JW, your instincts seem solid. I do not understand how you relate a site's PR or number of indexed pages to whether or not it provides manipulative links. The two points are not relevant.

I find both the getbacklinked.com and lookdirectory.com sites do not comply with Google's standards for legitimate directories. Any links from those directories will be viewed as manipulative by Google.

Bing and Google vary in their philosophy. Bing is much more selective about which pages it chooses to add to it's index. When a site violates Bing's guidelines, they often choose to de-index the site.

Google indexes a tremendous amount of low quality pages. Just because the page is indexed does not mean it would ever be found by a reasonable keyword search. Regarding PR, it is simply one of over 200 metrics used to determine rankings. Google has stated in the clearest possible terms SEOs and site owners should greatly reduce their focus on PR. They even reduced PR updates to just a few times a year, but people seem to not get the message.

In summary, you clearly understand the directories offer manipulative links. Accordingly, you need to remove those links in order to resolve your penalty / Penguin issue.

should I [disavow] domains that are now parked or no longer have a functioning site

No. The purpose of the disavow tool is to separate your site from active links which you are unable to remove.

Hi JW,

I do not personally use any tools to measure a link's age. Google has a new export available in WMT which shows this information as well as several other tools. I have never encountered a situation where a link's age has been relevant to link removal.

With the above noted, a link tool can only tell you the first time the tool discovered the link. Links can be much older than the discovery date for a variety of reasons.

For your backlink report, I highly advise including Bing and AHREFs as well. Otherwise, you will be missing numerous links.

With respect to identifying links, it is my experience most SEO professionals are not aligned with Google when it comes to evaluating a manipulative vs organic link. A few quick tips:

• The PR / PA / DA of a web page should not be a consideration when making a determination of organic vs manipulative

• The anchor text is also not a factor. Here you may say "wait a minute! Penguin specifically detects anchor text". What I mean is...if you change the anchor text on a link to simply a URL, the link itself is no less manipulative.

• 99%+ of general directories are manipulative in my experience. Most niche directories are manipulative as well in my experience.

• Most press releases are manipulative as well

There are tons of other examples and you need to refer to Google's Guidelines and ask yourself "if search engines did not exist, would this link be here"?

Best wishes

Hi JW,

There are lots of reasons you could be seeing links like this.

I have seen entire websites with hundreds of pages suddenly appear with links to a client's site and even been able to find references to a competitor amongst the hundreds of harmful linking URLs. While this was ringing every "negative SEO" bell for me initially, after careful investigation it became obvious that it was in fact some random person who decided to capitalize on a valuable niche by creating a site using hundreds of spammy articles that had since been deleted from directories by my client and their competitor...

Webmasters have long tried to get exposure for sites by adding links and clicking them or injecting referral data into server logs in the hope that curious site owners will click the referral link to check out the referring site.There are also quite a number of posts out there suggesting that linking out to quality sites can help rankings...as a result there are also people out there with poor sites who are trying to use this to improve their situation.

Most important of all, it is well known that data offered by Google through WMT is notoriously out of date ... I have seen several instances where newly surfaced links have been in place for more than a year.

If there is a mantra to adopt when working on link removals, I would say it is "nothing is ever as it seems".

Hope that helps,

Sha

**Here are a few examples that came right from the Google recent export from the webmaster tools and were links identified in Oct. **

There are several possibilities. A page could have been blocked via robots.txt and have since been unblocked. A page could have had the "noindex" tag applied and now it has been removed.

Another possibility is issues with the site architecture. A page could have been buried deep or existing as an island page, but now the navigation is fixed and the link is found.

In order to investigate further, I would need the URL to the actual web page which contains the link to your target site, along with the URL of the site. I need to be able to find the link on the page and use other tools to determine the link's age.

Can you share an example of these links which were created in 2012 and you feel are the result of an attack? Are you 100% certain neither the client nor any agent (family member, employee, developer, etc) working on the client's behalf had any part in the creation of these links?

...and neither did my first link removal client, but the penalty was revealed when I insisted that he needed to lodge a reconsideration request.

I have heard this story repeated over and over while talking to rmoov users over the past few months...I am quite sure there are way more people out there who are under a manual penalty than anyone realizes.

I have my own theory as to why this has happened, but that's probably for a blog post some time.

In a nutshell, I absolutely agree with Ryan's take on the subject except for one thing...hard earned experience does not in any way amount to bias.

