SIte wide links by google display / adsense
-
hey guys, I had a quick question about my back links that might be coming from adsense.
I am trying to help my father our on his site and help him recover from penguin. unfortunately his company hired some shady SEOers to do "SEO". little did my dad know the BLs he were getting might be spammy, thats what I am checking now.
When I ran a BL report on him ( i use two tools, SEO spyglass and OSE ) i found that there were many "sitewide" links, but i dont think there were placed there by the webmaster, i think they come from adsense. I know he has a PPC campaign where the daily spend is 3k/ day so I know its very possible that this might be the case.
If my tool is picking up BLs from these sites ( which are niche related ) does google count these links for ranking purposes? and might this hurt my rankings if google just sees these as "sitewide links"
-
Possibly, but if you were hit by Penguin, those links might be doing you more harm than good right now. If I had a chance in this situation to remove over-optimized, site-wide links, I would.
And you nailed the conundrum of Penguin on the head
-
cyrus,
wow, thanks so much for replaying to my post, and as a side note, i really enjoyed and learned a lot from your last whiteboard friday post.
yea, i did a lil more research and it turns out that it was his affiliates that were doing it on their own pages. Turns out, they were site-wide sponsor ads on every single page.
site wide sponsor ads are def frowned upon infront of google right?
Anyways, the good thing about this situation is that we know ALL the affiliates by name and can easily contact them ( in the process) BUT, wont google see a recession of links and might count that to another rankings drop?
Hope to hear back, thanks
-
Hi David,
Sorry to hear your father's site was hit by Penguin. I agree with John that Adsense links will not count as backlinks. Neither OSE nor SEO Spyglass should record Adsense links as such, either.
When searching for links on a page, it's best to look at the source code of the page in question. (right click > view source). Then do a search (control F) and enter the URL of your father's domain. You'll often spot hard to find or hidden links this way a lot easier.
(Another method is to catch Google's cache of the page. (Use the MozBar for this by using the Page Attributes function found by clicking the Magnifying glass icon, and search for the Google cache URL) When you view Google's cached version of the page, hit the link that says "text version". Perform a source search as described above. At the top of the page, Google will tell you the date of the cache. This may indicate to you that the link was once on the page at this time, but since then the page has changed.)
Sometimes links disappear. This is often the case with paid link that require a monthly subscription.
If the links aren't in the source code, then most likely they aren't there anymore. Which is good, because it means you have fewer links to clean up
Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
hey john, I am going to get access to GWT monday, but im using SEO powersuite which i think checks it right then and there.
-
Is it possible that the links have been removed? OSE takes around 4 weeks to update as far as I'm aware, so it could be that the links aren't there anymore.
Do the links show up in GWT? It's possible that the links were being paid for on a monthly basis, which has now stopped so they have been removed.
-
yea thats what i thought, but i cant find the links?!?! they are on none of these domains.
on one domain i am showing 25 pages with BLs. but i cant find any of my links on there.
-
Hi David,
No, I don't think AdSense links would be counted towards rankings and I seriously doubt that AdSense links would hurt your rankings.
It sounds far more likely that they're paid text links (nothing to do with Google), most likely purchased by the former SEO agency. These certainly could damage your rankings, particularly if they're sitewide.
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
-
Approximate costs of keywords in Google AdWords
Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions about how to go about getting some approximate costs for keywords through Google Adwords to assist my SEO efforts. I don't want to open an AdWords account, just looking for costs. If the pricing is too high then the opened account was a waste of time. So if anyone has any resources to find out this information, that would be great! Thanks in advance!
Paid Search Marketing | | MainstreamMktg0 -
I've 'lost' my Google Referral international traffic
We recently launched a new version of our website on the PrestaShop platform. On our old DNN platform, we would typically see several thousand clicks a month from Google Referral (domestic) and several thousand more collectively from Google Referral international traffic (i.e. UK, Canada, Germany, France). This was the data being reported in Google Analytics. Once the new site went live however, Google Referral traffic, both domestic and international, all dropped to 0. My question is: Did we lose this traffic due to some improper setting on our new platform, or is this Google Referral traffic simply being re-categorized into another category, i.e. Organic Search?
Paid Search Marketing | | bmayer090 -
Retargeting and Display Advertising - Moz data
Hello Dr Moz'ers So we have a new competitor in our market (6 months) that has basically copied our business model 100%, grrrr. We have been in the market since 2008 .This new website is ranking well considering how difficult our market is. This new website is using the re-targeting display advertising and within 6 months his Moz data is showing around 45,000 back links, is this because of the re-targeting display advertising? Is there any link juice from the re-targeting display advertising because the MOz data says the site has 100% follow even though its an image. Cheers
Paid Search Marketing | | supps0 -
Adwords & Bingads? How to link?
Hi all! I am new to MOZ and i am trying ot set up my first client: bingadsm, adwords, social and google analytics. Only problem i am having is to link bingads and Adwords, anyone has an idea on how to solve this? Thanks in advance! Sandra
Paid Search Marketing | | EyeonResponse0 -
Why are some restricted items showing up on Google Shopping?
Hi there, We sell tactical gear but only "Google Friendly" items in our Google Shopping Product Listing Ads. We don't include anything that goes on a rifle, including rifle scopes. However, we see that companies like ebay and OpticsPlanet can still sell riflescopes: https://www.google.com/#q=Bushnell+3-12x44+Mil+Dot+Tactical+Riflescope&tbm=shop. There's even an article by SearchEngineLand that points this out, too: http://searchengineland.com/google-weapon-listings-shopping-search-126487. So why is it that they can sell them and we can't? What advantage do they have or what have they done?
