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If you are providing affiliate links to another site, or anything similar, the links need to either have the "nofollow" attribute applied or be 302 redirected. The major affiliate programs I am aware of do such.

Thanks for the reply!

I would like to tell you more about these links.

I have a coupon agregattor website

There are an image, a button that I ask online shops to put if they want to apear in my site and don´t have a proper affiliate marketing programme.

The thing is that I don´t know how bad google sees this as many of my competitors do it and I am th eonly one that is penalized, just because I added a kexword for the image button.

What do you think about these links? I think they are fair as I promote them and their customers can find coupons for the shop in my site. But I am afraid google algorith does no see it that way.

Thanks!
Sebastian

Will changing this links with my url or brand will help? or should I delete them all ?

If you built manipulative links to your site, my recommendation would be to delete them.

If you modify the links to change the anchor text, you MAY fool the Penguin algorithm in the short run. I strongly believe Google will update Penguin in a similar manner as to how they have updated Panda over the past 2 years. If that happens, Google will incorporate signals other then anchor text and you will be in the same situation in a short period of time.

Hi Ryan Kent :),

I got a problem with most of my important keywords they all went to hell some months after penguin. Google said that there was no manual penality. I know that the problem is that I have too many links with keywords.
Will changing this links with my url or brand will help? or should I delete them all ?

Since them I foccus on building non keyword links but still not working.

Fantastic, fantastic post Ryan!  Dealing with this for a client now - good info!

I know I have done this before, good idea to check with

http://www.noindexchecker.com/

I think Google has opened a can of worms with Penguin. The problem is... removing links that are nearly impossible to remove. The next thing the spammers are going to do is flood the competing sites with bad back links in order get them penalized so their clients will be equal in being penalized, thus pushing up their own rankings. I think in the long run it is going to get real messy.
Also, I can't verify this but it appears that Google looks the other way with Penguin if the company is spending quite a bit in PPC...
I am by no means an expert but this is how it appears to me.

Thanks Ryan for taking your time and writing back.

I recognize this situation is difficult and a lot of emotions are involved. I would like to be helpful which is why I have volunteered time sharing the results of my experiences...to help others such as yourself.

I sympathize with your situation. A manual penalty for manipulative links has driven some companies out of business, other companies have been forced to lay employees off, and many SEO companies lost clients. I fully understand the impact.

Please keep in mind the original Q&A was asked and answered. You added to this thread stating "This is exactly what happened to us. We have removed over 600K links so far but still not enough for google. We are out of luck now because we cannot get any more links removed! ".

If you are requesting assistance I'll do whatever I can to help, but it is upon YOU to let us know your situation and how we can help. You stated you removed 600k links. And? For my first client I removed 3.5 million links and the penalty was not lifted. It makes no difference how many links you remove per se.

You also shared you are "out of luck" because you could not remove more links. Google has repeatedly lifted penalties for sites who were not able to remove all the links. Why is this statement relevant?

I humbly suggest the problem is neither Google nor me. You have a problem with how Google is ranking your site. We can hopefully agree on that statement. Based on your replies, the information you are sharing is not relevant to removing the penalty. You can say "I removed 600k links! How is that not relevant" My first client removed 3.5 million links and the penalty remained. Google does not care how many links you remove. The penalty is in place because of the links which remain.

Next, you mentioned the remaining links are impossible to remove. Here is the information which is helpful to Google:

1. Did you send a polite e-mail requesting link removal to the domain owner?

2. Did the e-mail contain a list of all links from that domain to your site?

3. Did you send the e-mail to the e-mail address on file with the WHOIS registry?

4. Did you also send the e-mail to any e-mail address on the site (if different)?

5. Did you also use the site's Contact Form (if available)?

6. Did you save a copy of all communications sent along with the date they were sent? Are you making these communications available to Google?

7. Did you verify which links were removed? Did you follow up with webmasters request regarding link removal?

IF you began with a comprehensive list of all known links to your site (i.e. not just Google WMT links and not just Google + OSE links but a comprehensive list from many sources) and IF you properly identified all the manipulative links and then followed the above process, Google will remove the manual penalty. The only other requirement is you admit any wrongdoings and commit to honestly following Google's Guidelines going forward.