Hope that helps,

Sha

I typed a long response and the forum seems to have eaten it. I will briefly respond:

do you actually take the time to visit each site and look for a valid email address

Absolutely. We not only capture the email address but the contact form URL. If we are unsuccessful at reaching webmasters via their WHOIS email, site email and contact form we often take additional steps. For example, we report .com domains to ICANN so they can be recalled. We report bad blogs hosted on wordpress.com, blogspot.com, etc. We call and mail people using the info in WHOIS or their website. We chase people down on social networks. We have to be passionate in order to consistently be successful at removing these penalties. Any less effort means there will be times when we fail to remove a penalty which will cost our clients in lost sales over time.

**So you think companies that have backlinks placed on porn sites deserver what they get and should have to clean it up.  You think that is the responsibility of the reputable company that did nothing wrong.  **

I never said nor thought that. You will find absolutely no judgment from me. My role as an advisor to you or any client is to provide the most complete and accurate information based on my knowledge and experience. If I were to allow my personal thoughts to get involved it would not be helpful to clients. It would be far easier for me to jump on the bandwagon and shout "evil Google" or "Google sucks". Instead I choose to take the actions which will serve clients best.

Google is a company. They have rules and guidelines. I work to understand those rules / guidelines / procedures as best as possible so I can produce the best results for my clients. Whether you choose white hat or black hat SEO, this aspect of SEO is the same. Where the line differs is I choose to use the knowledge and experience I acquire to stay within Google's Guidelines and maximize results for clients, whereas black hat SEO involves working outside of those guidelines.

Yes this company unknowingly participated in link farm nonsense but has not done sor for at least 5 years and is still gettting these links and they are not criminal.  They are hard working people that made a mistake.

I agree our clients are hard working people. They have made mistakes. If there is one thing I have learned throughout a year of cleaning up these links is Google is intentionally issuing penalties / Penguin as a means of punishing those who have cheated the system. They clearly want these site owners to atone for their past actions by going through a very long and hard process. At every turn when site owners and SEOs attempt to take a short cut in the manipulative link removal process, Google puts up a road block. They could easily just devalue all the bad links (which they do anyway) but Google chooses to take further action. I understand the reasoning. If they simply discounted the bad links, then there is nothing to dissuade SEOs from building more bad ones. Google feels a harsher action is required.

The good news is the penalty can be fully removed along with the negative effects of Penguin. There is a long, hard process which must be followed to achieve that result.

Frankly the idea that a reputable company has to spend hard earned money asking people that boldly place a backlink on their site which were never requested is just wrong.

In 100% of cases I have seen, the company affected by the manipulative links is NOT reputable with respect to Google. To be clear, as I look to my penalized clients I do consider many of them to be reputable companies, but 100% of them have admitted they either knowingly built manipulative links, participated in some form of link scheme, or hired a SEO company who did such. Some clients share they had no idea what the SEO company was doing, but a reputable company needs to take accountability for the actions of their employees and those they decide to do business with.

I have seen companies claim to be attacked by competitors, but it is an exceptionally rare event. Mostly I find site owners who were unaware of the actions of a prior site owner, SEO, employee or who is simply not being honest.

Consider prior to 2012, negative seo via manipulative links hardly existed. Google only penalized a relatively miniscule number of sites for manipulative links in 2011. Why would anyone engage in an effort to penalize a competitor for manipulative links at a time when 99.9% of sites with manipulative links were able to get away with it? Yet if you look at the age of those manipulative links, you will likely find many are older than 2011.

Another consideration, over how long of a period of time were these links built? If you have a "good" site and then a sudden attack of negative SEO occurs, Google does not take any action. Rand proved this fact when he acquired millions of spammy links to SEOmoz earlier this year.

Again, it is not important what I believe but every indication shows this is what Google believes, and they are acting in this manner. Google has stated very clearly how the Disavow tool is to be used and it is clear many SEOs and site owners will disregard Google's advice which is fine. Keep in mind Google has already shared they will disregard Disavow submissions which they do not have confidence in.

Direct answers to your questions:

Do you think it is bad to list sites that might 404 but that show as 200 and ping but don’t pull up a site.

When I receive that result, I check the site with another browser. If I still receive the same result, the site is marked to check later. Keep in mind if you receive a 404 error today but the issue is resolved tomorrow, it will look to Google the same as if you skipped the site.

Will the site be penalized more for not figuring out which sites are currently active?

No. If you are going through this process your site is likely already penalized and/or impacted by Penguin. You will not be further penalized, but you are unlikely to have the current penalty removed if you miss active sites.

**I am inclined to simply disavow all sites that are not indexed in Google.  See anything wrong with that? **

You are rolling the dice. It depends on why a site is not indexed. Whatever the reason, if it is resolved and Google sees the link, your Reconsideration Request will likely be denied and/or the Penguin issue will remain.

Here is the bottom line. Manipulative link penalties are designed to suppress the rankings of sites who have taken shortcuts rather than do the work required to earn links. I hope we can agree on that much.

