I just uncovered a massive 500+ domain PBN linking to competitors

[Leads.Bz]

As the title, some competitors I've been watching are using a PBN they (or their agency) have built.

I'm looking to get some discussion on how you approach situations like this - do you just report all of the domains to Google and pray they do something?

There are 4 sites I'm looking at, all competing in the same niche with very similar websites (different branding and content, but essentially the same pages). I thought all were related, but after Excel-ing all the domains to see which overlap I've found that there's several sets;

PBN 1 covers 117 domains that link to competitors A, B & C. Signaling to me that these are owned by the same person.

PBN 2 links together B & C with 30 domains,

PBN 3 is just C with 40 domains.

PBN 4 is just B with 105 domains.

PBN 5 is just A with 10 domains.

PBN 6 is D by itself with more than 340 domains. Signaling to me that this one probably isn't owned by the same person.

It looks like new domains are added to these PBNs every week and this has been going on for quite some time.

Now, I'm fully against use of PBNs that don't use authentic websites that provide value, and I can't find any of these sites that aren't just a basic WP template with a single-word text logo followed by spun content.

This is a goldmine, because according to Ahrefs these sites are pulling in well over 500,000 monthly visitors between them, and these links make up the majority of each site's link profile. If these networks were to crumble, that would open up a big opportunity for more authentic sites to rank well.

How would you recommend to tackle this? Do I find example URLs and write reports for each of the 500+ domains or are there better ways of working through this?

[MickEdwards]

Each domain in a PBN should leave no footprint and if you have found it then Google will find it/them.

For the 4 sites have you got any proof of relationship - contact details, whois, duplicate content, same plugins/layout, a very good reason to believe they are from the same source?

It would be very foolish of them to leave such a huge footprint as to link to all the sites.

Have you checked the PBN domains to see if they share the same C class? e.g. http://smallseotools.com/class-c-ip-checker/? or http://www.authoritydomains.com/bulk-ip-checker.php

If they were totally lazy then there is probably only a handful of hosting accounts.  If that was proven then I wouldn't have any difficulty talking to Google if the SERPs were being distorted by more than one site dominating but basically from the same source.  If it was a single site i'd tend to sit back and watch, while building a strong link profile.