It is a well-known fact that Google normally penalizes websites which contain links that were unnatural “from” other websites. Last week, however, Google took everyone by surprise as it penalized websites due to unnatural links linking “to” other websites.
What had happened?
Many website owners which contained such unnatural links has received an official message from the search giant – Google:
The message clearly mentioned that Google’s servers have detected inclusion of deceptive, manipulative, or unnatural artificial outbound links from the respective websites. Buying of links or simply participating in the links schemes that manipulate the Google PageRank is a direct violation of Google’s Guidelines.
Therefore, Google has sent specific information on which particular action was undesirable by according to their guidelines. They also mentioned that the actions that affect the whole website have been listed separately to the website owner from actions that affect specific parts of the side or incoming links. The former is listed in the category of matches “Site Wide” and the latter is listed under “Partial” counterpart.
In a simpler way, Google penalized the websites because it contained links that were a direct or indirect violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Why was such a drastic action taken by Google?
John Mueller has explained, the penalty by Google is targeted at such blogs which take payments for links and reviews by bending Google’s rules:
He pointed out that the “traveler’s link” proves to be more important and it should be the one everyone goes through.
The affected users need not “follow” every single link on their sites. However, the ones that are already there due to an exchange should have rel=nofollow for the links to the respective product, any profiles for social media or to the sales pages which are linked together.
What is to be done now?
If you’ve received such a message from google, then remove the links which are penalized from your site or else no follow them. After all, this is done, “reconsideration request” can be filed.