I hope you find this information helpful. If not, I will simply accept you may be beyond my ability to assist.

Good Luck.

Thanks for the reminder Keri and I apologize for the tone.

Hi! Just a note from an SEOmoz staffer here that unless someone has an Associate or Staff label on their avatar they are just a volunteer and donating their time and experience to others in Q&A, and we prefer that people keep things in a friendly tone and keep to the questions asked without getting into personal judgements.

If you'd like a confidential answer to a question and answers only from an SEOmoz Staff or Associate, you're welcome to use your private question credit.

First, if you read all my responses how come you're saying " When you say "it was not our mistake", that is not true in most cases"? You didn't even ask what exactly happened. You didn't even try to understand what the problem is. This is a part of listening(communication) and you did fail on that. You judge just like Google without listening to what I need to say. If you're like this with your clients, good luck to them.

I have carefully read all of your responses in this Q&A. You seem to feel that both Google and I are not listening because we are not responding in the manner you desire. Just because I do not agree with you does not mean I did not read or understand what you shared.

""It wasn't our mistake so I'm not gonna admit it." Really? It requires a lot of humility to resolve this issue. When you say "it was not our mistake", that is not true in most cases. Usually the site owner, or an agent of the site owner (employee, web developer, "SEO", link builder, etc) caused at least some if not most of the manipulative links to be created. If you recently purchased the site then you would want to explain that to Google and provide evidence of your statement. "

You're just judging me without listening what really happened.

Thanks again for your reply.

I respect their experience as well as yours but you guys are so Google-blind.

When I submit a Reconsideration Request for manipulative links to Google, the response I receive back is as follows:

Hello Ryan,

Thank you for your follow up email and all of the information provided. The
documentation you provided was very helpful in processing and understanding
this case.

After re-evaluating your site’s backlinks we are able to partially revoke a
manual action.

The response goes on to explain how the inorganic links which were not removed will be devalued. Shortly after receiving the above response, the site begins ranking normally again. It is important to note that "normally" does not mean it will rank where it did before the penalty. It depends on how many links were removed which affected the particular query, the competition, etc.

So if I am "blind" by Google, well, it's simple for me. They outlined a specific process, I "blindly" follow that process, and they remove the penalty. I am happy, Google is happy, and most importantly the client is happy.

MOST site owners and SEOs do not follow the process, so most do not achieve the results. You are likely fighting Google, not following the process, so you will continue to be unhappy with the results.

"It wasn't our mistake so I'm not gonna admit it." Really? It requires a lot of humility to resolve this issue. When you say "it was not our mistake", that is not true in most cases. Usually the site owner, or an agent of the site owner (employee, web developer, "SEO", link builder, etc) caused at least some if not most of the manipulative links to be created. If you recently purchased the site then you would want to explain that to Google and provide evidence of your statement.

In my experience Google does care, they do listen, and they are actually helpful with the penalty removal process. I will admit most people will share your experience, not mine.

Anyways, I was just looking to find some success stories around the same issue but never heard or seen one. So removing links doesn't really work or does it?

I can guarantee removing links does work. In fact, I guarantee success for clients. It's a sure thing. You remove the manipulative links, follow Google's process and the penalty goes away.

Thanks for the reply Ryan.

I heard and read exactly the same response from a lot of people in SEO. I respect their experience as well as yours but you guys are so Google-blind.

I have sent several emails to Google through the reconsideration request. I explained clearly what exactly happened and how those links got there, why our unique content all of a sudden spread to all over the web but they didn't even listen to. In these emails, I have included reports for the links that we have been able to remove, and also email responses from the websmasters who don't want to remove the links. There were a lot of proofs on those emails. If I explain situation to 10 different person, I'm 100% confident that 10 will say "this is not our fault." But Google didn't even care.

It wasn't our mistake so I'm not gonna admit it. We are always commited to follow Google Guidelines and we will be but that doesn't solve the issue. We lost almost 80% off all our traffic since 2011 and it's still going down. Imagine how hard this is for an ecommerce store.

Anyways, I was just looking to find some success stories around the same issue but never heard or seen one. So removing links doesn't really work or does it?

