50,000 backlinks in webmaster tools from one site???
-
Hi All,
I'm new to evaluating backlinks, but I just saw I got over 50,000 links from a backlink that was added on ONE page at this site here: http://www.netnewspublisherDOTcom.
I presume this is not a good thing, and if I contact them to remove the one link on the one page, it won't solve the other 49,999 links that Google is seeing pointing to us, so what do I do??.
Should I contact them and ask to remove it and see if they don't and then disavow? Or would you just tell Google to disavow the whole site?
Thanks!
-
Hi there, you've received some great responses. What is the current status of this issue?
-
PS - I just realized that OSE says the 50,000 netnewspublisher .com links are NOFOLLOW - If that's the case, should I not bother with these (can no follow links cause you a problem)?
Thanks -
Hi Sha,
Yes - there is one post comment with our URL in it on one page from this site. The pages that are showing in OSE are not identical copies of each other, but unique URL pages with different content - but these pages do not have a link to my site that I can see.
As best I can tell, all the links coming from so many pages is because each page has a "recent comments" section on it. I'm "guessing" when the comment containing the backlink to my site was on each of these pages in the "comment section", it was discovered as a backlink when the page was crawled - could that happen?
I'd be happy to share a URL if I could do so privately with you?
And per what luwhosjack says, my home page that was linked to so I can't really change the URL.
And, I have seen significant drops in my traffic on some pages since May 22 when Penguin hit, but I have no manual penalties. Upon investigating my backlink profile, I have many malicious sites linked to me from Poland (Google says not to open their site) -I'm hoping I can just disavow these since Google agrees they are not good sites.
Plus, I'm seeing at least one competitor and MANY other sites linking to me, but when I go to their page, my url is in their source code, but the webpage is different than all the text that's in the source code (like the source code is a bunch of text on the subject - but the visible webpage is salescopy or optin forms). I don't know what to make of this??? I would presume this is something Google would not approve of and I shouldn't be associated with it - do you agree?
Thank you
-
Hi luwhosjack,
That's about the best you can do if the issue is as I described above - if every 404 on the site generates a new version of that one page then it is generally happening because of poor backend configuration.
Where it gets really messy is in the case where new URLs are being generated by hacking. I've seen several instances where every attempt at injection by a hacker generates a new copy of the page and if the anchor text happens to be exact match, the result is a disaster for the linked site
Sha
-
I had this same issue and it really affected my stats. I tried to contact the website with no luck to get the links removed. Then, when i looked into it more they had linked to the same pages about 30,000 times so I deleted the pages that were linked that I could afford to and slightly altered the addresses that I needed to keep. It made a massive difference
-
Hi mim12,
Afraid I am a lot more risk averse than most when it comes to unnatural links (and I have seen similar situations that emanated from nasty goings on at a couple of sites), so I have a couple of questions to clarify:
First, my read of your description is that there is a single page on that site which contains a link to your site and since you are saying there are now 50,000 links that would mean that there are 50,000 different URLs all originating from that one site and pointing to your site?
So, are you saying that these 50,000 individual URLs are actually identical copies of that one page which contains the link? If so, can you test whether new copies of the page are being generated from 404's by typing a new non-existent path and hitting enter? For example, if the URL of the page in question is http://www.netnewspublisher .com/strangepage.php, what happens if you change the address to http://www.netnewspublisher .com/anotherstrangepage.php and try to access the page? Do you simply get a not found error, or does it generate a new copy of the page with the new URL?
Alternatively, can you give us the actual URL where the original link was placed so we can take a look at it?
Sha
-
Have you seen any signs of algorithmic penalties or SERP fluctuation? If not... forget it. Yes I would ask to have it removed if it's a garbage link from an irrelevant site. But I would avoid the disavow tool and use it as a last result. I don't trust that tool as much as others seem to... You can usually do well without it too. If you start getting manual penalty warnings and your SERPs are dropping without any response from the webmasters... then it might be time to break out the disavow.
Whatever you do, DOCUMENT it! All emails, contacts, discoveries.. keep these documented in a separate folder in case you ever have to submit a re-inclusion request to Google.
That's all I can really say.
-
Actually, with 50,000 OSE might not be the best choice. I would keep an eye on your Google Webmaster Tools # of inbound links and perhaps monitor via http://ahrefs.com. There may be some other suggestions from the good folks here that I haven't thought of. Good luck!
-
Hi Dana,
Thanks for your response. Well, it's not paid. I had 8000 backlinks in WMT before, now I have 58,000. This is the biggest spike I've had before for sure (that I'm aware of) - so it is a big jump for us.
This apparently has been going for for a few weeks to a month - the post that was added to their site has linked (perhaps a blogroll is the best term) through all of their pages, creating all these links.
Still think that's "ok"?
What would I look for in OSE to see if we are "dropping over time"? Not sure what you are referring to?
