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
-
Does Navigation Bar have an effect on the link juice and the number of internal links?
Hi Moz community, I am getting the "Avoid Too Many Internal Links" error from Moz for most of my pages and Google declared the max number as 100 internal links. However, most of my pages can't have internal links less than 100, since it is a commercial website and there are many categories that I have to show to my visitors by using the drop down navigation bar. Without counting the links in the navigation bar, the number of internal links is below 100. I am wondering if the navigation bar links affect the link juice and counted as internal links by Google. The Same question also applies to the links in the footer. Additionally, how about the products? I have hundreds of products in the category pages and even though I use pagination I still have many links in the category pages (probably more than 100 without even counting the navigation bar links). Does Google count the product links as internal links and how about the effect on the link juice? Here is the website if you want to take a look: http://www.goldstore.com.tr Thank you for your answers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onurcan-ikiz0 -
If I nofollow outbound external links to minimize link juice loss > is it a good/bad thing?
OK, imagine you have a blog, and you want to make each blog post authoritative so you link out to authority relevant websites for reference. In this case it is two external links per blog post, one to an authority website for reference and one to flickr for photo credit. And one internal link to another part of the website like the buy-now page or a related internal blog post. Now tell me if this is a good or bad idea. What if you nofollow the external links and leave the internal link untouched so all internal links are dofollow. The thinking is this minimizes loss of link juice from external links and keeps it flowing through internal links to pages within the website. Would it be a good idea to lay off the nofollow tag and leave all as do follow? or would this be a good way to link out to authority sites but keep the link juice internal? Your thoughts are welcome. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Does adding more outgoing links on a high PA page decrease the juice passed to previous links?
Hi, I'm not sure how PA DA exactly works when the goal is to create backlinks to your site in order to have the most impact on passing PA DA juice (if there is such a thing) to ones money site. For example let's say you have a blog and the PA is 40 DA is 30. Let's say I create a backlink pointing to my site on the homepage of this blog, in which I desire better rankings for, and the links I created are only 1-3 outgoing links on this post which is again on the homepage. Then say in a months time, I want to add another post on the homepage (so the 40 PA and 30 DA stays the same) creating a backlink to one of my other money sites. Does adding this second round of backlinks result in sending less juice to the first? This is what I want to know. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | z8YX9F800 -
Internal nofollow links
Hello, We have a blog and at the end each blog post (and from the sidebar) we link to one main product page (tagged with a particular query string). Now Google will see from every blog post all of these internal links pointing back to this page. Do you think this would cause a problem and that these links should be nofollowed? I think Google will kind of detect that these is kind of a "navigation" as the code will be the same across all webpages. Most of all, doing them nofollow I think it is worse because it may trigger some sort of pagerank sculpting algo filter, if it still exists. Thanks, Conrad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conalt0 -
Charity links
Quick question - Are links on charity websites with a small mention about what your company does good links to go for?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson1 -
Do links from twitter count in SEOMoz's Toolbar link count?
I am using the Chrome extension and looking at a SERP, when a page is said to have 2000 incoming links, does that include tweets with a link back to this page? What about retweets. Are those counted separately or as one? And what about independent tweets that have exactly the same content (tweet text + link)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davhad0 -
How to get the 'show map of' tag/link in Google search results
I have 2 clients that have apparently random examples of the 'show map of' link in Google search results. The maps/addresses are accurate and for airports. They are both aggregators, they service the airports e.g. lax airport shuttle (not actual example) BUT DO NOT have Google Place listings for these pages either manually OR auto populated from Google, DO NOT have the map or address info on the pages that are returned in the search results with the map link. Does anyone know how this is the case? Its great that this happens for them but id like to know how/why so I can replicate across all their appropriate pages. My understanding was that for this to happen you HAD to have Google Place pages for the appropriate pages (which they cant do as they are aggregators). Thanks in advance, Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Link anchor text: only useful for pages linked to directly or distributed across site?
As a SEO I understand that link anchor text for the focus keyword on the page linked to is very important, but I have a question which I can not find the answer to in any books or blogs, namely: does inbound anchor text 'carry over' to other pages in your site, like linkjuice? For instance, if I have a homepage focusing on keyword X and a subpage (with internal links to it) focusing on keyword Y. Does is then help to link to the homepage with keyword Y anchor texts? Will this keyword thematically 'flow through' the internal link structure and help the subpage's ranking? In a broader sense: will a diverse link anchor text profile to your homepage help all other pages in your domain rank thematically? Or is link anchor text just useful for the direct page that is linked to? All views and experiences are welcome! Kind regards, Joost van Vught
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoostvanVught0