideration requests fails but I could get it revoked by removing/disavowing all manipulative links. The interesting part is that there were situations when Google revoked penalty even without submitting any reconsideration request. I guess it's because Webmaster finds a gradual decrease in manipulative links and most of them were already disavowed. We afraid whether the message could reappear but it still haven't reappeared in the manual action page (It's been 8 months).
When I read this article from SEJ, https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-unfairly-using-seo-community-clean-internet/107383/, I came to the conclusion that what Google need is a drop in manipulative link count and disavow file with all manipulative links.
Hi,
If a manual action disappears without a reconsideration request submission it generally means that the time period allocated for the penalty has expired. If you have done enough work for the manual action to have been revoked when the webspam team comes back to review the expired manual action then it will remain cleared, but if there are still problems evident then the manual action will be reapplied. If it has been 8 months since the manual action cleared then you are most likely in good shape, but I would always be sure to monitor the situation into the future and deal with any unnatural links that may be surfaced as you find them.
Sha
Hi Renz,
All manual penalties have an expiry date regardless of what you've done to address the issues. However this may range from a few months to several years.
Once I came across a site that the amount of spam links was so high and the links so difficult to remove that I recommended starting from scratch on a new domain. Two years later the manual action is now gone without doing any work (other than the normal link decay). However, the traffic levels of this site have remained as miserable as before the penalty was lifted for two reasons:
Thanks Modestos and Sha. I'm new to that fact that manual penalties have an expiry date!
I would love to see a little consideration given for "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". The two times I've been involved with this process, clients have disavowed WAY more than the needed to. There's as much to lose from shaving off to much as there is from not shaving off enough. Great article and good thoughts though!
If clients disavow links, why do they need an SEO consultant?
Generally because they had no idea what they were doing and as usual have gone for the "quick fix", then realize they are in even deeper trouble :(
You are absolutely right about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Unfortunately that happens a lot.
There are three main reasons that we see:
There really isn't a good answer you can give someone when they ask you what to do about that!
While none of these really fit within Modestos' post since they are not going to be responsible for making reconsideration requests fail, they are certainly things that need to be thought about before the campaign is launched. All of them will definitely affect the chance for a meaningful recovery once the manual action is dealt with.
Sha
#8 - Insufficient effort to remove links - Can you expand more on this? I realize the definition of "sufficent effort" is subjective and totally up to Google. However, what is common? Reaching out to a website owner once, twice, four times? What is your definition of sufficient effort?
It is subjective but in my experience reconsideration requests with evidence of having tried 2-3 times to remove the links are more likely to be accepted compared to those that show little effort or evidence.
There is really more to this than how many times you have attempted to contact - where many people go wrong is in not bothering to really see if it is possible to find a method of contact. A classic example is where people are not able to easily find an email address, so decide it is not possible to contact the domain owner. When there is a contact form present on the site, not bothering to use it would reasonably be seen as insufficient effort.
The same applies to people who decide to go no further when they are not able to access contact emails using automated tools. If there is an email address visible on the site, then a "good faith effort" would reasonably require taking a look and attempting to use it.
Hope that helps,
Sha
Great points Sha.
The only thing I'd like to add is that for sites where no contact details or contact forms are available it is always worth looking into the whois registration details.
I usually rely on https://whois.domaintools.com/ unless the domain has been registered by Go Daddy which has a separate whois database available at https://who.godaddy.com/ .
Absolutely Modestos.
Our approach to ensuring a good faith effort includes finding and using as many methods of contact as possible and in the case of email addresses, we generally look for at least two if available. This means that any email address available from the domaintools database is always included along with information from the godaddy database as well. Our tool provides access to those by default, so the additional work of finding other email addresses, social media contacts etc adds to the chances of making a successful contact (and proving a good faith effort).
Jon Cooper from Pointblankseo.com provides numerous ways of how to get in touch with someone (for link building, not destroying :), but it's the same thing). Making it personal with a name or social media really helps.
