WMT option to check manual spam action

Google has just added a new feature in Google Webmaster Tools which makes it possible to check whether your website has a manual spam action or not. It can be checked in "Search Traffic" -> "Manual Actions".

If there's no manual action, there's just a short note. If there is a manual spam action, you can find the details about it, ie. (image from Google blog):

More information: googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ie/2013/08/manual-actions-viewer.html

 

Finally!
Just finished reading a post on fruition.net about the same update in G-WMT.
I'm not affiliated with fruition, I referred to them, cause they have a helpful tool that checks for automated penalties and Google's updates thought it could be related. Thanks for sharing it here on DP btw.

 

Finally ! Been waiting for a while now...

 

It's not on my menu under search traffic, have they taken it off again?

 

Yes, they have. I don't know why but I hope we'll know it within the next few days.

 

I just found it, they say they found a little bug and it will be back in a couple of days hopefully.

 

Yep, it is active now.
Pity they do not mention the exact "unnatural" links, although they ignore them. How can one try to remove them? I mean I know how to reconsider all links to my sites, but if someone is just running some site for his business, and is not involved in SEO / internet marketing, he/she will have no f. idea which links are good and which bad, hence great regress... Especially after even Matt said that negative SEO is quite possible.
Hah, actually even a client of mine asked me to do some negative SEO to his competitors (not that I would ever), but fortunately I have managed to convince him otherwise

Anyway, not perfect, but still a good feature of GWT.

 

They do give an example bad link if you click through the little report.. It's really weird, but the example they gave me is really obscure and doesn't even show up in my normal back link checks through webmaster tools.
In case it helps anyone, the unnatural link they give is from this site: alistdirectory.com , which sort of indicates what most of us already know - i.e. links from generic, low quality link directories are worthless, or, in this case for me, worse than worthless. My link has been in there since 2009. I know because I found an email report from someone at digital point where they'd added a bunch of link for me in various directories. I never thought of it as a bad thing at the time, just wanted more people to find my site.

 

Could you show me the screenshot of where exactly you've found the examples? I only have the link to the article in Webmaster help but I can't see any examples of unnatural links.

 

Uploaded screenshot.

 

Thanks. It looks like this information is not available in every country or they just display it on small percentage of websites. I've got the same information (unnatural links but the action impacts only backlinks) but there are no examples. And what's weird, this action impacts my website's rankings for most keywords.

 

Ya - same....
Got some work, will continue later/tomorrow GMT2+
Still I guess sooner or later we will have to remove some of these old links, be it 'cos of competition's negative seo or done by ourselves in the past... I do not think I did any but still ...