undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • MozCon
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
    Moz Pro

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

    Try it free!
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers

      Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Link Building
  4. Best way to remove unwanted links

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.

Best way to remove unwanted links

Link Building
5
5
1.7k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • airnwater
    airnwater last edited by May 11, 2012, 2:58 PM

    Hello,

    The site I work with has a number of unwanted, unrealted and just generally spammy sites linking to our site.  What is the best way to ask them to remove the links (formal notice asking to remove or more of a "hey, can you get remove this for us as a favor" tone)?  Do you have any tips for getting rid of these links?

    Thank you!

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
    • KeriMorgret
      KeriMorgret @Chenzo last edited by May 14, 2012, 3:57 PM May 14, 2012, 3:57 PM

      That is certainly an interesting way of asking for a removal, but I could see a potential for it backfiring as well -- having people talk about your client having an infected site, for example.

      I suggest reading how Ryan Kent dealt with removing links, and keeping very detailed records of the attempts to remove links, and his ability to get part of the penalty lifted in this Q&A at http://www.seomoz.org/q/does-anyone-have-any-suggestions-on-removing-spammy-links

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Chenzo
        Chenzo last edited by May 11, 2012, 6:10 PM May 11, 2012, 6:10 PM

        You might run into stubborn webmasters that just don't reply or tell you to fly a kite - so I came up with something that seems to work like a charm.

        I inform them in less than 3 sentences that your site has been taking over by a trojan/virus/something scary and that it seems to be attaching itself to any and all sites that are linking to "me" so tell them for the safety of their site and any google penalization please remove the link and actually ask them to "let you know"

        A great call to action and has been working for me

        -Chenzo

        KeriMorgret 1 Reply Last reply May 14, 2012, 3:57 PM Reply Quote 1
        • SteveOllington
          SteveOllington last edited by May 11, 2012, 3:43 PM May 11, 2012, 3:43 PM

          Christoph put a really decent video out on how to identify spammy links, that should help 🙂

          http://www.linkresearchtools.com/case-studies/link-networks/

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • NakulGoyal
            NakulGoyal last edited by May 11, 2012, 3:17 PM May 11, 2012, 3:17 PM

            I just responded to this exact question. Here's my answer and a link to that question:

            Honestly, my advice would be to grab a list of your backlinks using both Google Webmaster Console as well as the OpenSiteExplorer and merge them into a spreadsheet and get rid of all the duplicates.

            Next step would be to identify which of those links are spammy and you'd be better of having them removed. This is in my opinion the hardest part depending upon the volume of sites/links.

            Then hire somebody to find email addresses of the websites where you want links removed. Finding something on the page and if nothing else, using whois. I would then send an email to each one of those contacts and in a quick short email, tell me the URL where the link is located and your site URL. Tell them to remove the link right away since you have received a Google Warning. I would imagine this taking care of a good portion of those links. I would send another email in a week and then again for a total of 2-4 times to see if you get a response and get the link removed. When nothing else worked, offer then $10 for the link removal and that should gain their attention. If that does not work either, I would suggest you move on.

            I hope this helps. You could get somebody on odesk.com or a similar site to get all the labor intensive work done.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • 1 / 1
            1 out of 5
            • First post
              1/5
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • Caffeine_Marketing

              When conducting a link building strategy does it matter the country the link is from?

              We are a UK business and if we have links mostly from US based blogs and websites does this penalise us.  The links are from relevant websites and topics.  Should we be focusing on .co.uk sites

              Link Building | Dec 24, 2019, 1:43 PM | Caffeine_Marketing
              1
            • wellandpower

              Value of Links? What is each link worth?

