Getting links from spammy websites on the same IP
-
Hey,
I'm getting a ton ( 22k) of spammy links from another website which has the same IP address as mine. I've not received any notification from Webmasters but I think I'm getting massively penalized for the same.
1)Should I just go ahead and disavow these links?
2)Are there are other steps with regards to the technical aspects such as Hosting and Domain configurations I should look into to stop this and get ranked properly.
3)Do I need to submit a reconsideration request to Google after I've cleaned up this mess or will I need to wait till the next scrawl?
Thanks so much!
-
thank you for the responses
very helpful!!
-
Shared IPs are a bit tough. It used to be the case that, on rare occasions, Google might accidentally penalize a domain if another domain on that IP had a spammy history, carried a penalty, etc. These days, that seems to be very unlikely, probably because shared IPs are a lot more common. Once IPv4 started running out, many legitimate sites were sharing.
On the other hand, it is still more likely for links to be devalued or look suspicious if they come from the same IP, because that's often how low-quality link networks are built. In most cases, I suspect Google would simply devalue those links and not outright penalize the domains, but I'm not certain either way.
The tough part is that it's hard to separate whether you're being hit for the links, for them coming from a share IP, or for something entirely different. In a perfect world, I'm a fan of having a unique IP, but my gut says that that's probably not going to magically fix things here. Since they're all coming from one site, and if they're definitely spammy, I'd go the disavow route first (especially since you can disavow the entire domain). Give it a couple of weeks, and then you can try to submit for reconsideration. If/when you do, I'd specifically explain why you have a shared IP and that your site has no affiliation with this other site. As other said, reconsideration is generally for manual penalties, but it's unclear from your statements whether this penalty is manual or algorithmic. Disavow seems to be applicable to some cases of either situation, although Google has been a bit inconsistent on this topic.
At the same time, make sure nothing else is going on with your link profile. For links from just one domain to cause a serious penalty is very rare.
-
Just a quick answer to Q3
"Do I need to submit a reconsideration request to Google after I've cleaned up this mess or will I need to wait till the next scrawl?"
You are now only able to submit a reconsideration request if you have a manual penalty. The option is no longer there in Webmaster Tools if you have no penalty.
-
Hi Suchde!
-
You should first contact the owner of the website that is linking to you, and ask that they remove the links. If they refuse or don't respond promptly, go ahead and disavow the links. If the links are coming from a single site, you can disavow the whole lot in one go using domain: thewebsite.com in your disavow file.
-
Google penalises by domain and not IP, and so in theory (if you believe Matt Cutts), the fact that you're sharing the hosting with a spammy site shouldn't effect your rankings. However, there's an additional factor here - the spammy site is linking to you, making it look like there is some association. Although you're going to disavow those links and hopefully this should get rid of the issue, I can't be certain how Google will treat this. You could perhaps purchase a dedicated IP address for your site to mitigate the risk.
-
No need to submit a reconsideration request if you haven't received a manual penalty - reconsideration requests are just for sites with a manual penalty.
Hope that helps!
-
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
-
How do I redirect my old PHP website to my new Java website?
Please could you help? My old website is written in php. I've created a new design of the website in Java. I'll be using the same domain name though. example.com and I'd like to pass my link juice to my new redesigned website. When I turn the domain name to point to my new website how do I make sure pages that are ranked in google that don't exist on my new website transfer 301 from my old website to a similar page on my new website. Old Website Example example.com/bootcampuk.php New Website Example example.com/bootcamps.jsp Many Thanks, Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | puamethod0 -
Links via Commenting on Popular website. Does it work?
Getting links from popular website using real name or brand name as comment still works? I know that anchor tags in name while commenting on other sites would directly go to spam.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
University website outbound links issue
Hi - I'm working on a university website and have found a load of (1) outbound links to companies that have commercial tie ups to the university and, beyond that, loads of (2) outbound links to companies set up by alumni and (3) outbound links to commercial clients of the university. Your opinions on whether I should nofollow these, or not, would be welcome. At the moment I'm tempted to nofollow (1) yet leave (2) and (3) - quite simply because the (1) backlinks may have been negotiated as part of a package (nobody can actually remember at the university!), yet (2) and (3) were freely given by the university. Your thoughts would be welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Why would my ip address show up in my webmaster tools links?
I am showing thousands of links from my servers ip address. What would cause that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Getting over that DA hump...
Hi All, I have a client with a sizeable international manufacturing operation who we've managed to get up to a DA of 40 over time. However, things seem to have levelled out, and I'm not sure how to mix it up to get the numbers back on the rise. We create regular blog and social content, run press releases bi-weekly, optimize on-page content and stay on top of all technical issues. What else can we do?? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated, Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | G2W0 -
Not sure if I should disavow these links or not
I am on the marketing team for CandyGalaxy.com we are an online candy store that specializes in bulk candy for events. Were just about a year and a half old and i'm running into some SEO strategy road blocks lately. When we started the company we used an oversee's seo company. For the first few months results were great then things took a massive dive as google began rolling out updates early and mid last year. After that point we started taking things in house and have been trying to create content and begin content marketing. We launched a blog @ blog.candygalaxy.com and also launched and educational resource at candybuffet101.com - However the question i'm up against now is what to do with those bad old links? Are they actually hurting us? Or just neutral? I'm also trying to decided what to do about the links in my footer? We put those there because those are truly our most popular products and we wanted customers to have easy access, but are those links potentially harmful? I'm questioning these issues because I feel like there is something holding back some of my pages from ranking. For example "blue candy" is a very popular section of our website. We have worked on a lot of content for the blog related to blue candy, made videos, photo shoots ect. We have customer reviews on page and unique category content. According to open site explorer our DA and PA are around the range of most of the sites in the 8-12 serp position. But we have more social activity then all but the top 2-3 spots. However the page almost impossible to find via search. Its not in the first 300 results and surely the page is more relevant then an entry about quilts.. Similar situations like this have led me to think that maybe there is a technical underlying issues that I have not addressed. ? The content is definitely there because if i type in a line from the content directly to google it is the first result. So the site seems indexed properly.. Would love to hear any feedback from similar experiences or ideas. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonathan_Murrell0 -
External links from banned websites
Currently working with a client that has seen his rankings diminish after the penguin update. I've manually analyzed all his 600 backlinks and identified approximately 85 external links from websites that have been banned by Google. How do these sites affect his current rankings? Should i just disavow all these links using the Google disavow tool? Any comments would be highly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nick_Johansson0 -
Is there an optimal ratio of external links to a page vs internal links originating at that page ?
I understand that multiple links fro a site dilute link juice. I also understand that external links to a specific page with relevant anchortext helps ranking. I wonder if there is an ideal ratioof tgese two items
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Apluswhs0