Weird backlinks
-
Using SiteExplorer we managed to find a large number of weird polish sites ranking to our site.
Actually most of them does not on purpose link to our site. They seem to be scraping content from wikipedia articles and our link happens to be in the article about Sweden.
A typical links looks like this
http://www.xn--wiey-katalog-mlc97b.kepno.pl/kalmarunionen.php?title=Sverige
Today we took a HUGE drop in rankings and I had some suggestions that these polish links might have something to do with it.
Any ideas how to solve this?
Anyone seen anything similar before?
Thanks in advance and have a great day
Fredrik
My site can be found at:
-
Yeah, this is a huge problem that Google needs to deal with. If it's a directory network, then can you find the owner of it and take action to get them to remove your link from there? Honestly, even if you have to pay them to do it, it will be worth it in the long run because you will be ranking again.
I wouldn't be surprised if these links, if they appeared all of a sudden, have tripped the Penguin algorithm filter.
Good luck.
-
I reported them as soon as I found it. We'll see what happens. Also begged, I mean requested the Google Gods to reevaluate the site based upon the proof I submitted. Still waiting...
-
Here's the link for Google to report WebSpam:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en
They will ask you the following:
- **Address of specific webpage that is misbehaving: (Required)**Example: http://example.org/veryspammywebpage.html
- Exact query that shows a problem (copy this from the Google search box): (Optional)Example: hotels in Paris
- Additional details: (Optional) (300 character maximum)Feel free to read our blog post about how to write actionable webspam report comments.
Here's the official Google how-to:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2010/11/how-to-help-google-identify-web-spam.html
-
Those are so named IDN domains, but more to worry about the usage and how to stop them,right?!
So actually**, they are the reason for the drop, as they are spam link farms!**
Not much chance to stop them doing it, but making sure Search Engines realize you are aware of it and doing something against it!
This discussions and general info might help you, as others were fighting with similar or same problems too:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/C-OoaJfb0Yg
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/algorithm-change-launched/
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/pissedconsumer-link-farm-dominating-google-serps
-
Yes it is still indexed as of right now. I have reported it to Google. They have just removed my content. Now they are using another persons article.
-
Hey Kathy,
Sorry I meant is the single site that you had 4000 backlinks from still indexed at all (if you're saying the owner had to take it down)...
Thanks
-
We are still indexed, just went from first page on all keywords to beyond 50
I'm going thru the site now to make extra sure that we meet all Google guidelines then I am going to submit for a reevaluation. The site was nicely SEO'd. I'm just going to make sure now that it was not too SEO'd.
-
It's unlikely to purely be a result of this one incident though. Are there any pages of this domain still indexed in the search engines? If not now, then if this was the cause, I would be expecting your rankings to be reinstated... Otherwise, there is likely issues elsewhere too.
-
One of my sites that was affected had over 4,000 back links from a single site. The person had taken an article that I had written and placed on Ezine and was dynamically creating content for his ADSENSE site using my one article. Generating 4,000 links. Needless the say the poor fool had no clue what he was doing. The site was a complete joke.
I notified the hosting company and they made him take it all down.
Now here we sit no where to be found in the search engines.
Makes me really second guess the whole article thing.
-
Almost any domain's link profile I look at contains a collection of backlinks such as these, I've noticed many in our site's link profile before - they come and go though and mostly these are just auto generated via various scrapers, bots and other automated systems to try and manipulate engines and/or mass produce content at other domains.
How many link's are we talking here, if they account for a good 25% - 30% of your overall link profile, then I would agree there is a chance that a drop in rankings could be related to these since the Penguin update. If its only a few links, then I wouldn't say these would be having much of an affect on your rankings.
The drop in rankings could be due to any number of reasons so it's not practical to start exploring these without first establishing exactly what has been done on your website in the past week (or even few days depending on how frequently your domain gets crawled) and diving into your web analytics to establish any unusual onsite behaviour or changes to metrics in the lead up to today.
Could well be the affects of an algorithm update. Could be something entirely different.
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
-
Strange backlinks
I'm a dentist and I keep getting my images turning up on pages where there are hundreds of images of dental procedures, linking out to dentists all over the world. It's not -ve SEO I don't think. There's just not enough of it to be that. The images are linking back to me with follow links (but worthless) and the pages are indexed with low to moderate 10-30 DA (that's old DA) and the new link explorer is showing them as worthless - so well done new link explorer! I'm not worried they are harming my site because I'm sure they're being ignored by google. But is there some evil black-hat scam going on that i'm not aware of? Should I disavow? I don't care that they're using our images. They are watermarked and they are linking back to us. I just don't understand the point of such a site either? Is it a precursor to something more malevolent or spammy? **So my question is - is this harmful or should I just let the crazy internet be crazy and not interfere? 🙂 ** I'm always wary of disavowing.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool0 -
Dodgy backlinks pointing to my website - someone trying to ruin my SEO rankings?