Paid Search Marketing | | PatriotOutfitters810 -
What are the strongest and most-Google friendly directories to place my business on for the sake of large SEO gains? for the sake of Exposure to customers? What is the best way to invest for ROI nowadays? Thanks.
I do basic SEO stuff as well as marketing for quite a few clients. But, I am wondering which directories or exposure based groups are worth the money? Is a business.com directory listing for $300 a solid investment to get a strong link? Is yext a good move? How about wildfire? I could use some really high DA links to stack on top of the link profiles I have already built through content, etc.? Please advise me. PS Confession: I was once a pre-panda Fiverr link junkie. But I am in recovery. I have an 18 month chip and am currently making amends. 12 steps to SEO freedom baby.
Paid Search Marketing | | creativeguy0 -
targeting different keywords for site
A site i am working on seakayakingdevon.co.uk, currently optimising for sea kayaking wishes to target alternative keywords such as - canoeing, canoe trips etc. more importantly rank higher than a dedicated local canoeing center site. The issue is he provides kayaking trips and courses and not canoeing but believes a a large percent of his targeted market actual mistakenly searches for canoeing when they actually mean kayaking or simply have no preference - i.e kayaks are often confused with canoes especially with people who have no preference but are more inclined to search using terms related to canoeing, canoe day trip etc. As his site is geared to what he actually provides, I have advised that he would struggle to target such terms as he has no content relating to canoeing and risks the overall ranking positions and SEO efforts for sea kayaking terms.( As these would have to be diluted and would no longer relate to the actual page content.) What method could he deploy without sacrificing the sea kayaking optimisation? I realise he could optimise the site and content for both but question just how successful this would be when compared with the loss of dedicated sea kayaking audience. Is it really worth targeting keywords for service he doesn't provide? On a separate note the site is doing reasonably well since optmisation for localised serch terms but would like to target a wider UK audience as well i.e. tourism to the area. thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | Bristolweb0 -
Adwords Product Listing Ads & Google Analytics mis-reporting
I hope you're sitting comfortably, this could be a long one and loaded with questions! Cut to the chase: Why is traffic from google product ads showing as 'organic' traffic in GA? Here's the scenario: Google Shopping I have thousands of products in a feed to google shopping (froogle, google base, google merchant, whatever you like to call it, I'll settle for google shopping for the purpose of this question). The URLs of this feed is tagged with GA tracking data (notably utm_source=GoogleBase&utm_medium=Product-Search), I have also tagged this with internal tracking which comes through in the back-end to assign orders to that specific source. In this case 'GOOGLEBASE'. Adwords Product Listing Ads As you know, a new (ish) feature of adwords pulls in your products from google shopping so that you get a richer ad (image, title, price) and displays this in the 'advert section' of the SERP. Once setting up a few of these, I noticed I was getting a fair amount of traffic for these new ads, taking one example, which resided in a relatively specific ad group (advertising Aviation Snips). Naturally, I wanted to find out which keywords were driving that traffic in order to improve the ads, or kill them if they weren't working. What was interesting is that I can't find anything about that traffic anywhere in adwords or google analytics. 254 clicks to 'aviation snips' must show up somewhere in analytics, if not the keywords, then what about the product? Analytics is showing nothing like that quantity of visits to those product landing pages where you'd expect. It's like ghost traffic. Google Analytics Since experimenting with product listing ads the organic traffic in GA has suddenly shot up, looking at the new keywords they are all queries which when I test them show up product listing ads in the SERP so it's obviously the paid listing ads driving this traffic. Why is google reporting these as organic, rather than paid? I also noticed a keyword appear as * in the PAID segment of analytics. I thought this was my missing aviation snips traffic, but digging into the landing pages for the * keyword, they are many different ones. There's a connection between the * and product listing ads, but what is it? Is the traffic being doubly reported? Back End Meanwhile we've seen an increase for orders tagged in the back-end of GOOGLEBASE which makes sense - google are pulling in my google shopping feed into the paid part of the SERPs and these are generating sales. Here are some of my initial thoughts / theories: 1. When google pulls in google shopping results into the organic part of the SERP, these get reported as ORGANIC in google analytics, even if you've tagged them otherwise. It seems they strip the tags out. This makes it very difficult to know if your google shopping feed is working well, or if you are doing well on standard organic traffic. 2. Google isn't separating out traffic as PAID with their new product listing ads, completely skewing the reports. It makes it look like you've gained great natural organic listings when if fact you are paying. 3. With relation to the missing Aviation Snips data - maybe google is showing a huge variety of products for that adgroup (even though it's specific) and therefore I can't see the traffic to the specific products that you'd expect. This I'm most confused about and wondered if I've missed a trick in setting the product listing ads up? I've attached a couple of screenshots which I hope will help clarify some of this. I can see product listing ads being great if you could get proper data to analyse and improve them. So here are my questions again if anyone can help? How do I see which keywords are driving the product listing ads? How do I see the landing pages for the product listings ads? What is the * keyword coming through in GA? How can you get GA to report product listing ads as paid rather than organic? Thank you so much. If I can gather enough data on this all and work it out I'll try to write up in a blog post to help others. 0rOMM.png GUAE0.png fWPL7.png
Paid Search Marketing | | ewanr0