Exactly ...what works for successful link cleanup is in many ways identical to what works for successful link acquisition. I actually prefer to take it to the next level and find ways to do both at once ;)
I spoke about this at the State of Search conference in Dallas recently, with examples of some of the "ninja moves" being exhibited by smart people working in the penalty recovery space.
As with everything we do, shortcuts breed sub-standard results. Being smart, creative and giving a damn has a way of paying off ;)
Nice post, thanks for sharing :) Even thou getting a reconsideration request takes long time as I've seen, it works if you weren't too spammy with your site
Thanks Marisa! for provides me very helpful information.
Really its very helpful for me!
Thanks
Thanks for your great post Modestos. I learned new things about Google penalties with your article.
Good article
Blindly relying on tools and going too thin - probably the most common reasons why an RR fails.
Thank you for sharing these 12 reasons about why our reconsideration request fails. Is there any maximum number of times you can submit a reconsideration?
No (as far as I am aware).
Great post, I've spent such a long time cleaning my clients back-link profiles after poor SEO processes. Its nice to see I'm not the only one. Added to bookmarks :)
Good post Modestos!
I think points 9 and 12, in my view, can be some of the most challenging for the main reason that you need to explain the technical history and what effect it is having on your site in the nicest possible way, to people who potentially have little knowledge in that area of online.
Thank you Daniel!
You're spot on - points 9 and 12 are some of the most challenging ones and many people don't realise the amount of effort and detail required to get the maximum value out of these activities.
Good Post Modesto!
I'm currently auditing a link profile for a client, I collected backlink data from Google Webmaster Tools and Majestic. Should I invest in Ahref and Open Site Explorer for one report? (kinda wish backlink data sites ran on purchasable non expiring credits rather than retainer.)
I've read in many places that it's important to show Google evidence of work. However, no one explains how. What file types can be included in the reconsideration request?
I used SEO Tools For Excel to weed out all no-follow links and using the PageRank extract tool I pulled all the -1 to use in my audit. Would you say this tool is accurate enough?
Lastly, one of the backlink profiles linked in from separate IP addresses (I ran a who.is report on every site that returned a -1) After sending him a personalized email asking link removal, he responded $5 pre link removal. I've read this should be disavowed. Thoughts?
Having access to GWT and Majestic SEO data you should be fine. If your reconsideration requests fails it might be worth investing in Ahrefs too but for most cases GWT and Majestic SEO data should be enough.
With regards to evidence, you need to take screenshots of all emails you've sent and contact forms you have filled in and share them via a Google doc which will be linking from within your reconsideration request.
Take a look at step 7 in the below post:
https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal
Well filing requisition request is not the only thing that matters, it is no doubt about complete analysis with tools and with your wits too.
I have done a few tests on this before and found that all of the link data tools i tested did not match the links shown in webmaster tools. Every penalty that I have had removed (and it's been quite a few now) I have only used the data provided by Google themselves in webmaster tools.
Very thorough post! I like your advice about the use of multiple data sources. I found that downloading the link data from webmaster tools a few times over a coupe weeks or months to make sure they are sharing all link data. The other benefit of using multiple link profiles are the fact that more and more sites are blocking crawlers so the more crawlers you use, the more complete your data will be.
What it is clear, if we analyze the trajectory and impact of Google updates in full, is that Google is not patching, it is evolving. We perceive all media professionals, and indicate all the changes we need to incorporate to websites that have good ranking position.
Google is increasingly seeking: 1) Natural, related links and quality, they are not always focused on the same anchor text. 2) Good, relevant and unique content that add value to the user.
So it is important to work in this direction but updates to come in the future, no doubt.
Valuable post on failure of reconsideration requests. It is really a problem for SEO professionals. Because when the site is penalized, normally site owner or business organization will cancel the contract with that SEO Company. And when the company hire new SEO team or deploy new in house staff for solving the problems and lifting penalties, the new team may be aware about the practice and strategies followed by the previous team. If the company authorities are aware about most the link building tactics followed the previous SEO team, it will be highly helpful to the new team deployed or hired for recovery requests. Really good post. There can be many reasons by the resubmission initiatives may fail. If we logically use our technical knowledge in excavating pointing links which are harmful by combined usage of all available resources, we can include them in our link data prepared for re submission.
