How did you first find out that your brand had been hit by a Google penalty?

We received notification of the partial inbound link penalty in our Google Webmaster Tools account on the 27th of July 2013 – the detail of the penalty was visible via the “manual action viewer”, which was a new feature as of August 2013 within Google Webmaster Tools.

Did you find out on the day, or were you informed at a later time?

We found out on the day that we had the penalty. We received a message from Google via Webmaster Tools once the penalty was applied.

What was your reaction when your Google penalty landed?

It’s really important that you don’t panic when you receive a Google Penalty. The first thing to do is to read why you have received the penalty, it could be for a number of reasons. Once you know why, you can then work out your plan of action to rectify how Google think you have violated its webmaster guidelines. It’s just important not to panic.

Did any of your other competitors get hit at the same time?

Over the last 12 months or so, a lot of our competitors have experienced difficulties with their natural search rankings, whether manual or algorithmic. Google penalties have definitely been a lot more frequent for brands who have been around for a long time over the last 12 months. It’s part of Google’s on-going focus to clean up the web and I think it’s working.

When looking at the link profiles of your organic competition, do you think that Google’s decision was fair?

Google don’t give out manual penalties without good justification to do so, I think that answers the question.

What channels did you explore to maintain your market presence?

As a brand we didn’t experience a major loss in visibility because the penalty was only a partial penalty. However we did have to push harder in the PPC space to maintain our market share.

What (internal/external) resources did your brand use to rectify the issue?

Our entire internal organic performance team was focused on rectifying the issue, we also engaged with a third party and utilized their database expertise to house all of our link data. It made the process a lot more manageable, there’s nothing worse than using spreadsheet after spreadsheet.

Who or what had the most beneficial impact on your team in order to rectify the issue?

I would say that process was an integral part to getting out of penalty. You have to work as a well-oiled machine to review all linking domains that point to your site, it’s not easy. The introduction of a database through a third party really helped to give us some much needed structure. You have to show to Google a sustained and prolonged effort and that’s very important, don’t rush it as it will do more harm than good.

If your SEO company got you into a penalty - Did your SEO company get you OUT of the penalty?

We have worked with many SEO agencies over the years so it would be unfair for us to point the finger, however getting out of the penalty I can say was handled in house with the help of a third party software provider.

How long did it take you to get out of the penalty and at what cost?

We received notification of the penalty in July 2013 and we received notification that the manual action had been revoked on the 2nd March 2014. It was a lot of hard work but it was all worth it.

What would you learn from this experience?

The most important thing that we’ve taken away from the penalty journey, is that we have now set up a weekly disavow process for MoneySuperMarket and TravelSupermarket brands.

This means that we review all new links found from various link sources on a weekly basis, we identify which links we think may be causing us a negative impact and we then place these links into our disavow file and update it weekly.

This is a fundamental part of our process moving forwards as it mitigates as much risk as possible from sites around the web linking to us. Due to the size of our brand we attract copious amounts of SPAM that link to us on a weekly basis and this is the only way to ensure that the links generated don’t pose a negative threat.

How have you changed the way you think about getting ahead in Google?

MoneySuperMarket changed the way in which we thought about campaigns and the entire offsite activity side of things a while ago, the penalty impacted us for our legacy activity which we have moved away from. It’s not about getting ahead in Google, it’s more about doing what’s right for consumers in the form of engaging content and amazing campaigns and then the effect on Google almost becomes a by-product of your efforts.

How does your brand intend to increase their search performance in 2014 and beyond?

We have a new Head of Organic Performance at group level, David Harling, and with David comes many fresh ideas. I’m not going to give much away, I’ll just say watch this space.