Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Fake PageRank scam?
-
Had someone offering to place a link on their site for a monthly fee, claiming their site is PR8 - I checked the PR and it seems to be real, with no 301 redirect, but by looking at the site and their presence in google results, I highly doubt their PR is legitimate, but cannot find out how they faked it, and whether having a link on their site will have a negative effect on my site.
Their domain is articledomination(dot)info
Can anyone shed some lights into this ?
-
The PR is legitamate. But the site itself is bad, bad news.
If you check whois, you can see the registration is only a few months old. So how did they achieve such high PR in such a short period of time?
A very smart (and un-named) colleague of mine suggested using spyonweb to check the Google Analytics and Adsense code of this site to see what other sites it was connected to. Looks like it's part of a huge link network all owned or managed by the same people.
(hint - use spyonweb to search for the Google Adsense code "pub-xxxxxxxxx")
Regardless, the site is obviously selling links at the bottom of the page. Although Google doesn't catch all paid links, these are so obvious that anyone who buys them is at huge risk of a penalty. A smart webmaster would be wise to stay away from paid link offers like this.
-
I think you should avoid this place. One easy way to test the quality of a site is to see how they rank for various terms -- this one does not even rank for the name of the site, which is probably a good indication that while they have built a lot of links (thus the PageRank) Google sees them as a spam site.
-
Hello Tuan,
It is important to remember that the PR you see is just toolbar PR and is not the internal PageRank that Google uses in their ranking formula – no one has access to that. Their Toolbar PR is high because of their large number of backlinks and content.
In looking at the website you provided the URL for, I see that there are dozens and dozens of completely unrelated, almost random looking, links in the website’s footer. You do not want to be associated with this website – it will get noticed if it hasn’t already. It is obvious that they sell links; this is exactly the type of thing Google looks for when hunting for link farms.
Hope this helps,
Vizergy
-
Hi Tuan Nguyen,
I am usually not biting these kind of meat. I don't like to buy links. Note that one day Google will find these, and will punish them.
The question is, do you want to have any kind of connection with them at that point?
Gr.,
Istvan
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I Report A SEO Agency to Google
Our competitor has employed the services of a spammy SEO agency that sends spammy links to our site. Though our rankings were affected we have taken the necessary steps. It is possible to send evidence to Google so that they can take down the site. I want to take this action so that other sites will not be affected by them again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Halmblogmusic0 -
Best practices for retiring 100s of blog posts?
Hi. I wanted to get best practices for retiring an enterprise blog with hundreds of old posts with subject matter that won't be repurposed. What would be the best course of action to retire and maintain the value of any SEO authority from those old blog pages? Is it enough to move those old posts into an archive subdirectory and Google would deprioritize those posts over time? Or would a mass redirect of old blog posts to the new blog's home page be allowed (even though the old blog post content isn't being specifically replaced)? Or would Google basically say that if there aren't 1:1 replacement URLs, that would be seen as soft-404s and treated like a 404?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David_Fisher0 -
Inbound links to internal search with pharma spam anchor text. Negative seo attack
Suddenly in October I had a spike on inbound links from forums and spams sites. Each one had setup hundreds of links. The links goes to WordPress internal search. Example: mysite.com/es/?s=⚄
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Arlinaite470 -
How to fix site breadcrumbs on mobile google search
For past one month, I have been doing some research on how to fix this issue on my website but all my efforts didn't work out I really need help on this issue because I'm worried about this I was hoping that Google will cache or understand the structure of my site and correct the error the breadcrumb is working correctly on desktop but not shown on mobile. For Example take a look at : https://www.xclusivepop.com/omah-lay-bad-influence/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ericrodrigo0 -
What is the proper URL length? in seo
i learned that having 50 to 60 words in a url is ok and having less words is preferable by google. but i would like to know that as i am gonna include keywords in the urls and i am afraid it will increase the length. is it gonna slighlty gonna hurt me? my competitors have 8 characters domain url and keywords length of 13 and my site has 15 character domain url and keywords length of 13 which one will be prefered by google.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | calvinkj0 -
Pinging Links
Interested to know if anybody still uses the strategy of pinging links to make sure they get indexed, there are a number of sites out there which offer it. Is it considered dangerous/spamy?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seoman100 -
Sky Lancers: What is the deal?
For a few days now we are being stalked by a "referrer" site out of Bangladesh, called sky lancers dot net. Their home page is nothing but a login and password. All traffic comes from one invisible inner page. They don't seem to try to login, nor do they use PPC to get to the site. They send thousands of visitors a day. Anyone has any idea what this site is trying to achieve and what their goal may be? All they do is get the bounce rate to skyrocket, the time on the site to go down and the avg page views of course to go down as well, as they click out immediately after they hit the homepage. Any suggestions on what to do about this practice? And what are they trying to achieve? Thanks for your insights guys!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Discountvc0 -
Why Do People Send In Fake Form Submissions?
I get a lot of form submissions through my website that are clearly not actual people (unless they are insane . . ). It fills out stuff nonsensically, has an email address, and usually some stupid snippet of text that makes no sense. Does anyone know why people do this? Clearly there can't be any SEO benefit to submitting to someones web form. I guess if I added a "captcha" option it would put a stop to this . .
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | damon12120