              Morning Everyone, I just had this thought and wondered what everyone's opinions were in terms of link value in monetary terms. We'll assume for the purposes of this that the links come from contextually relevant sites and that the sites in question have got the Moz DA from being high quality and have a good quality incoming link profile. Its a bit of a theoretical question, but i guess imagine if the only way you could get links was to pay for them, what would they be worth to you. This is link value for SEO purposes, they will have in addition value from traffic from good sites, that no doubt varies wildly depending on topic. I assume everyone also agrees on: The first link from a domain is the most valuable High DA sites are worth  more than low ones. So could anyone who has an opinion on the link value suggest a monetary value for links. Its really just using a monetary amount to see how best to target my time.  Here is my example of what might be expected, but I am hoping people with more knowledge will perhaps correct it. DA Rating    First Link  2nd-5th Link  5th-10th Link 10Plus Links 5               $5         $2            $1              $0 15               $7         $3            $2              $1 25              $25         $10            $5              $2 35               $45         $20            $7              $3 45               $65         $30            $11            $4 55               $95        $45            $19             $5 65               $200        $100            $45              $6 75               $350         $120            $65              $9 85               $700         $240            $95              $15 95               $1100         $450            $200              $30

              Link Building | Jun 19, 2024, 10:18 AM | wellandpower
              1
            • darkmediagroup

              Best SEO practice to redirect affiliate link

              Hello, I got an affiliate program on my website, that redirects the affiliate link to the main site like: site.com/ads/aff_code/  ->  site.com/ (The redirect is done using a 301 status code.) On the redirect process the site stores a cookie to track the affiliate sale. Will Google and others SE follow this permanent redirect, transferring the relevance of this affiliate link to my main site? In other words, if an affiliate does something wrong (like spams), does the bad reputation will be transferred to my main site? Is there a better way to do that from a SEO standpoint? Thanks,

              Link Building | Aug 2, 2016, 5:31 PM | darkmediagroup
              0
            • lucek

              Are links with space considered to be the same as links with %20?

              I wonder if Google would consider those three links to be the same? http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test+page.html

              Link Building | May 21, 2013, 2:55 AM | lucek
              0
            • Ron10

              Linking to sites that link to porn or casinos, my site getting penalized?

              I have some link exchanges with some sites to get web traffic but when i ran the bad neighborhood link checker, i found that one site links to some casinos and another site has one link to a porn site.  Is this getting me penalized?  should i remove the links to these sites? Thanks, Ron

              Link Building | Feb 6, 2013, 9:22 PM | Ron10
              0
            • highwayfive

              Best five links to get first for a new website

              I wondered if people had a list of the top five or ten links you should build for a new website in order to add some sense of authority. For example should a new website start with key social media websites such as Twitter, Google+ and Linkedin ? Or top level directories such as BOTW and DMOZ? Should they local for niche website directories in their location or vertical? If you had to choose five links - free or paid which would they be?

              Link Building | Jan 25, 2013, 2:48 PM | highwayfive
              1
            • ec9awp

              Remove links or change anchor text?

              I am currently in the process of cleaning up the link profile for a website that has been hit by Penguin thanks to loads of links from free directories with exact match keyword anchor texts (about 200 root domains from total of 300 root domains). I was wondering whether it's best to remove these un-natrual keyword anchor text links altogether, or change the anchor texts to brand (domain name, domainname.com, www.domainname.com, http://www.domainname.com)? I am currently trying to remove these links but was thinking it would be quicker to get to a healthier link profile (in terms of brand/commercial anchor text split) by altering the anchor texts and not removing them. Some of these directories are the worst of the worst on the other hand. Also note that I'm only really getting about a 30% response rate from the owners of these directories. Any thoughts? Many thanks in advance.

              Link Building | May 17, 2012, 5:28 PM | ec9awp
              0
            • GardenBeet

              Inbound links from porn sites into a professional business services site - remove help?

              The website in question was hacked four years ago and there was porn on the servers. It was used as a peer to peer torrent streamer.  The images were deleted. We have just found inappropriate inward bound links (with great link juice!!)  - how can we remove these links - or should we? any advice would be appreciated thanks

              Link Building | Sep 6, 2011, 6:44 PM | GardenBeet
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.