I just saw in 'Just discovered' section of MOZ that 2 new backlinks have appeared back to my website - www.isacleanse.com.au from spammy websites which look like they might be associated with inappropriate content. 1. http://laweba.net/opinion-y-tecnologia/css-naked-day/comment-page-53/ peepshow says: (peepshow links off to my site)07/17/2016 at 8:55 pm2. http://omfglol.org/archives/9/comment-page-196 voyeur says: (voyeur linking off to my site)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
July 17, 2016 at 7:58 pm Any ideas if this is someone trying to send me negative SEO and best way to deal with it?0 -
Spamming Backlinks - doesn't seem to be detrimental enough?
Hi, We have noticed sites such as http://www.rattanfurnitureoutlet.co.uk & http://www.supremerattanfurniture.co.uk/ have huge numbers of what appear to be spam like and invaluable backlinks yet they have both maintained a great ranking for their search terms despite this. We would like to know why, does the good outweigh the bad so to speak?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | birdmarketing0 -
Backlink, how to delete or find who is linking to me?
Hi there guys, Can someone tell me how I go about finding who is linking to my site or how to find backlinks to my site and if it is a spam site or a site I don't know or want linking to me, how to stop them from linking to me and also how to delete their link? Thanks appreciate the time Cheers
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
How to Get Backlinks to a Coupon Code Website
Hello Guys, I run a coupon code website, which by its very nature does not contain the most compelling of content. As you can probably understand, not many people are going to want to link to a page which lists a number of coupons relating to a specific online retailer. I am really struggling to come up with new and innovative ways of attracting links and wondered if anybody was in a similar position to me or could offer some advice. Would love to get some feedback. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Marc-FIMA1 -
Finding and Removing bad backlinks
Ok here goes. Over the past 2 years our traffic and rankings have slowly declined, most importantly, for keywords that we ranked #1 and #2 at for years. With the new Penguin updates this year, we never saw a huge drop but a constant slow loss. My boss has tasked me with cleaning up our bad links and reshaping our link profile so that it is cleaner and more natural. I currently have access to Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, SEOMoz, and Link Builder. 1)What is the best program or process for identifying bad backlinks? What exactly am I looking for? Too many links from one domain? Links from Low PR or low “Trust URL” sites? I have gotten conflicting information reading about all this on the net, with some saying that too many good links(high PR) can be unnatural without some lower level PR links, so I just want to make sure that I am not asking for links to be removed that we need to create or maintain our link profile. 2)What is the best program or process for viewing our link profile and what exactly am I looking for? What constitutes a healthy link profile after the new google algorithm updates? What is the best way to change it? 3)Where do I start with this task? Remove spammy links first or figure out or profile first and then go after bad links? 4)We have some backlinks that are to our old .aspx that we moved to our new platform 2 years ago, there are quite a few (1000+). Some of these pages were redirected and some the redirects were broken at some point. Is there any residual juice in these backlinks still? Should we fix the broken redirects, or does it do nothing? My boss says the redirects wont do anything now that google no longer indexes the old pages but other people have said differently. Whats the deal should we still fix the redirects even though the pages are no longer indexed? I really appreciate any advice as basically if we cant get our site and sales turned around, my job is at stake. Our site is www.k9electronics.com if you want to take a look. We just moved hosts so there are some redirect issues and other things going on we know about.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | k9byron0 -
Low Quality Highly Relevant backlinks, should we get them?
I see a lot of opportunity to get lower quality, but highly relevant backlinks, should we try to get these? I'll give you an example, lets say we have an asphalt paving company ( not a lot of authority blogs out there, that we can find yet) We found this one http://www.wolfpaving.com/blog/ - DA of 27 and PA 29 should we go after links like this. I would actually like to know about sites with less authority than this one, I would probably go for this one without question. So Should we go after worse DA and PA but still legitimate looking sites and highly relevant?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin0 -
Can you block backlinks from another domain
Wondering if this is somehow possible. A site got hacked and created a /data folder with hundreds of .php files that are web pages selling all sorts of stuff. We deleted the /data folder and blocked Google from indexing it. Just noticed in Webmaster Tools that the site has 35,000 backlinks from other sites that got hacked with the same way. Is there a way to block these sites? I am assuming there isn't, but wanted to see if anyone ran into the same problem. It is a wordpress site is that helps.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | phatride0