FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ)

What is a Google penalty?

There are two types of penalties Google may put on a website: algorithmic and manual. An algorithmic penalty is a drop in rankings and search traffic due to one of Google’s algorithms, such as “Penguin.” A manual action means that Google has reviewed your linking profile and has found examples of manipulation. For more information on penalties, check out this article from Wikipedia.

Why do I need links removed?

Our tool assists in analyzing links from your backlink profile. It is vital to your site’s health that you manually check these links and weed out the bad from the good. Once you’ve determined which ones you would like removed, you contact webmasters to have the work done. Our link removal tool helps you every step of the way, and this process is explicitly recommended by Google as a way to get your site out of a penalty, or to prevent one.

What is the difference between the self-service and full-service options?

As you may have read by now, the link removal process can be complicated. While performing the tasks involved by yourself can prove beneficial, there is no replacement for a professional team working on your account week after week. From backlink analysis to outreach, disavow list to penalty recovery, we provide the highest caliber work every step of the way. Check out our pricing models to see which option fits your experience level!

Why can't I just disavow all the domains with harmful links to my site?

We always want to follow best practices, and link removal outreach prior to uploading a disavow file is recommended by Google. Whether you have a penalty on your site or not, it is important to keep a detailed record of your outreach to show your good faith efforts.

This will take too long! Is there a tool out there that can automatically analyze my links?

Some sites do have large backlink profiles with many links to analyze and remove. As professionals in the field for over a decade, we will always advise against automation when it comes to analysis and removal. Automated tools often include links that are helpful and suggest you remove them, which is very detrimental to your site. There is no replacement for hard work and the human eye when it comes to these projects, and it will pay great dividends if you do it the right way!

How do I know if a link is good or bad?

That takes experience and know-how, but here is a great guide to get you started. Remove’em has a self-service option that starts with analyzing links, so study Google’s guide and get a confident start. Don’t forget our full-service option!

How often should I contact webmasters?

Try to space your outreach to about every 3-5 days. Remember that you are emailing a person, and there is a human element to outreach. You want to always be polite, and not too bothersome. You’ll find a lot more success this way!

I've emailed the same address 5 times; what should I do now?

If one form of contact proves unresponsive, it’s time to move on to another. Try another email address, a contact form, or even social media. There are also report tools on a lot of websites that you can use. Make sure to record your efforts in the “notes” section of our Remove’em tool!

Some webmasters are asking for a payment. Should I ever pay to have a link removed?

Paying for a link removal depends on your budget and on your personal preference. In some cases, it can be quite beneficial, especially if a low-quality directory has a large number of links to your site.

I signed up! What should I do next?

Check out the video on the right for a full walkthrough of the features of Remove’em, from link analysis to Google penalty recovery!

What is R Score

We have had several support tickets requesting a more in-depth description of our link scoring algorithm, R-Score. So, what is R-Score and how is it applied to each link added by Remove’em?

R-Score primarily uses anchor text matching and comparison to determine which anchor text phrases are used the most, and in turn, determines which phrases have been over-optimized. Anchor text over-optimization refers to a particular anchor phrase being used an inordinate (unnatural) amount of times to link back to a website.

Google has made their various iterations of their Penguin algorithm capable of detecting this over-optimization in everyone’s Google Webmaster Tools account. Their crawlers index all the links to your site and can compare the anchor text across all of those sites to determine if your back-link profile is natural or unnatural.

For example, a Casino website would want to rank well for particular key phrases such as ‘Free Online Betting,’ and to help a site rank for these phrases, they will build hundreds, even thousands of links using that anchor text and long-tail variations of it. Links with a particular anchor text to a site tell Google that this Casino website is known for ‘Free Online Betting’ and in-turn, should rank higher than other sites because of the amount of links using that anchor text. However, as mentioned before, Google’s Penguin algorithm is able to see this anchor text abuse and ‘algorithmically penalize’ sites that have over-optimization issues.

That being said, please use R-Score as a STARTING POINT by which to analyze your back-links. There is no online tool available at this time that is better at analyzing links than the human eye and brain. The best way to analyze your back-links is to use your best judgement to determine the validity, relevance, and quality of a link according to website quality / authority, anchor text selection, and a few other metrics.

Lastly, R-Score will only be applied to links added by Remove’em upon adding your website to your account. User-added links will not be scored, as many lists do not contain anchor text, such as the Latest Links export from Google Webmaster Tools.

When we allow machines to do all the work, we are letting SkyNet win. All jokes aside, we overlook the fact that humans put these links up, so it will require humans to analyze them to see if they need to be removed.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns via support@removeem.com

Still stumped?

Did our FAQ page not answer your questions? Contact support@removeem.com, submit a support ticket via Zendesk, or contact our sales team today – we’re more than happy to help!

Our Mission: Make it easy for webmasters to...

Monitor Backlinks and Recover from a Penguin Penalty or Unnatural Links Penalty.

Depending upon your needs, you can use our easy to manage and affordable Remove'em platform, or if you need a little extra help, we have a team of experts available capable of handling your cleanup from start to finish!

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