Thank you for the reply Ginger. That's a good strategy.

You are not out of luck. In my experience Google will always remove a manual penalty IF you clearly demonstrate a solid, good faith effort on your part. At a high level these are the requirements:

• admit your mistakes and how they were made. Be completely transparent and do not attempt to hide anything.

• Commit to following all Google Guidelines going forward.

• Gather a comprehensive list of all known links to your site. Simply using Google's list from WMT is not enough. Neither is using WMT + OSE or any one tool. Use several tools together. What has consistently worked for me is WMT, OSE, AHREFs, Raven and SEMrush combined. Many site owners and SEO's fail here by not compiling a comprehensive list.

• Every link/domain on the list needs to be evaluated. All manipulative links need to be identified. You need to be certain all remaining links fully comply with Google's Guidelines. Many site owners and SEOs fail here due to wanting to save links.

• Every domain which provides a manipulative link needs to be contacted. All aspects of the contact need to be thoroughly documented. A copy of the actual e-mail sent, the date it was sent, the response, etc. must be maintained. Letters should be sent via three methods: the WHOIS e-mail address (including the private addresses), the e-mail address on the site, the contact form on the site. Not all methods will be available on all sites, but the overwhelming majority of sites will have at least one if not all methods available.

A document needs to be created (a spreadsheet works great) listing all the URLs, links to the letters sent, the responses, etc. If you can demonstrate to Google you sincerely performed every reasonable task to have the links removed, they will "partially" lift the manual penalty. In my experience that means the penalty will be removed but any manipulative links you were unable to remove would be devalued.

You should always be able to have a manual penalty lifted, but it requires an exceptional amount of effort.

@Ginger, you are correct in that most penalties will address the specific pages which were the target of manipulative links. It sounds like you have put forth an incredible amount of effort. I hope you might pursue having the penalty lifted.

I meant to use the word "penalized" not banned

Here is an update of my efforts so far to find out out what happened and how to fix two of my banned money sites. I used various tools, some public and some private to find a list of the following:

**Some notes: **

• My sites that were heavily linked were penalized at the same time. My sites that were not linked together as much were not.
• The entire site was not penalized, only the very important key phrases, the type one might spend money on.

**I ran tools to find: **

• Banned links
• Not indexed links
• Use of keyword anchor text as a percentage of overall anchor text

After I "married" those lists..I began a process of link removal request especially for the overuse of the same three keyphrases which resulted, frankly, from not monitoring the efforts of one of one of subcontracted partners.

I created different link removal email request templates for the different kind of links after a few really angry replys. The email templates were for:

• Blog comments
• Private article sites
• Mass release articles sites
• Regular old links

Note: I sorted these by IP. When i found tons of links for the same IP I often offered money to rid myself of the links.

Two months later I have had 175 of about 500 bad links removed. I have not had the penalty lifted nor have i submitted it to Google. I dont plan to. Some mistakes were made, I am making huge efforts to take away the bad (these sites are from 1996 to 2008 .. SO..somethings can no be undone.

My current strategy is to make more good to dilute the bad. Like creative cooking.

Also, ofcourse I have started a new dish for dinner that might end up being what is served. No telling how long the others have to sit on the stove before its eatable

This is exactly what happened to us. We have removed over 600K links so far but still not enough for google. We are out of luck now because we cannot get any more links removed!

Thanks so much Ryan, I had a hunch that we should use common sense on this one. I will definitely try the nofollow approach with the website owners who are not cooperating, and I'll respond back in here with an update here with the results for the benefit of others.

Thanks again!

Google does not require you to give in to blackmail. With that said, I completely agree with your approach. Paying $10 to remove all the spammy links from a domain with numerous links is an easy fix, and can help with Penguin and future updates as well. This opinion may not be popular, but in the business world we need to value our time as well.

For the sites which attempt to charge larger fees, I would recommend replying with the following...."We are attempting to remove links from a large number of domains. We are unable to afford the thousands of dollars it would require to pay site owners to remove links. We would request that you please voluntarily remove the link as a courtesy. You may also wish to consider that providing a followed link to a penalized site may cause your site to be penalized. Instead of removing the link perhaps you would be willing to change it to a "nofollow" link."