Thanks! -
I wouldn't panic about this. Getting a sudden spike from a post that gets carried on a news site isn't really that unusual. Did you pay for the backlink? If not, I wouldn't worry about it. If you did pay for it, and now you're feeling a little queezy, then yes, have them take it down if it makes you feel better.
I would NOT use the disavow tool. The site is a PR4, you could do a lot worse than to get 50,000 links from a PR 4 site. I'd also take this in context with your overall link profile. If you only had 10 links and now you have 50,010...yes, this might be a problem, and I stress "might." If you have 100,000 and now have 150,000 it could still be a problem, but far less of one. Also, if you've had spikes in inbound links before, then no worries.
This can happen for a number of natural reasons. For example, we have an industry publication that occasionally posts a ton of info about our products. It can add 20-30K links in one month, and they might all be gone the next month.
Honestly, I'd sit tight for a couple of days and watch OSE and Fresh Web explorer to see if they are dropping off over time. My guess is they will and anything that you may have done while in "panic" mode may end up hurting rather than helping.
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
-
Backlink (which one is better)
Hi, for guest posting which Anchor is better for my brand website? 1)Naked Anchor text (e.g according to www.example.co.uk) OR Branded Anchor text? (e.g according to Example, which can be clicked to www.example.co.uk ) Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KINSHUN0 -
Site wide external links analysis tool?
Hi Guys, I just got a remove url email from someone asking us to remove their link. What website or tool is best to see ALL of your external links sitewide from your website? And as a bonus, columns of "nofollow" and "follow". Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Mobile Site Outranking Main Site
Hi, We have recently been hit with a problem regarding our mobile site, where it is outranking our main site. This is causing a drop in orders and ranknings for our main site. It would appear that google has indexed our mobile site and so the two are now competing against each other. Our main site is on a .co.uk and our mobile site on a .mobi, but we have now taken down the mobile site until we get this sorted. Does anyone else have any experience of this happening and how to stop it happening again? Thanks Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Steve251 -
Webmaster Tools Internal Links
Hi all, I have around 400 links in the navigation menu (site-wide) and when I use webmaster tools to check for internal links to each page; some have as many as 250K and some as little as 200. Shouldn't the number of internal links for pages found in the navigation menu be relatively the same? Or is Google registering more internal links for pages linked closer to the top of the code Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
Better SEO Option, 1 Site 3 Subdomains or 4 Separate Sites?
Hey Mozzers, I'm working with a client who wants to redo their web presence. They have a a main website for the umbrella and then 3 divisions which have their own website as well. My question is: Is it better to have the main site on the main domain and then have the 3 separate sites be subdomains? Or 4 different domains with a linking structure to tie them all together? To my understanding option 1 would include high traffic for 1 domain and option 2 would be building Page Authority by having 4 different sites linking to each other? My guess would be option 2, only if all 4 sites start getting relevant authority to make the links of value. But right out of the gates option 1 might be more beneficial. A little advice/clarification would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
My site still out of rank
Hello, I am working on a site for past 3 months, here are the problems with this site, 1. It had a forum full of spam becuase initially captcha was not included, 10000 spam backlinks 2. Affiliate page was also hit by spam about 4000 spam backlinks which were either not existing or porn etc.... 3. Too many internal links which were indexed, these additional links were generated due to tags, ids, filters etc. Existing SEO team decided to remove the forum and after 30 days they blocked it in robots. But within 30 days the site moved from 3rd page to no where. Now after few days lator internal links are also cleaned by putting following in the robots, Dissallow: / *? Dissallow: / *id Dissallow: / *tag Links are now cleaning up, all the spam and bad links are now put into disavow file and sent to google via disavow tool. On daily bases good quality links are been produced such as through content, article submission, profile linking, Bookmarks etc. The site is still not any where on top 50 results. The impressions are decreasing, traffic also do not rise as much. How do you see all this situation. What do you suggest and how long do you think it will take to return to top 10 when good linking is being done and all preventive measures are being taken. I would appreciate any feedback on it. Thank you. Site URL: http://www.creativethemes.net keywords: magento themes, magento templates
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict0 -
URL errors in Google Webmaster Tool
Hi Within Google Webmaster Tool 'Crawl errors' report by clicking 'Not found' it shows 404 errors its found. By clicking any column headings and it will reorder them. One column is 'Priority' - do you think Google is telling me its ranked the errors in priority of needing a fix? There is no reference to this in the Webmaster tool help. Many thanks Nigel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Richard5551 -
Migrating a site
Hello, I have what a I think it's a noob question.. I have a medium size website and need to put it into maintenance for the next 2 months, and afterwards activate a completly new site. My client asked me to do this, cause the same people whoe run the constant flow of information on the site, are the ones who are going to develop the new site, so he wants to just close it out So... what are the steps for doing this with minimum impact on any SEO advances made this past months?.. How do I tell the search engines, Hey, just under maintenance for a while....then... i'm back in the game but this is my new structure. and the old one should go here
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0