Detected a bad site linking to you? what to do?
-
I have detected on linkdetox site that had stolen a face photo of a smile from a star my website and is linking to the page.
I uploade a disavow with that site very bad domain. But my question is if should a take that picture of my site or rename so the link goes to 404.
It is not an important or relevant page for my website
-
There's no harm in disavowing the link but it's probably not necessary. The point of the disavow tool is to allow webmasters to ask Google to not count links that were made for SEO purposes. If you had placed this here so that you could increase your rankings then sure, I'd disavow it. It's unlikely that it's a negative SEO tactic...not with just one link. But, if you had a pile of these and you felt it was negative SEO then I'd disavow.
Every site, even the ones with the cleanest backlink profiles have bizarre links that appear like this. I would just ignore it.
If, however, you are trying to get it removed because you don't like the idea of your face residing on a page filled with porn, then if you can't contact the webmaster, you can try reporting the site to its host. Sometimes the host will remove spam pages/sites.
-
That's really helpful. Thanks Jeff.
-
You can always email -
postmaster@
and/or
webmaster@
Those two should go through to some one who looks after the site. Disavow will be enough to stop the link causing you any problems.
-
This bad site has no contact information. Impossible to reach the webmaster to ask for removal.
I am wounder if the disavow will be ok. But in this case i will rename the page and delete the photos.
-
Agree with Peter & Jeff,
If you're really upset with a link you can disavow it if you want to do it correctly you should email them prior, but if you jsut want it done, add the domain to the disavow list and job done.
-
FYI, Google's Matt Cutts has broken from the previously stated mantra on the disavow tool, and now is encouraging Webmasters to use it if they are worried if a link is from a bad domain, due to poor SEO (or someone else trying to hurt your site by creating bad links):
-
I would ask the site owner to remove the photo and link. If that fails then if the page is not important to you then it will be simpler to remove it than wait for the disavow to take effect.
Peter
-
I have more than 3000 original pictures on my website with the water and they are constantly stolen. I dont mind about that.
In this case is a porn site. On other cases among with good sites there are sites that i dont want the link of the credit and i delete the linked picture the link remains but goes to a 404.
I mean deleting the photo because i community advice deleting or rename the page i wild do that also with the disavow.
What would you do?
-
So a site is using a photo from your site but giving you credit for the photo by giving you a link?
How are you sure it's a "very bad domain" ?
The disavow will be fine it tells Google you don't want that site linked to your in anyway. If you don't want people stealing your images you could look into water marks.
-
Hi Dario
The first thing you should really do it contact the site who created the bad link and ask them to remove it and the photo if you are not happy about that also. If they are unresponsive then sending in a Disavow should really be done after speaking to the offending site's owner.
If though, as you say, the page is not important to you, then if the above doesn't work then yes, just remove the page.
Peter
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
-
I am getting automatic spam links to my site, how can I remove them?
Hello, I need assistance, recently I noticed a huge traffic drop from my blog, lost all the rankings in SERP. I got to know that it's Google OCT Spam Update mainly it's about spamming and black hat techniques. But I haven't done any spammy practices or Black HAT SEO. I pay good amount of $ a month to freelancing content writers and don't make any spam backlinks. My site is : tcmguide.com Checked my site in search console and noticed that I had out of no where got 13000+ links from different dirty sites, as I have never tried to building those links in my life. 13 382 links.jpg I tried to export and Disavow this but via Export I got access to 1000 only and can't find these links in MOZ. Moz is showing other links, can any one help me out to recover my traffic and If my site is hit with Spam Update, how can I recover from it. Please help me felling pretty demotivated and stressed
Link Building | | dsdfsdfdfdfvg330 -
When will link farms and back sites be penalized or when will the website using them as backlinks be penalized?
After doing some backlink searching on competitors, I see a great deal of competitor's backlinks are obvious linkfarms and just completely unrelated to their field. Also I see a lot of forum comments using links are showing as backlinks, upon inspecting the html element I see they're " no follow " links. Why are they showing up as backlinks with link equity then?
Link Building | | Deacyde0 -
Starting a new site's link campaign... how to approach it?
Over the last few years I have been building content in my niche that I believe rivals some of the best content out there and deserves some attention. Although I have a plan to produce alot more content which I believe will take the quality and quantity of my content into a position among the top 5 or top 10 sites in my niche in the next 1-2 years, I decided that making that massive investment in content production irrespective of a consistent marketing plan is a recipe for failure because I need the positive feedback loop from site visitors to begin now, not in 2 years. Right now I'm in a position where I'm producing content that I think is better than alot of what's out there, and it's just not ranking the way I believe it should. I think I need to do a legitimate link building campaign to establish the website a little more firmly and put it on more level ground with some of its competitors. In Majestic SEO's "fresh index", most of my site's immediate competition have no more than 500 new domains in their links, though the biggest one has some 2,000. How can any link building effort I might take on possibly compare to links of this scale? Is there some "rule of thumb" for how many quality links I should aim for to get on square ground with some of the competitors on the lowest rungs? And if I try to build that many links at once, do I risk sending signals of untrustworthiness? (Assume I'm not going to be looking for any shoddy links, and in general will aim to follow Google guidelines.)
Link Building | | guitarsites0 -
Somone is creating a ton of links to my site!!!
Today I looked at site explorer and found over 1100 linking root domains and over 750 linking c-blocks. My site was hovering around 200 linking root domains and 150 linking c-blocks. I have not paid anyone to link to my site... Is this one of my competitors trying to create negative seo for a specific key word? I've worked very hard to never try to build links and only get links naturally by providing good content that people would want to link to. Can all hundreds of new links hurt me? What can I do? my site is www.yakangler.com | | |
Link Building | | mr_w
| | |0 -
30,746 Links from One Site to Our Site
I learned this morning in our Google Webmaster Account about a website has 30,746 links to our website. Both our website and their site present information related to plastic materials, so in essence they complement one another. However, is having that massive amount of links from one site to ours a bad thing and should we use Google Disavow? Also, they have a PR3 while our site is PR5 (not sure if that matters much).
Link Building | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Site Published Our Guest Post but Removed the Link Back
I recently developed a nice article for a career site and they agreed to publish it as a guest post. Once they published the article I noticed they had removed the link back to my site in the byline. What is a best way to approach this situation? Would you ask them to take down the article if they are unwilling to link back to your site?
Link Building | | Charlessipe0 -
What is the best way to make sure competitors or others aren't buying links on my sites behalf to penalize us?
Is there a good way to do this? Does the Open Site Explorer have an ability to screen by when the link was found, or help by picking up on potentially shady links? Thanks much..
Link Building | | jim_shook0 -
Is it even worth getting a link from PR0-2 , unrelated themed sites?
Is it even worth getting a link from PR0-2 , unrelated themed sites like http://www.area-rug-news.com/ or http://www.denvercohomerentals.com/ to my PR4 health training site that has been around since 2007? Can getting a sitewide blogroll link do more harm than good?
Link Building | | gundogs0