Best of luck!

Hey Ryan,

Thanks so much for your detailed analysis, this confirms the gameplan we had to remove thousands of links to our site. We ended up contacting about 800 webmasters who owned ~2,500 domains total with spammy links to our domains, and we had about a 6.5% response rate.

About 42 site owners responded and removed their links easily. Then there were about 10 who responded that they would take down the links for a fee. We've paid 8 website owners for a total of about $135 but there are three more that own a ton of domains and they want another $410 total for about 75 links.

We are trying not to spend that much on link removal, do you think if we document this and send it to Google they will understand the high cost that we don't want to pay, or will they just tell us that we have to pay this off if we want the manual penalty removed?

During my initial case of working on this type of penalty in 2011, the first couple contacts were through Reconsideration Requests. After that the contacts were e-mail exchanges. They e-mailed me directly.

There seems to be a bandwagon of "Google is bad / evil / [insert adjective]". In my experience if you are sincere and put forth the proper effort, they will do what they can to help. In the overwhelming majority of cases I find people are not sincere. They are not sorry they cheated the system, they are sorry they got caught. They are not putting forth the proper effort, they are putting forth the minimum effort. When this happens, the relationship becomes adversarial.

a) How did you contact Google, was it purely through reconsideration requests?

b) How did they respond back to you, was it whoever's email was linked to the domain in Google Webmaster Tools?

Just worth a follow up, there are now multiple tools and services that help with this. I wont link to them because I own one of them, but just search google for either bad link removal tool or bad link removal services to find a bevy of companies assisting in the process.

Did you investigate if blocking those links by making the server drop the request will work. This seems to be a easier way if posible?

Alan, I had not investigated blocking server links. Anything is possible but after thinking about the process, it does not seem reasonable to me that Google would remove a penalty based on the block. Some challenges:

• How could Google see the block exists?

• Even if the block does exist, why would Google care? The types of links Google is penalizing are not likely to receive any traffic, which is why they are being penalized. If the links actually received traffic, Google would not have any problem with the links.

• After working through a few of these penalties I really feel Google is trying to achieve one of two goals. Either to punish webmasters who have violated their policies, or to clean up the web. Blocking the links does not achieve either goal.

With the above noted, it is just my intuition and logic. I have been mistaken before. Nothing beats testing and experience!

Rayan i have just found one of my clients has the same problem, I am glad of your previous expirence as i dont want to have to go thought such a long process.

Did you investigate if blocking those links by making the server drop the request will work. This seems to be a easier way if posible?

Ryan, I am 100% agreed with you, man if I look into competitor's links they are all or full of manipulated links. they are still there. I don't know why

I am agreed with you on the ".to create amazing content which others find useful / helpful / amazing then let the world know about it. If you wish to build more links, then embed yourself as a member of the community related to the site's niche and sparingly mention the site."and this is the best long term planning for a site.

Exactly..when reviewing our site about a keynote speaker a few years ago we realized we didnt have much info that was helpful to people hiring a keynote speaker..so we added that..our own ideas on the subject..probably why we passed through the last Google updates so well. We have tons of original helpful content..however; I've learned we have to be better than that. There is soooo much our company has to offer that we need to get out there for our industry. We have been at the top 1%  of it for awhile now in terms of dollars, experience etc. So once again, its time to revisit, refine, etc. but what this thread is about is removing links! And thats what i want to talk about here

The idea is the overwhelming majority of links to your site should be earned. People should want to link to your site. If a large percentage of the links to your site are self-created then I have two suggestions:

• review your website. Consider all aspects which may affect the user experience.

• review your content. Is it authoritative? Is it accurate? Is it compelling? etc.

Let's take this Q&A post as an example. SEOmoz has a great site. It is a custom built site. There are many aspects of the site which help offer a great user experience. It is still a work-in-progress, but hopefully some of the $18 million they recently received will be set aside for site improvements

Also look at the content of this article. It seems very helpful to many people based on the responses received. This Q&A is relevant to the site, it's a current topic, etc. If you can generate great content on your site, then you should earn links naturally.

