Google Matt Cutts Explains Untrusted Link Notifications
Still, there is plenty of confusion. So over the weekend, Google’s Matt Cutts posted a described blog post on what these notification means. He wrote:
In less severe cases, we sometimes target specific spammy or artificial links created as part of a link scheme and distrust only those links, rather than taking action on a site’s overall ranking. The new messages make it clear that we are taking "targeted action on the unnatural links instead of your site as a whole." The new messages also lack the yellow exclamation mark that other messages have, which tries to convey that we're addressing a situation that is not as severe as the previous "we are losing trust in your entire site" messages.
Matt Cutts Says Do Not Neglect The Links:
Matt Cutts said don't ignore the links scorn what we think Google told us to do on that Friday.These new messages are worth your attention. Fundamentally, it means we're distrusting some links to your site. We often take this action when we see a site that is mostly good but might be might have some spammy or artificial links pointing to it (widgetbait, paid links, blog spam, guestbook spam, excessive article directory submissions, excessive link exchanges, other types of linkspam, etc.). So while the site's overall rankings might not drop directly, likewise the site might not be able to rank for some phrases. I wouldn't classify these messages as purely advisory or something to be ignored, or only for innocent sites.
On the flip side of the coin, I don't want site owners to panic. We do use this message some of the time for innocent sites where people are pointing hacked anchor text to their site to try to make them rank for queries like [buy viagra].
Anyhow, Matt goes into more points on the Google Webmaster Blog.
A Webmaster World thread has Tedster saying he would still concentrate his time and resources on other things and not go after getting rid of links. In this link is a harmless notification.