The type of site owner and SEO who takes these short cuts typically tries to remove their penalty in the fastest / cheapest / easiest manner possible (i.e. taking more shortcuts). That is why many site owners are still upset their penalty has lasted 6+ months and there is no sign of it being lifted anytime soon. Many are jumping at the Disavow tool announcement with a complete misunderstanding of how the tool works or whom it benefits.

You can complain about Google's earning revenue with AdWords. You can be upset about the penalties being unfair. You may have very valid points but the bottom line is....unless Google's requirements for dealing with these issues are satisfied the choices are:

a) go out of business (which many have done)

b) lay off employees (which many have done)

c) accept lower traffic / pay for AdWords or generate traffic in other ways

d) move sites

The process of going to each link and determining which are manipulative versus organic really sucks. The same for emailing 1000s of domains asking them to remove links. There is no way to sugar coat this work. It takes hundreds of hours of trained personnel and it is the most unrewarding task in SEO. You are not building anything but rather cleaning up internet garbage. Nevertheless the choice has been very clear for the past year....do it or choose one of the 4 options above.

I know these words are likely not going to be well received. But I also know it is better to share the cold hard truth then try to sugar coat the situation when people are facing layoffs and business closures.

Best Wishes.

**As for contacting these irreputable scum bags.   No offence but that is a joke.  I am suppose to send emails to 1000s of these sites when they are just trash.  They will never take the link down and it will be a complete waste of time. **

Every week my team sends these emails and receives results. I have worked with dozens of sites resolving their manipulative link penalties. On the first site I worked with, 14% of the site owners we contacted removed their links. Since that time, we have greatly improved our success rate. While the rate varies from client to client, our most result results exceeded a 50% success rate of link removal.

If you perform the process correctly, it works very well. One example is sending a polite letter requesting the link(s) be removed rather than a threatening letter. A great tool which can help manage this process is Rmoov. To be clear, there is no "set it and forget it tool". It still requires a lot of work to manage responses from each site, but the Rmoov tool definitely helps.

I did hear him [Matt Cutts] say you are to contact these sites but come on....that is a joke...

If you sincerely believe those words there is nothing I can type to assist you. The head of Google's Spam Team shared a very clear and direct message and you feel it is a joke. Here is the bottom line. You, your company and employees are the ones who need to live with the results so you are free to decide what action you wish to take. Some site owners approach SEOs for assistance and 60 days later their penalty / algorithmic suppression is removed and they are back in business. Many clients choose to test various methods for a few months then later return and ask for service. That works too but then months of time, effort, money and lost sales are gone.

Personally, I am a service provider. I earn money from site owners who pay my agency to resolve their penalty issues, so feel free to consider me as a bias source of information. The challenge is any site owner is free to add links to the Disavow tool at any time, and Google knows it. They are also free to remove those links as well. That is why Google wants to see solid effort upfront.

With respect to the Disavow tool specifically, it is new to the SEO community and we are all using it and watching the results closely. As with anything else, you will see a wide variety or reports from various SEOs and site owners regarding their successes and failures with the tool. It takes 3-4 weeks for Google to recrawl the links uploaded to the tool, so we don't expect to see any tangible data for a few more weeks.

I encourage you to watch the first 2 minutes of Matt's video repeatedly. Listen to how his shares about 1:20 in the Disavow tool is only to be used after all attempts to contact a site owner has failed. We contact site owners via their WHOIS email, the email address on the site, the Contact Form from the site and more. We have chased down site owners via social media, called them on the phone and written letters. It all helps. These are my experiences which you are free to accept or ignore as you deem fit for your needs.

Best Wishes,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA

The first question I would ask is...are you affected by a manual penalty or Penguin? If you are not affected by either, Google specifically shared you should NOT use the disavow tool.

The next question is, have you contacted each webmaster requesting link removal? The disavow tool is designed to be used only after you contacted each domain repeatedly. Google has been quite clear on this topic. They desire you to use all reasonable methods to contact site owners prior to using the disavow tool. They even stated some disavow files will not be trusted.

The bottom line...if you are impacted by a manual penalty then no short cut will help you. Google understands those impacted by a manual penalty for manipulative links attempted to cheat the system by taking shortcuts. They have clearly designed the penalty removal process to block all short cuts. Nevertheless, site owners and SEOs seem to continue to try which is why forums are full of posts like "I have submitted 10 Reconsideration Requests and all have been denied."

If you are impacted by Penguin, the Disavow tool MAY work but I suspect it either will not work, or work only temporarily. Google is specifically looking for a "significant" reduction in manipulative links pointing at your site. Keep in mind site owners can add and remove links to the disavow tool at any time. Accordingly, it is not designed to be used except as an absolutely last resort after every other possibility has been exhausted.