Member Avatar for olddocks

my site was hit by a google penalty first week of october and since then everything has been downhill including significant loss in traffic. i did receive a warning in webmaster central detection of unnatural links pointing to other websites.

i suspect that google imposed this penalty because they think that i was selling paid links. i did use nofollow at page level even still google denied my reconsideration request.

I am confused because as an owner of the site i am free to sell links or do whatever i want with my website. What i dont understand is even after using nofollow, they have denied my reconsideration. Worse yet, google does not disclose the reason why it was penalized.

As far as i know once you put nofollow, you dont vouch for the link and the paid link becomes advertising link and does not pass pagerank.

i remember even daniweb is hit by google penalty, remember reading this in google forum.

Are there any other ways of recovering besides sending the reconsideration request?
Can my site recover automatically?

oh! This is my first post in daniweb, since 2005, quite a lot of time i guess.

Edited by olddocks because: n/a
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— that “unnatural links” message in Webmaster Tools is a manual action: it means Google’s reviewers found a pattern of links they view as manipulative. Check the Manual Actions report in Search Console to confirm scope and the official remediation steps. . ()

Practical next steps: export your backlink sample from the Links report, supplement it with third‑party crawls (Majestic/Ahrefs/Moz) to get a fuller picture, and audit for obvious paid/site‑wide or keyword‑rich anchor links. For each suspect link attempt removal or ask for rel="nofollow"/rel="sponsored", and log every outreach attempt in a spreadsheet (link URL, anchor text, contact, date, response, evidence). Use the Disavow tool only for links you cannot remove after good‑faith outreach. . ()

When you file a reconsideration request, include a concise timeline and concrete evidence: sample removed links, copies/screenshots of removal requests and replies, and a statement of changed editorial/link policies. Google expects documented removal efforts; simply toggling nofollow without outreach is often insufficient. If denied, re‑audit, expand your documentation, disavow where appropriate, and resubmit with stronger evidence. . ()

Be patient — link‑related reviews can take weeks or longer, and repeated violations make successful reconsideration harder. Buying or selling links that pass ranking signals violates Google’s spam/link policies; marking paid placements correctly (nofollow/sponsored) is the right practice going forward, but it does not instantly undo past problems. While cleaning links, also strengthen unique on‑site content and user value (as suggested) — and follow ’s advice about removing bad neighbors. Recovery is a mix of documented cleanup, targeted disavowal (last resort), and time. ()

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Member Avatar for gooplex

you got this penalty because of bad neighborhood, Remove all the bad quality links and submit your site for reconsideration. You will be back

Member Avatar for canadafred

Legally you can do whatever you want with your site. Ethically, manipulating off-site ranking factors by participating in link schemes merits a certain demerit in your web pages' value.

My suggestion is to find ways to increase you web page's value internally by concentrating your efforts with on-site/on-page optimizable components, particularly your own, unique content. Then let the off-site influences dictate themselves, basically and naturally.

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