Google Panda/Penguin - What links to remove? - Articles

With the many Google Panda & Penguin updates that have been rolled out over the last year, it is really hard for webmasters to know what ones to really listen to. One of the major updates that Google has done is change the way that it treats backlinks in order to rank a website, meaning that low-quality unnatural backlinks could actually hurt a website’s ranking.

There has been many cases of people overreacting and going on a link removal request rampage seeking the removal of legitimate links fearing that Google will not like them.

In one of the latest Webmaster Help video, Matt Cutts covers how to determine what links to get removed. The video is a response to this user-submitted question:

“Google Webmaster Tools says I have “unnatural links,” but gives little help as to which specific links are bad. Since I have never purchased links, I don’t know which ones to have removed, and I’m scared of removing good ones, which will hurt my traffic. Suggestions?”