Have you ever received an unnatural links message in your Google Webmaster Tools account?
If so, the following news may give you some hope for regaining rankings.
Google started sending these messages to webmasters a little over a year ago, but instead of helping webmasters, they have only brought more confusion.
Did you find yourself asking these questions…
What links are spammy?
How can I recover my rankings?
Can I just leave the “spammy” links if I am still ranking well?
How do I assess which links are beneficial or not?
We may not be able to answer all of these questions but as least we may have some answers soon.
Matt Cutts recently released a video in response to the question below. In the video, he discussed how to determine which of your links are suspect or “untrusted” by Google.
Here is the question…
Google Webmaster Tools says I have “unnatural links,” but gives little help as to which specific links are bad. Since I have never purchased links, I don’t know which ones to have removed, and I’m scared of removing good ones, which will hurt my traffic. Suggestions?
Cutts mentioned how Google started the unnatural links warnings to become more transparent. The search engine began to look at links from a broad perspective assessing whether or not they were affecting the reputation of a site. Over time, Google has become even more transparent and as a result the search engine started to single out particular link types.
Cutts stated that Google may still “like” your site overall, but there still may be some links that are affecting your rankings. Fast forward to today and Google will soon give you specific examples of the unnatural links that are pointing to your site.
Cutts discusses in the video some practices to discover unnatural links…
Sort your links by recent discovery to retrieve the date when Google discovered your latest links. Check your recently acquired links for any that may have caused the warning message in your webmaster tools account. Just click on the “Download latest links” button.
Insert IMAGE: Download latest Links
Google is working on a feature that will help you understand which links are the offenders (“untrusted” links). According to Cutts, you may get one, or two or three as examples in your Webmaster Tools account, and they will help you identify the exact links that are the problem.
However, they are meant to provide examples only.
According to Cutts, the examples will give you an idea of the links Google is NO LONGER trusting. I thought this was interesting…no longer trusting? I thought Google didn’t trust these links for the last few years, but their algorithm was just not smart enough to detect them. It will be interesting to see what happens when more and more people step up and report on the links Google is using as examples of “untrusted” links. I am thinking there will be no surprises but one never knows these days.
According to Cutts, these example links are not exhaustive or comprehensive…they will give you a flavor (yes, he said this actual word). I’m not sure what flavor means in this regard, but you can read between the lines.
Cutts also briefly mentioned some links that may come up as examples…
- Widget links
- Keyword-rich anchor text in article marketing
- Links purchased from a hired agency that used black-hat techniques
What do you think? Will these link examples help webmasters decipher which links are not trusted by Google?
An article in Site Reference
How to Detect Unnatural Links