Thats what I thought from remembering issues back in "the day". Thanks for clarifying. Hmmm...seems like there is a career opportunity for people right now who want to go into the hunting down website owners business I'd certainly pay a nice penny at this point.

The challenge with contacting a host is their hands are tied. There are only two ways I can think of for a host to potentially help you:

1. Provide the site owners contact information. That would be a breach of confidentiality. There is simply no reason for a host to share this information with you.

2. Remove the links to your site. If you filed a DMCA complaint regarding a copyright infringement, then a host is likely to help you. They may also assist with trademark complaints. Otherwise the site owner is free to link to any site they desire. The site owner is not breaking any laws by linking to your site. Therefore the web host is not able to take action.

Ron, you are missing the key idea.

You should simply not worry about anchor text. Why? Because you should not have control over anchor text. If you earn authentic links from others, they will link to your site.

I control less then 5% of the anchor text for my clients. I would have to think further about the math but it may very well be less then 1%. At those low percentages, you are not at any reasonable risk of incurring a penalty related to manipulative anchor text links.

Thanks Ryan,

Yes I'm using whois and a variety of other services to discover contact information but more often than not, I'm getting returned mail (address not valid). Some of the networks, especially those banned from Google have hidden themselves VERY well. One of my hit sites is 16 years old and I'm not embarrassed to say what seemed very ok years ago is now an issue along with what appears to be content scrapping along with a link to my site. I'm thinking it might be best to remove the "you can use this article as long as you give a link" statement that was popular in the past..RIGHT? .. I'll keep digging into the whois info..along with other search techniques but I was hoping someone had some luck with hosting services replying to this issue.

If a website does not offer any contact information, the next step is the WHOIS information. Visit http://www.whois.com/

Site owners are required to provide their accurate name, address, phone number and e-mail when registering their websites. It is part of the ICANN rules. It is also required that this information be maintained up-to-date.

I am not a legal expert but it is my understanding if the information is not accurate, you can file a complaint with ICANN who then will attempt to contact the site owner. If they are not successful they can recall the domain.

Some sites, especially spammy ones, choose to hide their contact information using a privacy service. There is still a contact e-mail provided. If you send an e-mail to that address it does get forwarded to the site owner.

Has anyone had any luck with contacting the hosting company; Specifically for 3 or more links from a "network" of sites from the same C class IP with absolutely NO contact information what so ever. If so, can you provide an example of the letter you sent? Thanks you guys

The concept of anchor text manipulation deals with replacing the URL with text which is more targeted to the keyword for which the site is trying to rank. Editorial links mostly do not use ideal anchor text. Many simply use the site link while others use text that is not ideal for SEO.

When the site owner or a SEO builds links to their own site, one of the many signals that point towards manipulation is when the anchor text is perfect. Try this...check OSE for Google.com. Look at the anchor text. Filter out the image alt text and just focus on the anchor text. Of course you will see "Google" a lot but you will see a nice variation of terms used to link to the same page. That is because those links are natural.

Look at your client's site. When you look at the top 20 links and 17 of them show "Best watch" for the anchor text, that is a clear sign of manipulation. Either the site owner or someone working on their behalf likely created those links. Another possibility is the site owner influenced the creation of those links. These links are not natural, or at the very least are less natural.

I hope that answers your question. I will also add the suggestion you are focusing on the wrong area. The best way for a site owner to build links is....to create amazing content which others find useful / helpful / amazing then let the world know about it. If you wish to build more links, then embed yourself as a member of the community related to the site's niche and sparingly mention the site.

Hi Ryan,

Great words. I am following the thread throughout. I need a help from your last post;

"If you use a URL link then the concept of exact match anchor text does not apply"

please correct me if I am wrong in understanding, this line means that if the anchor text is a URL then there is no issue of exact matching anchor text. Am I right?

What do you suggest that what ratios are Green, Yellow and Red signals for the exact match anchor texts in the back-links?

I am unable to find what back-link types are remaining after Penguin to be used? Do you think that if all the back link types like;

1- Forum Profile

2- Forum Posts

3- blog comments

4- Articles links

5- Author Bio

6- Directory Submission

are used in safe ratio of keyword mix, PR evaluated, Google Indexed sites then the site can gain a good ranking. what other back link types do you suggest and why?

