Tons of Links from Low-Quality Image Directories?
-
Hi Mozzers, I've been receiving a ton of links from low-quality websites that look like image directories or search engines? They are displaying the images that are hosted on our own website. They all seem very similar.
Has anyone experienced this and are these harmful? Should they be left alone or disavowed or..?
Here are a few examples:
etc.
Thanks in advance!
-
Nailed it!
-
Hi SylviaH,
I have never had any such issues before. However, I do have experience with bad links neighborhood and know how painful it can get when low quality sites start to link.
Don't ignore these links as they will cause harm to the website later on.
I would recommend that you get rid of these links, either these webmasters remove the links or your disavow them.
-
I have lots of images on my websites that are popular in Google image search. These images are often grabbed by "image directory" sites. The goal of many of these image directory sites is to display your image, or simply link to it, and hope that it gets picked up by image search, which will then result in their site getting attribution for the image and traffic referrals from image search.
We don't allow other sites to use our images, have them marked clearly with copyright, and have cautions about unauthorized use on our own website. So, if our image on their website appears in Google image search, we submit a DMCA complaint to google and a copyright violation complaint to adsense. This usually gets the image kicked out of image search and the adsense ads turned off on the offending page.
We submit DMCAs weekly or even daily if there are a lot of active infringers. Caution.... don't submit DMCAs or complain to adsense unless you are certain that they are not making a fair use of your image.
-
Hotlinking can't be stopped with .htaccess. Because users will see "hotling warning" but bots will still see link.
Since i have exactly same issue with mine images - i disavow them w/o any doubt. This is low quality directory with all images based on some keywords like "aztec". They scrape SERP for images, get top 100 and make "website". No, no please, no.
That's why disavow them ASAP.
-
Thanks for your response, Malika.
After some more research, it turns out that all these image websites are hotlinking our images. I'm not entirely sure what the point of them doing that is. It looks like most of these sites don't have a contact form even. I'm curious if you have any of these image websites hotlinking to your website?
I found a few threads in the google forums with other people experiencing these issues. Although no one has really talked much about disavowing other than trying to stop them from hotlinking from htaccess.
Not entirely sure if that is the route to go, just disavow, or ignore.
-
I don't think there is any value in these websites so it would be a good idea to get rid of them to keep your backlink profile clean.
If the images on your website were not intended to be shared then you can get in touch with these websites and request them to remove the link. I usually take these steps in the whole of getting rid of links from bad neighborhood -
- Request the webmaster to remove the links
- Follow up with them. Usually, the webmasters are busy and dont respond to your first email or forget about taking the links off etc.
- From my experience (only directory sites), these webmasters sometimes come back saying that they can do it but will charge some money - 5,10, 20 bucks. You dont have to pay at all. Simply send them an email that it's fine, you will go ahead and disavow their website if they dont remove it themselves. Some webmasters will remove the link and send you an email confirming that.
- For the webmasters that never got back to you, simply disavow their website.
What I would suggest you to do is that if there are a lot of such websites linking to your site then you should try to understand as to why they are linking to you. This could save you a lot of time in future. It could be just one website triggering the whole issue.
While trying to figure out the root cause, you can start with the process of contacting these webmasters.
If the contact details are not obvious on the website then you can check their whois information.
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
-
If I disavow bad links on "disavow link webmaster" will they still show up on my moz reports?
We recently found out we have a lot of bad links linking back to our website from spam sites, I disavowed them through the google disavow link webmaster. On my moz report it still shows the links, is that normal?
Link Building | | Ryan.Cruz0 -
Post index of quality back links; How long should you leave it to see if it's had any impact?
The question is pretty much in the title. We had a link from a Charity site (high PA/ DA) and from Metro online recently. Indexed about 3 weeks ago and 5 days ago respectively. No movement to speak off. (Previously we've seen significant boosts from far lesser links). Should I assume they have had no effect? Or is too early to tell I know it takes up to 2 months for some of our new pages to rank, same with passing authority from links? (Note: I appreciate the competition will play a significant part in this, but my question is specifically about how long one should leave to know one way or another. )
Link Building | | isaac6630 -
Link building
hello, my website is www.anavasis.gr and it is in Greek. Which is the best way to build backlinks? Hire a freelancer and let him making links to any site? What should i ask from a freelancer when building links for me? what should i give him like (keywords) ?. what is important to take take of? When you go to freelancer.com there are people offering backlinks for less than 100$ is that a good method? Will this help my seo? Is it a matter that my site is in Greek? thanks
Link Building | | anavasis0 -
Directory Submission
Is it worth of submitting our company website in directories mentioned on http://www.directorycritic.com/free-directory-list.html?sort=pr&pg=
Link Building | | Obbserv0 -
Any benefits to having Wikipedia links now they are 'no-followed' (apart from traffic and natural link prof.)
I see that Wikipedia outbound links are all no-followed, is there any benefit (aside from the traffic) for having links here now ? For example is their co-citation and co-occurance benefits. I know there is without the links since from seeing previous Moz content about this saying Google getting good at connecting brand/s and topic mentions on a page (without any links) so appreciate Wikipedia is still good for that sort of thing. And a no-followed link is obviously good for the potential traffic. But is there any additional SEO benefit to having a no followed link on a wikipedia entry/stub too ? (aside from its contribution to your no-followed links which in turn contribute to a natural looking link profile) Cheers Dan
Link Building | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Beaten to death but still have to ask, low comp area spammy directory links
I have a client that wants to rank for low comp local keywords (i.e. service + suburban area). Would several well written blog posts on relevant blogs be more effective than 100's of low level spammy directory links? I just want to give him an initial base of a few links, aside from submitting to the local search engines such as those in whitespark citation finder..... please keep in mind this would be a low competition area where on-page would probably rank in the middle of the 2nd page.
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
Link DIrectories - Is it a Good Idea with recent Panda Updates
Yo! I have been doing a tonn of research on a few of my top competitors and have noticed that a decent percentage of their links are from link directories. Most of these directories seem organized and the links on the pages are relevant to the selected category. These pages offer both free link submission and a paid feature link submission. My question is that is it a good idea to submit my site to these directories with the recent Panda update(s). I have read a bit about it, but still do not fully grasp the overall picture of it. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Link Building | | techbattery0 -
Are 36 links from one site to nested pages better than one link to the root domain?
I have a Driving School website www.1stclassdriving.co.uk. The site is structured geographically with 36 area pages, one
Link Building | | Brian_Worger
page per area post code and one page per Driving Instructor. I am trying to develop links and have found a site (da91 pa
63) where I can create area links to each of my area pages if I
wish. Is it best to just create one link to the root page or
should I create 36 individual links to each area page? - which is most valuable?0