Spammy page with canonical reference to my website
-
A potentially spammy website http://www.rofof.com/ has included a rel canonical tag pointing to my website. They've included the tag on thousands of pages on their website. Furthermore http://www.rofof.com/ appears to have backlinks from thousands of other low-value domains
For example www.kazamiza.com/vb/kazamiza242122/, along with thousands of other pages on thousands of other domains all link to pages on rofof.com, and the pages they link to on rofof.com are all canonicalized to a page on my site.
If Google does respect the canonical tag on rofof.com and treats it as part of my website then the thousands of spammy links that point to rofof.com could be considered as pointing to my website.
I'm trying to contact the owner of www.rofof.com hoping to have the canonical tag removed from their website. In the meantime, I've disavowed the www.rofof.com, the site that has canonical tag. Will that have any effect though? Will disavow eliminate the effect of a rel canonical tag on the disavowed domain or does it only affect links on the disavowed website? If it only affects links then should I attempt to disavow all the pages that link to rofof.com?
Thanks for reading. I really appreciate any insight you folks can offer.
-
Thanks, good to hear!
-
Thanks for your input David!
-
Hi Bruce,
There was a bit of a debate about this recently - whether a cross-domain canonical could be a new type of negative SEO attack: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-negative-seo-via-canonicals-redirects-25614.html
But I personally don't think it would be a successful negative SEO strategy.
Having disavowed the domain, I think you have taken all the precautions you can and I wouldn't be too worried about this having a negative impact on your traffic and rankings.
Cheers,
David
-
Oh dear what a kerfuffle. People are always searching for new negative-SEO assault deployments!
In February 2018 Moz actually covered the subject of cross-domain canonical tag usage:
Apparently it can work but only under very specific circumstances:
- The content of the 'canonicaling' URL matches the canonical destination
- The headline of the 'canonicaling' URL's content matches that of the canonical destination
- In-Content Links of the 'canonicaling' URL match those of the canonical destination
So unless the content on their pages happens to be almost identical to the content on the page on your site which the tags are linking to; they're pretty much boneheads and this isn't a major concern.
In all likelihood nothing bad will happen but you could try using Google's Disavow tool (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main) to send them a signal that you do not wish to be 'associated' with the spam-site in question. It is unknown (or at least I haven't heard) whether the disavow tool covers canonical links. I would think that it would at least prompt Google to fundamentally disassociate the two sites.
More than likely those behind the attack are fully aware that it is extremely unlikely to harm you. They probably have a network of machine-built sites launching the same (fake) attack against thousands of webmasters. My guess is that they are preying on ignorance, hoping that some webmasters will pay them to take the tags off.
DON'T fall for it
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
-
Index, follow on a paginated page with a different rel=canonical URL
Hello, I have a question about meta robots ="index, follow" and rel=canonical on category page pagination. Should the sorted page be <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"></meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> since the rel="canonical" is pointing to a separate page that is different from the URL? Any thoughts on this topic would be awesome. Thanks. Main Category Page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice
https://www.site.com/category/
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow"><link rel="canonical" href="https: www.site.com="" category="" "=""></link rel="canonical" href="https:></meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> Sorted Page
https://www.site.com/category/?p=2&dir=asc&order=name
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow"=""><link rel="canonical" href="https: www.site.com="" category="" ?p="2""></link rel="canonical" href="https:></meta name="robots" content="index,> As you can see, the meta robots is telling Google to index https://www.site.com/category/?p=2&dir=asc&order=name , yet saying the canonical page is https://www.site.com/category/?p=2 .0 -
Is it best practice to have a canonical tags on all pages
The website I'm working on has no canonical tags. There is duplicate content so rel=canonicals need adding to certain pages but is it best practice to have a tag on every page ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ColesNathan0 -
One page ranking for all key words, when other targeted pages not ranking
Hi everyone I am fairly new to SEO but have a basic understanding. I have a page that has a lot of content on it (including brand names and product types and relevant info) ranking for a quite a few key words. This is cool, except that I have pages dedicated to each specific key word that are not ranking. The more specific page still has a lot of relevant text on it too. eg. TYRES page - Ranks first for "Tyres". Ranks okay for many tyre key words, including "truck tyres"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDadd
TRUCK TYRES page - not ranking for "truck tyres" Further on, I then have pages not ranking all that well for more specific key words when they should. eg HONDA TRUCK TYRES - Then has a page full of product listings - no actual text. Not Ranking for "honda truck tyres". ABC HONDA TRUCK TYRE - not ranking for "abc honda truck tyre" key word
These pages don't have a lot of content on them, as essentially every single tyre is the same except for the name. But they do have text. So sometimes, these terms don't rank at all. And sometimes, the first TYRES page ranks for it. I have done the basic on page seo for all these pages (hopefully properly) including meta desc, meta titles, H1, H2, using key words in text, alt texting images where possible etc. According to MOZ they are optimised in the 90%. Link building is difficult as they are product listings, so other sites don't really link to these pages. Has anyone got ideas on why the top TYRES page might be so successful and out ranking more specific pages? Any ideas on how I can get the other pages ranking higher as they are more relevant to the search term? We are looking in to a website redesign/overhaul so any advice on how I can prevent this from happening on essentially a new site would be great too. Thanks!0 -
New Website Launch - what to do with the URLs of the pages with ranks
Hey there, So, we are "redesigning" our website, it will have a new user journey and overall layout, use, and feel. Situation: Previously, most of our keywords ranked over time organically though all of them pull up our domain.com as the landing page. Now that we are redesigning the site, most of the keywords pointing to the home page will now have their own page. Keywords properly grouped and content will now be on topic and focused per page. Q: What are the things that we need to do so we won't lose those keywords? Appreciate your help. Also, if you can cite specific SEO checklist when redesigning a site, that'll be a great help! Thanks! Jac
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jac.reyes0 -
Should I use rel=canonical on similar product pages.
I'm thinking of using rel=canonical for similar products on my site. Say I'm selling pens and they are al very similar. I.e. a big pen in blue, a pack of 5 blue bic pens, a pack of 10, 50, 100 etc. should I rel=canonical them all to the best seller as its almost impossible to make the pages unique. (I realise the best I realise these should be attributes and not products but I'm sure you get my point) It seems sensible to have one master canonical page for bic pens on a site that has a great description video content and good images plus linked articles etc rather than loads of duplicate looking pages. love to hear thoughts from the Moz community.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mark_baird0 -
Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?
I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions. Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up" - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...) I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm Google shows www.mywebsite.com in the results instead. The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it.. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chunkyvittles0 -
There's a website I'm working with that has a .php extension. All the pages do. What's the best practice to remove the .php extension across all pages?
Client wishes to drop the .php extension on all their pages (they've got around 2k pages). I assured them that wasn't necessary. However, in the event that I do end up doing this what's the best practices way (and easiest way) to do this? This is also a WordPress site. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digisavvy0 -
Any penalty for having rel=canonical tags on every page?
For some reason every webpage of our website (www.nathosp.com) has a rel=canonical tag. I'm not sure why the previous SEO manager did this, but we don't have any duplicate content that would require a canonical tag. Should I remove these tags? And if so, what's the advantage - or disadvantage of leaving them in place? Thank you in advance for your help. -Josh Fulfer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mhans1