You forgot:
Step 13.
Google just doesn't like you..
Great Post though, really helpful. Thanks.
He he. You are right, sometimes Google doesn't want know about you, but this is the main reason why take actions to reverse the situation. You have to be loved trying to do good actions, good links and good content. If you earn traffic and votes in social nets, Google HAVE to love you.
Great post Modestos!
There are always reasons Google doesn't like you and it's our job to find out what these reasons might be. So far I haven't come across any penalised site that didn't deserve to get penalised. Of course there may be sites that get away with similar (or bigger) link-related violations but their day might come too.
Such a useful article to create a reconsideration request...
There are lots of reasons for failing in the reconsideration request like improper identification of unnatural link, improper use of the disavow the rest of bad links, lake efforts to get unnatural links removal.
Great post Modestos,
But I couldn't agree with second point. When you have link data, you would know targeted keywords and pages by that. You should not trust your client in it
Link data provide significant information about the targeted keywords and pages but asking the client for a bit of background also has some benefits such as identifying certain patterns from past link-building campaigns.
Hey Modestos,
Thank you once again for crafting another useful post. I just have some questions,
Why do we need to manually outreach first? If a site has 5K+ links that needs to be removed, how can someone manually request each site owner to remove it? I mean we already did the hard work by diving into the pool of links and pointed out the demons then why can't we just file them for disavow?
Another thing is, what if the site owner especially the "directories owners" demands you to pay them $$$ in order to remove the link, how to deal with such intelligent people? Do we need to report this virulent behavior to Google as well?
Great question!
Manually reaching out to get as many toxic links removed as possible comes from Google. In a way it that the more effort you put in getting the links removed the more likely Google approves your reconsideration request. That said, I have come across cases where penalties have been lifted without removing any links and just relying on the disavow file.
However, in my experience this approach usually requires several attempts until the reconsideration request get approved and can end up taking up much longer to lift penalty.
Thanks for the reply Modestos, you're right.
And what about the last question? Have you ever paid some amount in order to get removed your link?
Paying a small fee to get links removed from directories is a good idea, if you want to move fast. In many cases the fee they charge is much lower compared to what they charge to create a listing. However, for those trying to take advantage and charge high fees, reporting them to Google might be wiser.
Hi Modestos, this post have been really helpful to better structure my approach to work with penalised websites. But I have a question though. Let's say that you had sorted all the links but you would also like to check deeper to avoid "Not looking beyond the first link", is there another tool (known or personal) that you use to double check a "good" link, or this is a process based on gut feeling, experience and lots of manual work?
Hi Raul,
As I said in the article apart from a good (on-demand) crawler you don't really need any other tools. The final call should be influenced solely by a manual review - automation can only cause problems at that stage.
You are right about automation, but I also have the feeling that EVERY link is unnatural when looking through my own linking profile.. it's silly but I can't really help it.
I suggest to use best Backlink Checker out there to use for reconsideration request.
Adding Majestic to your toolset is a good idea (in addition to what you're using, not a replacement). Keep in mind there are constant instances (like yours) where backlinks are pulled from Majestic, Ahrefs, OSE, & GWT and the combined+deduped list still didn't catch all of the links that the webspam team wanted gone before removing a penalty.
It's pretty messed up, but that's the place we're in right now. You just have to account for the fact that there's no perfect solution, and get as much data as possible. Try similar kinda service providers [link removed] out there..
1 - Forget about ose. It has very low number of backlinks. Everytime I'm checking this, majestic and ahrefs got far better stats
8 - Disavow works fine and there's no need to "show effort". The key is link analysis. Works for me all the time (around 200 jobs done so far). Also I saw real effort but Google sent negatives because of bad link profile. Disavow is faster and better than sending tons of requests and get answers from for example 3%. Imo that service is for earning some extra cash only...
9 - As above, disavow is enough
11 - Wrong. Google can't check You if You did effort or not. Once again link analysis is the key, not "sending requests" and wasting time