I found three kind of links in the back link of my client site and mentioned them as paid links.

1-Link List

2-Advertisement

3-side bar

Am I right in my idea? what other links do you suggest are kind of paid links?

S

What exactly are spammy links or "inorganic links"? Can you (or anyone) explain in simple terms what that means?

Organic links are links you earned. They are usually links which are editorially added. Inorganic links are ones which were created to manipulate Page Rank. There are various examples and details which can be offered to further clarify the distinction but at a high level, that is the distinction.

People say the other problem is having too many links with the "exact same anchor text". Does that mean having too many links pointing to the same page (like home page) using the same text in the URL - like MYHOMEPAGE.COM?

No. If you use a URL link then the concept of exact match anchor text does not apply. If you sell sports watches and then build 10 links to your page with the anchor text "sports watches" that would be an indicator the links are not organic.

Hi Everyone - and Ryan,

IRyan, thanks for all of your helpful info. I'm so desperate to understand this Penguin further...could you answer 2 questions for me please?

I got the "unnatural links pointing to my site" message in the google WMT last month and now my traffic is almost gone. Before I clean up, I need to udnerstand 2 things clearly.......

1 - What exactly are spammy links or "inorganic links"? Can you (or anyone) explain in simple terms what that means? How will I know which ones to remove?

Or is it safe to say that any link  I built through article marketing is considered spammy or inorganic?  For example, I hundreds of articles in places like Articlesnatch.com or Articlebase.com. These articles contain at least 2 links pointing to my site -- 1 to my home page and 1 to my T2 or T3 page. Should I try to remove them ALL?

2 - People say the other problem is having too many links with the "exact same anchor text". Does that mean having too many links pointing to the same page (like home page) using the same text in the URL - like MYHOMEPAGE.COM?

Thanks for any advice I can get.

I have tremendous respect for Pete and I can understand his thought process. I'll share a different viewpoint.

I am fully understanding of a client's past history. If they practiced black hat techniques in the past, that is not my concern. The past is the past. If I work with a client, they must agree that going forward they will not use any black hat SEO, and they will actively work to resolve any issues so their site complies with Google's Guidelines.

Based on the above, I complete the Reconsideration Request. I have nothing to fear from Google. I would have already reviewed the client's website. I would have identified and be actively working on any outstanding issues. I practice full transparency with Google. This approach is how I choose to operate, and I believe I am more successful because of it.

What's the alternative? Hide from Google? At best, it's only a matter of time until they catch up.

Perhaps I am naive. But if you do have a manual penalty then the fastest way to resolve it for the client is the Reconsideration Request tool. Google can actually help you identify the issue and they can tell you exactly what is required to resolve it. I'll share one example.

When I was reviewing the manipulative link issue mentioned above, I found many free directory sites and I initially classified those links as being ok. Based on the information shared from Google, I re-evaluated those links and removed them. I firmly believe if we are fully transparent with Google and sincerely try to resolve violations, they will be helpful. That is my experience. Many others share different experiences. When I question them and review their communications, I quickly determine they fall short of full transparency so I can understand why they are struggling.

In December 2011 when I encountered this issue for the first time I suspected it was a manual penalty. I contacted Google via the Reconsideration Request tool and they confirmed the site was indeed manually penalized. After the initial wave of cleanup, Google confirmed the reason for the manual penalty was the "inorganic" links.

In our post-Penguin world, I would presume the issue is algorithmic but since we are all so new to Penguin I would still use the Reconsideration Request tool if the client approved.

Thanks Ryan - can you advise how you know if it's a manual or algo penalty ?

Thanks for sharing your experience with this Ryan.

We had a similar scenario to contend with and after trying to contact all sites linking to our client's and providing detailed documentation to Google to no avail, we had to resort to 404ing the affected pages to kill all the bad links, changing the url of those pages without redirecting the links  and re-point the good links.

Reconsideration has since been submitted and we are waiting to hear if this is now satisfactory.

On one hand I'm pleased this is happening but on the other hand, it's not the client's fault in many cases, it's the poor advice they received from agencies.