Website Spam Backlinks Solution
-
I have been doing some back-link checking and found that 25% of the total back-links to my PR5 site are Spam and generated over the past 8 weeks.
There are 189 links in total from 38 different domains and the anchor text is a combination of 'ugg boots for women' from TLDs in China, Russia and North Korea. The PR of these sites is 15 are n/a, 12 are 0 and the other 11 range between 1 - 6.
More interestingly, all the links point to 1 single page on the domain. I have taken down that page now and wondering if I should 'disavow' the offending links in Google and Bing?
Clearly with such a high % of my total links now being Spam, I want to be proactive so this does not hurt my rankings in search. If a Spambot is behind it then the issue is going to get worse moving forward. Any advice is welcome...
-
Text on the page doesn't necessarily mean it'll get indexed...but it might.
You can always just 404 the page, wait a week or so, and see if the page shows up in Google's index (just copy and paste the URL into Google).
If it shows up you can simple block SE spiders from indexing it using your htaccess and/or GWT.
-
A pragmatic solution which is great.
I was worried about how Google would interpret my doing this. Panda, penguin... it all seems so up in the air and I don't want to fall foul. Essentially these links are pointing at gibberish now, so no foul I reckon!!
Thx.
-
Ah right, my 404 page does have text on it like you say.
If I remove the original page URL from Google's Index by using WMT, would that resolve the issue moving forward?
-
Just one thing about that you need to be careful about: having your 404 page indexed.
Some 404 pages have content (ie. "Sorry, but this page has moved...").
And if it's the only page on your site with that content, Google may still index the page.
-
You said: "More interestingly, all the links point to 1 single page on the domain. I have taken down that page now and wondering if I should 'disavow' the offending links in Google and Bing?"
You're in luck!
404 the page and your job is done. Just change the URL by one character and you're good.Make sure the page is actually retuning a 404 status code.
Google only cares about links to pages that resolve on your site. By 404'ing them you are essentially removing all of the links in one shot.
Don't make a disavow, or anything you're done.
-
You definitely want to be proactive...but not overreactive.
The disavow tool should only be used for a penalized site.
If you have a clean link profile you probably don't have to worry.
I once had a competitor hit me with 250,000 spammy blog comments...and nothing happened.
If you're really concerned you can always 404 the page and repost the content on another URL.
-
Have the links actually harmed your site in any way? If the sites are extremely spammy, full of spun content, and/or feature only scraped content then you may not want them pointing to you... but if they haven't hurt your traffic, rankings, etc. then why remove your page or disavow the link? Google will likely just discount the links instead of pegging you with an algorithmic penalty. In the mean time, why not work on acquiring some relevant backlinks through outreach.
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
-
Spam signals from old company site are hurting new company site, but we can't undo the redirect.
My client was forced to change its domain name last year (long story). We were largely able to regain our organic rankings via 301-redirects. Recently, the rankings for the new domain have begun to plummet. Nothing specific took place that could have caused any ranking declines on the new site. However, when we analyze links to the OLD site, we are seeing a lot of link spam being built to that old domain over recent weeks and months. We have no idea where these are coming from but they appear to be negatively impacting our new site. We cannot dismantle the redirects as the old site has hundreds, if not thousands, of quality links pointing to it, and many customers are accustomed to going to that home page. So those redirects need to stay in place. We have already disavowed all the spam we have found on the old Search Console. We are continuing to do so as we find new spam links. But what are we supposed to do about this spam negatively impacting our new site? FYI we have not received any messages in the search console.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | FPD_NYC1 -
Website penalized never again be the same
In February 2015 I received google email that had been penalized Superficial content with little or no added value. I resolved the situation with Google and the site was reconsidered two months later. The problem happens that since I had to drop the site never again be the same, since the site has been penalized never again be the same, now owned only 10% of visits and since then has not shown more growth. I'm deciding to leave the site for no more hopes and all who have had the same problem told me to forget about and working with new. What do you think? Give up the site and get a new one? In addition, during this period I rephrased the entire site, let responsive, mobile and improved as a whole in the general context and migrated to wordpress. www.acervoamador.com.br (Warning: adult content) I thank you for your attention and have a nice day.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | stroke0 -
Canonical tags being direct to "page=all" pages for an Ecommerce website
I find it alarming that my client has canonical tags pointing to "page=all" product gallery pages. Some of these product gallery pages have over 100 products and I think this could effect load time, especially for mobile. I would like to get some insight from the community on this, thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JMSCC0 -
Backlink Question
I have a backlink on a very popular sports news site PR5 this is a sitewide link. The link is near the top on righthand side. As you scroll down, the page keeps loading more and more information. According to my Google webmaster tools the link is on the site over 21,400 pages. As the stories being submitted are new most of the pages have no PR however there are around 30-40 categories that have PR ranging from 0-4. According to my AHREFS account on a daily basis it picks up between 100-200 new links with on average around 10-20 being lost as the stories are being removed. Would anyone advise I just ask for my link to be on the category pages only or should I leave it as it is? Many Thanks in Advance for any Feedback.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Palmbourne0 -
If I am getting links on competitor websites, is it safe to assume those competitors are doing this to hurt our SEO?
