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    4. Suspicious external links to site have 302 redirects

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    Suspicious external links to site have 302 redirects

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO
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    • crescentdigital
      crescentdigital last edited by

      Hi,

      I have been asked to look at a site where I suspect some questionable SEO work, particularly link building. The site does seem to be performing very poorly in Google since January 2014, although there are no messages in WMT.

      Using WMT, OPenSiteExplorer, Majestic & NetPeak, I have analysed inbound links and found a group of links which although are listed in WMT, etc appear to 302 redirect to a directory in China (therefore the actual linking domain is not visible). It looks like a crude type of link farm, but I cant understand why they would use 302s not 301s.

      The domains are not visible due to redirects. Should I request a disavow or ignore?

      The linking domains are listed below:

      http://www.basalts.cn/
      http://www.chinamarbles.com.cn/
      http://www.china-slate.com.cn/
      http://www.granitecountertop.com.cn/
      http://www.granite-exporter.com/
      http://www.sandstones.biz/
      http://www.stone-2.com/
      http://www.stonebuild.cn/
      http://www.stonecompany.com.cn/
      http://www.stonecontact.cn/
      http://www.stonecrate.com/
      http://www.stonedesk.com/
      http://www.stonedvd.com/
      http://www.stonepark.cn/
      http://www.stonetool.com.cn/
      http://www.stonewebsite.com/

      Thanks

      Steve

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • crescentdigital
        crescentdigital last edited by

        Linda,

        OK, thanks. Grateful to have another opinion on it. It seems like this site has suffered, but the rest of links look reasonable. However, the previous SEO done appears to have been link building with complete absence of keyword research and subsequent optimisation of pages, posts, etc.

        Regards,

        Steve

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Linda-Vassily
          Linda-Vassily last edited by

          As strict as Google can be, I have never heard of them penalizing  anyone for something bad they used to do (but didn't get caught at) and have now stopped doing. I think they reserve their penalties for current bad actions. [Which is not to say you were doing something bad--we are talking about your wanting to be sure that it doesn't appear to Google that you tried something bad.]

          In general, I think it's best not to disavow unless it is an extreme situation. As Google itself says: "In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool."

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • crescentdigital
            crescentdigital @Linda-Vassily last edited by

            Linda,

            Thanks. It appears that the domains are all owned by the same / person entity and could it be that there is any legacy effect of having these links prior to 302?

            Regards

            Steve

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Linda-Vassily
              Linda-Vassily last edited by

              Since the links are using 302 redirects they are not passing any link juice, so I can't imagine that you'd be penalized for them.

              crescentdigital 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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