Member Avatar for seo007

My Google Webmaster Tools is warning me regarding Unnatural Links (I have 400 or so inbound links in total, and I don't know which links are coming from bad websites and which aren't) and I wish to remove them immediately. I need help with the following:

  1. Need to identify which of the links are coming from website google/bing/yahoo don't like (I don't want to remove good links, that would make no sense, won't you agree?)
  2. How can I actually remove them, since I wasn't the one who linked it initially ?
  3. Is it even remotely possible to find out who may have created such links to my website? Or, at least the dates on which these links were created?

If I may be pointed to the right TOOLS (hopefully FREE ones, but paid ones are fine too) to get these tasks done, that would also be great help.

Thank you in advance for your help.

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  • 2 Months Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by samuelmax

Dani AI

Generated

Quick, practical plan for handling an "Unnatural links" warning (what described), plus a few corrections to the thread: start by confirming whether Search Console actually issued a Manual Action and treat disavow as a last resort. If there is a Manual Action you must audit, attempt removals, disavow leftovers, and file a reconsideration with documented removal attempts. If there is no Manual Action, avoid heavy-handed disavowals — Google often filters bad links itself. ()

How to audit (efficiently): assemble link lists from multiple sources (Search Console + one external crawler to fill gaps), merge and dedupe, then triage by repeatable signals: irrelevant or keyword-stuffed anchor text, links buried in spammy pages or link farms, very low-quality domains, and sudden “first seen” spikes (these help spot negative-SEO or purchased link bursts). Use third‑party tools to speed this (they show “first seen” and other helpful metrics), but don’t blindly trust any single tool — review examples by hand. (rewindseo.com)

Removal workflow (what to do next): try to remove links first — WHOIS/contact form, site contact email, or the site’s abuse form. Keep a timestamped removal log (so Google can see your good‑faith efforts). If removal fails, prepare a disavow .txt (one URL or one domain per line; use domain:example.com to disavow a whole domain), upload it in Search Console, then request reconsideration if you had a Manual Action. Expect processing to take weeks and that disavowed links may still appear in reports (they’ll simply be ignored for ranking). Example disavow fragment and a simple removal-log header are below. ()

# disavow example
domain:spamdomain1.com
http://spamdomain2.com/bad-page.html
# removal-log.csv
link_url,referring_domain,first_seen,contact_method,contact_date,response,removed_yes_no,notes

Final notes: was right to look at official data; is also right that obsessing over every ugly backlink is usually wasted effort. Use disavow only when you have evidence of harm or a Manual Action, document everything, and focus longer term on earning clean, relevant links and improving content. For context on how search engines are evolving, Bing removed its disavow feature in 2023 as algorithms improved — another reason to be surgical, not sweeping. ()

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Member Avatar for Dani

Wow, I'm actually impressed that Google assists webmasters now by telling them that they may/are being penalized for unnatural backlinks. Is that something new? As far as I can remember, it was up to the webmaster to take a guess why their traffic was decreasing.

Because I'm completely clueless as to what you're referring to, can you explain a little further? Does it just have a notice saying there are unnatural links with no further information or does it go into more detail? It doesn't give you any clues as to what to remove?

Google Webmaster Tools gives you a good sampling of the sites that link to you under Traffic-->Links to Your Site. You can download the entire report into an Excel spreadsheet. You're going to have to go through them and see which ones look spammy, are "bad neighborhoods", have too many links on the page, have lots of unrelated links on the page, are pages unrelated to your content, etc. Anything that would be "unnatural".

Unnatural backlinks can also mean that you're building backlinks just way too fast ... at a speed that is not consistent with your site's growth, and is "unnatural".

Member Avatar for atomitservices

Google webmaster is boon for webmasters it tells about the 404 error, HTML error, duplicate page, title and meta description. We can set geotargeting and remove unwanted pages from google data base and many more.

Member Avatar for macgizmoguy

Frankly I think it's INSANE to spend time and energy deleting backlinks - especially if you don't even know IF they are the cause of any penalties. Many links can't and won't be removed even if you tried or asked. Some of the links you suspect (or even paid for) may even be HELPING you to rank well in Bing, Yahoo and elsewhere for all you know.

There's 1001 sources of free site traffic besides Google Organic Search. Trying to change the past is a fool's errand. Just move forward building fewer, but higher quality links. Improve your existing content and write better new content to attract the sorts of visitors that will build links naturally - FOR YOU.

One thing I think it's important to understand is that Google doesn't really CARE if your site doesn't rank well. Getting onto Page 1 is increasingly ONLY reserved for the most trusted and aged sites. It's simply an ever-shrinking noose that fewer and fewer websites will qualify to be part of.

I've been hit hard by Panda - then Penguin updates. But it doesn't matter. I'm building a sucessful business model that doesn't NEED Google to keep my face fed. Live in the moment. Life's too short to spend it living - and working to 'please' Google. Build websites for PEOPLE and yourself - not an algorithm you can't control.

Member Avatar for Geek-harjeet

Hello People, Google has mailed me for the unnatural links and after checking the links I know that some of the links are really bad ones. But tell me how can I remove the bad links because these links are not under my control. And I have one more problem plese check my other one post; that is about the SEO techniques and I have no answer till now. Please help me.

Member Avatar for samuelmax

Dani you have really given very nice information. with the help of this information i can too remove bad link from my web site too.

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