Have you ever wondered how Google goes about deciding whom to contact and whom not to? From folks I’ve talked to it is a bit of a problem for them since they really don’t want to be giving the bad evil doers, (U know, this guy) a leg up.
As such, many people are often left to lament why Google doesn’t tell them (what they’re doing wrong) more often. Anyway….
Someone passed me this the other day;
Notice of detected unnatural links? Oh right, spamming. Interestingly, while I don’t know the domain name, I do know it seems likely a whack of site-wides (from clean indexed sites) might have played into it.
Which of course raises the question; WTF if this is legitimate or even worse, a bombing attempt?
Would you be able to go back to them (via reconsideration request?) and say, “Hey, wasn’t me… let me outta the penalty box!“. And then of course, would they believe you? I can’t speak to this specific case, but it sure did get me thinking.
I am also aware, personally, of instances where Google has notified people that have been hacked (and had links dropped deep in the site). But there must be many instances they don’t notify the webmaster.
Have you or your clients received notifications via GWT? I’d be interested in hearing about it.
Cool, thanks for the screenshot. I’ve seen people post on forums but didn’t get a chance to look at the email.
Yeam funny that. I wrote this back on Monday and noticed today that you’d also posted about seeing some of these in the wild. It really does have me wondering about the process of ‘clearing’ oneself if you weren’t at fault. Which of course brings back the whole discussion of ‘can others linking to you, hurt you?’
Remember the old mantra of links can’t hurt you?? You know, the one Google used to trot out all the time while those of us that know better claimed otherwise??
Do you think we can use this email to finally put an end to this discussion??
Good luck with that, Steve! :sigh:
I really don’t see the problem…
what could be easier than fixing unidentified problems, in accordance with a vague notification of a failure to adhere to some vague policy? /sarcasm
I will add only this… We are playing in Uncle “G” stadium and need to know the Guidelines… I feel it is that simple. 😆
Seen exact same email. But strangely no penalty… just the email. WTF ??!
I had two sites receive ths same warning. With no drop in rankings. Main link building has been blog networks like bmr. Slowing down the amount of links built daily, upping anchor text variation, and starting an aggressive social media campaign.