We have received a few notification from Google Webmaster Tools and Moz that our competitors have "mentioned" our page on their website. This is incredibly odd as you wouldn't think they'd want to do this. Further, when I go to the page that we are supposedly mentioned on, the link to our site is not on the page. What is going on? Thank you in advance for your insights!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brits0 -
How to deal with link echoes of former hacked websites?
Hi all, I'd know which is the best way to deal with link echoes of former hacked websites that Webmaster tool reports. to clarify: when you download the backlink report from Webmaster tool you'll have a list of backlinks discovered, but if you follow one of those links you will see that on that page there is no link to your website. the source code is also clean, no hidden links or other dodgy technique. Since that the topic is usually miles away from my industry I have to assume at some point that site has been hacked by a spammer who placed that backlink. In this case what should I do? Ignore it, disavow the domain or what? Moreover, which is the best procedure when you have to face a site which points a lot of backlinks from only its sub-domains? For example: this dodgy spammy website : http://px949z32.com/ is apparently a desert, but when you do site:http://px949z32.com/ you'll discover 55,200 results! Would be it be enough to just disavow the root domain http://px949z32.com/?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | madcow78
As I don't want to wait too long before taking any action, my plan is to disavow all those domains without any mercy, although I can't find a current backlink in one of their pages. I will do this, as at the minute my concern is they will be hacked again and I have to face the same issue again and again Thanks to all, P.0 -
Website slipped for particular keyword this year
www.schupepetents.co.nz I am webmaster for this site which slipped in rankings around 18/1/13. It was doing really well for keyword "marquee hire" ranking 6-8 for google.co.nz. It is now ranked about 30. Background. It has been ranked well for keyword for about 3 years. From what I can see there was a few websites that tumbled around this time. The website has been completely redone to a wordpress site this was in December last year. The switch was done before putting in 301 re directs to preserve internal page rank. As a result the internal page rank of pages has had to start again! Three things from online research into what has potentially affected this:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chopchop
1. Lack of website substance. As website has been redone it has lost Google "esteem" (lack of internal pages PR). But the time that it dropped was a long time after the site redesign.
2. Possible penalty for too high proportion of links from directory websites. Heard some whispers from forums that this had happened. But links are not just from directories.
3. Too many links with specific keyword (marquee hire) for junk sites. This is possibly true but why the drop at that time when no one else experienced this. Also we hired a company mid last year who link bombed using "marquee hire" and a couple other keywords. Moz seems to be very happy with the website!! Good link scores and on-page optimisation is great. Wondering what has happened?!0 -
Dentist office website has foreign country backlinks. Scrap it or Move On
Another SEO person who was working my potential dental customer website managed to hookup over 147 backlinks to various bogus weather sites, watch sites, chinese sites etc. The dentist owns the URL which is "dentist" plus his zipcode. Is it worth continuing SEO on this site or should I scrap the URL? I am worried that Google may take action on this site sometime in the future and all the work I will do will be lost. He does have another website, because SEO's keeps trying to sell dentists microsites... This site isn't too bad but he doesn't own the URL but the url is a combination of the two doctors names and isn't easy to remember... and we would have to spend time trying to gain control of the URL. Suggestions?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Czubmeister0