{"id":6088,"date":"2017-02-03T07:13:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-03T15:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ahrefs.com\/?p=6088"},"modified":"2025-12-18T09:18:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:18:36","slug":"manual-penalty-removal-ahrefs-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/manual-penalty-removal-ahrefs-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Manual Penalty Removal: An Ahrefs Case&nbsp;Study"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intro-txt\"> Making a site perform well in search sometimes means removing things like spammy links, which could be hurting a website\u2019s performance. This process can be tedious and time consuming, but very beneficial once it\u2019s complete.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<p>We have documented a process we\u2019ve used to successfully remove a manual penalty, so that other webmasters can see just how it\u2019s done using Ahrefs <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/site-explorer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Site Explorer<\/a> and Google\u2019s process for cleaning up bad&nbsp;links.<\/p>\n<h3>Finding Toxic&nbsp;Links<\/h3>\n<p>A site we are working on already had a manual penalty. Keep in mind, most website owners will not need to go through a comprehensive link removal campaign. But in this case, the website owner was assigned a manual penalty and we had to take action to get it removed.<\/p>\n<p>The best way to find out if you have received a penalty is to configure your website with Google Webmaster Tools. Google will inform you by email if it has applied manual action against your site as a result of unnatural links.<\/p>\n<p>Once you know that you have a penalty, the first step in the process is finding the links that are pointing at the site, that may be <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/bad-links\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">contributing to the penalty<\/a>. In our scenario, we used Ahrefs to analyze the backlink profile of the penalized website.<\/p>\n<p>Ahrefs provides metrics for identifying domain authority, inbound links, link acquisition timeframe, anchor-text and more. By understanding what these metrics mean, we were able to narrow down the list of suspects.<\/p>\n<p>In the backlinks report in Ahrefs, we sorted referring domains by Ahrefs Domain Rating and anchor text in the following ways:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>We sorted all domains by Domain Rating. We added all sites with DR  40 to our outreach list.<\/li>\n<li>We did an anchor-text distribution sort. If we found a high percentage of Exact Match Anchors on a site with DR  50 (or a site that just appeared to be spammy), we added them to our outreach list as&nbsp;well.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h4>Sorting by Domain Rating<\/h4>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/DR-sort-in-backlinks-report.jpg\" alt width=\"900\" height=\"445\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-15383\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/DR-sort-in-backlinks-report.jpg 900w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/DR-sort-in-backlinks-report-768x380.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/DR-sort-in-backlinks-report-680x336.jpg 680w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\"><\/p>\n<h4>Sorting by anchor text<\/h4>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Anchors-sorted.jpg\" alt width=\"900\" height=\"446\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-15384\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Anchors-sorted.jpg 900w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Anchors-sorted-768x381.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Anchors-sorted-680x337.jpg 680w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\"><\/p>\n<h3>Inspecting Our&nbsp;Links<\/h3>\n<p>By using Ahrefs we were able to narrow down the list of suspected toxic domains using their metrics (like DR) that indicate their quality.<\/p>\n<p>We went through our initial list and identified any domains that appeared spammy, had low domain authority, were not curated, had an unnatural anchor-text distribution percentage, irrelevant anchor-text use and added them to our \u201coutreach list\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>This part of the process can be very subjective. In general, we were looking for websites that clearly didn\u2019t have any real value to offer. They may have had poorly written content or were just completely irrelevant to the main site they were linking to. We did not want the website we were trying to recover to be associated with any site that may have violated Google quality guidelines.<\/p>\n<h3>Outreach<\/h3>\n<p>Once we had our outreach list finished, the next step was to manually contact these site owners and ask that the links be taken&nbsp;down.<\/p>\n<p>The link removal outreach process is very time consuming depending upon the number of outreach candidates. Not all websites have contact information clearly listed. In those instances, we had to rely on whois lookup services to find administrative contact information. We sent emails and submitted to contact forms to owners requesting they remove our link from their&nbsp;site.<\/p>\n<p>In many cases, we had to send multiple <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/outreach\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">outreach messages<\/a> (up to 6 per\/domain) in order to get a website owner\u2019s attention. In other cases, there were no responses at&nbsp;all.