How Do You Uncover Your Spammy Links?

A WebmasterWorld thread has a webmaster who seems to have been hit by the Penguin 2.0 update. He is now asking how he should go about discovering which of his links are spammy.

He asked in the thread:
The only thing I can think of is that I may have spammy backlinks. I have 1500 backlinks but do not recognise all the sites that link back to me. How can I find out whether they are spammy and harm my website?

Author: Barry Schwartz

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Google Shares Insight Into Content Removal: 404s Confirmation & More

A Google Webmaster Help thread has some interesting details from Google's John Mueller about content removal from Google's index and/or search results.Some of these points you already know but every SEO and webmaster should understand these. Heck, some are even eye opening to me.

Here are the raw points John made and then I'll share what I think is revealing:

• The URL removal tool is not meant to be used for normal site maintenance like this. This is part of the reason why we have a limit there.
• The URL removal tool does not remove URLs from the index, it removes them from our search results. The difference is subtle, but it's a part of the reason why you don't see those submissions affect the indexed URL count.

Author: Barry Schwartz

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Google: Use The Disavow Tool Like A Machete & Not Fine-Toothed Comb

Earlier this month, Google's head of search spam, responded to a comment on his blog explaining that when most SEOs and Webmasters use the disavow tool, they use it wrong.Matt Cutts said you should not use it like a "fine-toothed comb" but rather use it like you would use a "machete,"

To me this means that webmasters and SEOs are missing too many bad links when they use the tool and possibly often, Google will flag a whole domain as being bad and not just a specific URL. So if you use the disavow link tool too gently, then it might not work. But if you use it too aggressively it might hurt you as well.
Google's John Mueller reshared this on Google+, so clearly we have Matt Cutts saying this, Google's John Mueller sharing it again on Google+. This must come up fairly often.

Author: Barry Schwartz

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Google Penguin 2.0 Goes Deep - But What Does That Mean?

As you know, Penguin 2.0 #4 is live and webmasters and SEOs are buzzing about that. The thing is, some misconceptions about Penguin 2.0 are driving me absolutely crazy.Matt Cutts, in his video about this update, talks about how Penguin 2.0 will be "more comprehensive," how this version "goes deeper" and will result in "more of an impact" than Penguin 1.0.

The SEO community is translating "goes deeper" to mean that Penguin 1.0 only impacted the home page of a web site. That is absolutely false. Deeper has nothing to do with that. Those who were hit by Penguin 1.0 know all to well that their whole site suffered, not just their home page.

Author: Barry Schwartz

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Google Pushed Out The Major Penguin Update (v2.0 #4)

As I reported last night at Search Engine Land, Penguin 2.0 / 4 is now live - this is the next generation Penguin update. As Google's Matt Cutts added, this impacts 2.3% of English queries and also impacts other languages but the percentage depends on the level of spam in those languages.Matt officially announced it while on This Week In Google see towards the very end of episode 199.

Matt said on his blog:
We started rolling out the next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm this afternoon (May 22, 2013), and the rollout is now complete. About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice. The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.

Author: Barry Schwartz

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Webmasters Upset Big Brands Get Personalized Responses From Google's Matt Cutts

Many webmasters know that it is incredibly hard to get a Google representative to respond to their concerns one-on-one, let alone Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts.Google simply does not have the resources, man power or desire to respond to each webmaster concern one-on-one. I respect that and you should also.
But remember when Google slapped Sprint for a UGC spam penalty? Well, Google's Matt Cutts responded directly to the thread to help out. Matt Cutts also did so for Mozilla's penalty also.

Author: Barry Schwartz

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Yahoo Spends $1.1 Billion To Be Cool (Buy Tumblr)

I'm sure you heard the news by now, Yahoo has acquired Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion in cash.Seriously, everyone is talking about it - just see techmeme.

A WebmasterWorld thread talks about how we want this to make Yahoo cool and relevant. We want $1.1 billion to turn the company around. We do wish the best for Yahoo.
The concern is will Yahoo mess up Tumblr or will Tumblr clean up Yahoo?
What do you think?
Yahoo did some neat stuff with Flickr yesterday - so that is a good sign, I think.

Author: Barry Schwartz

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Google Adds Organization Schema Markup For Knowledge Graph Logos

Google has announced they've added support for the schema.org markup for organization logos within the search results, specifically not the search snippets but within the knowledge graph.
So while author schema will show in the search results snippets, organization schema will only currently show in the knowledge graph box.

Here is a code sample of using organization schema:

Do not confuse the two.

Author: Barry Schwartz

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