Ignore these external links reported in GWT?
-
Taking a long, Ace-Ventura-like breath here. This question is loaded.
Here we go:
- No manual actions reported against my client's site in GWT
- HOWEVER, a link: operator search for external links to my client's website shows NO links in results. That seems like a very bad omen to me. OSE shows 13 linking domains, but not the one that's listed in the next bullet point.
- Issue: In Google Webmaster Tools, I noticed 1,000+ external links to my client's website all coming from riddim-donmagazine.com (there are a small handful of other domains listed, but this one stuck out for the large quantity of links coming from this domain)
- Those external links all point to two URLs on my client's website. I have no knowledge of any campaigns run by client that would use this other domain (or any schemes for that matter)
- It appears that this website riddim-donmagazine.com has been suspended by hostgator
- All of the links were first discovered last year (dates vary but basically August through December 2013)
- There have not been any newly discovered links from this website reported by GWT since those 2013 dates
- All of the external links are /? based. Example: http://riddim-donmagazine.com/?author=1&paged=31
- If I run that link in preceding bullet point through http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php, or any others from riddim-donmagazine.com those external links return 302 status.
My best guess is at one time the client was running an advertising program and this website may have been on that network. One of the external links points to an ad page on the client's website.
(web.archive.org confirms this is a WordPress site and that it's coverage of Bronx news could trigger an ad for my client or make it related to my client's website when it comes to demographics.)Believe me, this externally linked domain is only a small problem in comparison with the rest of my client's issues (mainly they've changed domains, then they changed website vendors, etc., etc.), but I did want to ask about that one externally linked domain.
Whew.Thanks in advance for insights/thoughts/advice!
-
Not back during the fall of 2013, but more recently there's been a change, and it's likely because of the website vendor switch.
Will the links eventually disappear from GWT? If so, do you know the timeframe?
-
Since it's suspended, google will recrawl and discover the link and gone and you should be in the clear. Did you experience a drop in rankings?
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
-
Google ignoring the Title Tag?
Anybody seen this too? We have a webpage with tiny different title tag and H1. If you search for let's say "Renovatie", you get to see the title tag "De kostprijs van je renovatie". However, when you search with the search term "Wat kost een renovatie", we see the H1 title in the SERP, which is "Wat kost een renovatie". So that's normal when you search a term that's exact the same as the H1 tag, Google ignores the title tag? N.
Technical SEO | | nans0 -
Should we nofollow footer social links?
Like most sites today we have a whole raft of social links in our footer, these are on every page of the site and link out to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc Should these links be nofollow to avoid juice leaving our site or would you recommend allowing them to be followed to increase the power of these social sites? Is there a definitive Yay or Na on these social links?
Technical SEO | | Twist3600 -
Updating inbound links vs. 301 redirecting the page they link to
Hi everyone, I'm preparing myself for a website redesign and finding conflicting information about inbound links and 301 redirects. If I have a URL (we'll say website.com/website) that is linked to by outside sources, should I get those outside sources to update their links when I change the URL to website.com/webpage? Or is it just as effective from a link juice perspective to simply 301 redirect the old page to the new page? Are there any other implications to this choice that I may want to consider? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Liggins0 -
What do I do with these back links?
In the last two weeks, I've got 10 pingbacks from this http://caraccidentlawyer.cc/coroner-ids-berkeley-bodies-who-were-killed-in-recent-car-accident/ and sites like it. The featured attorney is a competitor of ours and, since the links aren't sex/drugs/rock&roll related, (and he's linked too) I doubt this is a negative SEO campaign, but I want it to stop. These blogs are basically pure spam. Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Competition links make no sense
Hello everybody, I used the open site explorer to check where my competitor has links and try to put mine there too. However I am extremely confused with the results. Eg the first link to my competitor coming from a domain with authority 91, is a download file. The other one is a link from ups, the courier service. When I click on it I get an access denied.The other one comes from samsung and when I click on it, I download an swf file. Next one, fcc.gov and it downloads a wp file. If I keep clicking on these links, in the end I am going to get a virus or something and learn nothing about what my competitor does. Any one have a clue how they managed to get linked like that?
Technical SEO | | polyniki0 -
How Does Link Juice Pass?
Say there is a link on an authoritative site to my site, and the link points to www.mysite.com. However, I have set all URL variations (https://mysite.com, www.mysite.com, mysite.com, etc.) to redirect to http://mysite.com automatically. Does the link juice from this authoritative site pass through the www.mysite.com URL to http://mysite.com automatically due to the automatic redirect? I guess my question is does the link juice automatically pass on to the destination URL, even though it is not the original URL the authoritative site pointed to?
Technical SEO | | NiallTom0 -
GWT indexing wrong pages
Hi SEOMoz I have a listings site. In a part of the page, I have 3 comboboxes, for state, county and city. On the change event, the javascript redirects the user to the page of the selected location. Parameters are passed via GET, and my URL is rewrited via htaccess. Example: http:///www.site.com/state/county/city.html The problem is, there is A LOT(more than 10k) of 404 errors. It is happenning because the crawler is trying to index the pages, sometimes WITHOUT a parameter, like http:///www.site.com/state//city.html I don't know how to stop it, and I don't wanna remove it, once it's very clicked by the users. What should I do?
Technical SEO | | elias990