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes site owners requested a bounty for removing links. This is simply a request for payment and in this case study, no bounty ever exceeded 20 dollars.<\/p>\n<p>For our case study, the outreach lasted for about 2 months. We sent 6 emails and\/or contact form messages per violating domain.<\/p>\n<h3>Disavowing Links and the Reconsideration Request<\/h3>\n<p>Google understands that it isn\u2019t always possible to get every site owner to communicate with you and remove links. That\u2019s one reason they may have created the link disavow tool. As a method of collecting violating domains by volume.<\/p>\n<p>We created a file of all the domains where we were unsuccessful with our outreach. We submitted the file to Google via the disavow links&nbsp;tool.<\/p>\n<div class=\"editor-note\"><div class=\"editor-title\">Editor\u2019s Note<\/div><div class=\"editor-content\"> Today Ahrefs has a built-in tool to create disavow lists.\n<p>You can add domains or URLs to your disavow list directly from the backlinks report, as you inspect your backlink profile. Then you can easily export your disavow list from Ahrefs and import it into Google Disavow Tool.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Disavow-Tool-Example.jpg\" alt width=\"900\" height=\"378\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-15385\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Disavow-Tool-Example.jpg 900w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Disavow-Tool-Example-768x323.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Disavow-Tool-Example-680x286.jpg 680w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\"> <\/p><\/div><div class=\"editor-info clearfix\"><div class=\"editor-photo\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nick Churick\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Avatar.jpg\"><\/div><div class=\"extra-box\"><div class=\"editor\">Nick Churick<\/div><div class=\"editor-job\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<p>Along with the disavow links file, we also submitted a reconsideration request.<\/p>\n<p>The request and the disavow file work in combination with one another. The disavow file lets Google know which specific pages or domains we do not want linking to our website. The request details our process for fixing the problem on our own and the steps we took to do that. The more information you can provide to Google as to exactly how you tried to remove bad links, the better. They want to see that you\u2019ve made a concerted effort to clean things up before asking for their&nbsp;help.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poweredbysearch.com\/google-reconsideration-request-example\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">request template<\/a> that worked for us was created by Powered by Search. Instead of writing it from scratch, we were able to simply insert the relevant information where appropriate.<\/p>\n<p>Once everything was in order, we submitted the request to google.<\/p>\n<h3>The Result<\/h3>\n<p>It took about 4 weeks for the review process to take place. We then received the email below from Google stating that the manual action against the website we were working with had been removed.<br>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-6092\" src=\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/the-result.png\" alt=\"the result\" width=\"780\" height=\"465\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/the-result.png 826w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/the-result-680x405.png 680w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\"><\/p>\n<p>This entire process took about 3 months from start to finish. With manual penalty removals, you have to be patient and meticulous. It may take more than one reconsideration request. Just be sure to document your efforts and abide by Google\u2019s quality guidelines.<\/p>\n<div class=\"further-reading\"><div class=\"reading-title\">Further reading<\/div><div class=\"reading-content\"> Getting penalized by Google might be a result of a negative SEO attack.\n<p>Read this guide to learn how to identify negative SEO and fight&nbsp;it:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/negative-seo\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">How To Detect (And Deflect) Negative SEO<\/a> <\/p><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have documented a process we\u2019ve used to successfully remove a manual penalty, so that other webmasters can see just how it\u2019s done using Ahrefs Site Explorer and Google\u2019s process for cleaning up bad&nbsp;links. Finding Toxic&nbsp;Links A site we are<span class=\"ellipsis\">\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\">Read more \u203a<\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":6129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[335],"tags":[],"coauthors":[374],"class_list":["post-6088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-seo","odd"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Manual Penalty Removal: An Ahrefs Case Study<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Manual penalty removal case described in detail. Learn how to find and remove bad links from your backlink profile.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/manual-penalty-removal-ahrefs-case-study\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Manual Penalty Removal: An Ahrefs Case Study\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Manual penalty removal case described in detail. 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