Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does blocking domains help remove bad links?
-
I have affiliate websites that are harming for one of 2 reasons:
1. They are on adult websites (and I don't want to be in a bad neighborhood)
or
2. They are using a Frameset (so their content appears identical to mine and I am getting "credit" for all their junk links)
I cannot get these websites to remove our links so I have blocked their IPs on our production firewall.
Is this an effective method or should I do something else with these links?
-
You could try to block the URL in robots.txt like Sanket says below, but at the end of the day, the link's still pointing to your website and therefore Google will still see it. If I'm not mistaken, Bing has launched their disavow tool already (Ref: http://www.serperture.com/blog/link-building/disavow-link-tool-block-bad-incoming-links), so perhaps you should at least start there?
-
Hi,
You have blocked their IPs but it is not a perfect solution because blocking site in your servers can stop generating back links data. Google gets your links form that adult site. so try to contact the administrator of that site for removing your link. For that you can get contact details from Whois.com and send request mail that site for removing your link.
If you get unnatural link mail from Google about this site then you can put website's name in reconsideration request so that website is no longer in Google index, Google has removed that website from search and its also not showing in your GWT backlinks profile.
-
thanks Chris - was about to answer that as well.
So nothing really that can be done until the disavow tool is developed?
-
David, SaraSEO states, "I cannot get these websites to remove our links" above, so I would say that she has tried that to no avail, unfortunately.
-
As above, until Google release a disavow link tool, the only way to remove a link is to have it removed from the linking website. Have you tried contacting the sites directly?
-
Hi SaraSEO,
If I've understood correctly, you have backlinks to your website that you would like to have removed as they're harming your domain's authority. If that's the case, then the best thing you can do is Google about Google's disavow tool and list the domains as unwanted.
Unfortunately negative SEO is a topic that's been discussed in great detail and there are many opinions, but listing these bad domains as unwanted is a wise move. Blocking the IP addresses on your production firewall, isn't going to stop Google from seeing the association unfortunately.
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
-
Internal Linking - Post links vs Side Bar Links behaving differently
Hi, I have a question regarding the internal linking behavior. My website is www.hindimeaning.com which is approx 3 years old. I have approx 450 posts. Now i have a widget on right sidebar "Popular posts". A widget below my posts "Related Posts". And a simple html CSS menu above the posts (I removed menu around 6 month before so currently it will not show.) I crawled my site with moz crawler (same are the result from google crawler as well) and it shows menus links as internal links. While sidebar widget "Popular posts" and "Related Posts" are not showing as internal links. If we talk theoretically what i learn till now is "every link on a page behaves as internal link". Then why the widget links are not showing as internal links. Thanks, Mahesh Kumar
Link Building | | chaudhary04890 -
What is the best way to remove a link that redirects to a spammy site?
I've got a new client and I'm trying to clean up their backlinks. There are several links that all redirect to this spam site http://www.expert-lender.com. All of the websites appear to be real, i.e. http://www.sammorganhomes.com/ but the actual links i.e http://www.sammorganhomes.com/wp-fav/backup/supplement/semitruckleasing.html are in a sub-directory and redirect to the spam site. I don't know if these links were from the previous SEO company or if they paid someone to create these or if these sites have been hacked. Can anyone tell me what is going on here and what should I tell these site owners?
Link Building | | Total-Design-Shop0 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Are links with space considered to be the same as links with %20?
I wonder if Google would consider those three links to be the same? http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test+page.html
Link Building | | lucek0 -
How do I remove bad web directory listings?
I am starting SEO for an E commerce website. I guess like 1 year or two ago they had another SEO company working for them. After looking in Site explorer I realized that they have like 2000 links (almost all from website directories) that have the correct anchor text but are all in the wrong categories, and most from countries like china and india. Many of the Titles are even in Chinese. This company sells packaging supplies and they are in categories like real estate, animals, and so on. I am changing the domain name, so I guess any links to internal pages will be lost, however I have to forward the main domain to my new domain, so any links to the home page will still be there. Does anyone know how I can remove these links??
Link Building | | DTOSI0 -
Does linking to a subdomain give link juice to the main domain?
I have a few domains that I'm going to use for link building, will the link juice from the sub domains transfer to the main domain?
Link Building | | Vsky0 -
Can link juice be passed in an iframe from domain A to domain B
Need to give our web partners our booking form which must be loaded in an iframe calling back to our domain. Is it possible to pass any link juice from their domain loading our iframe back to us. Was thinking of a "Powered by" text link in the form footer, but I'm guessing the link needs to be outside the iframe. Would love to hear any thoughts or workarounds on this.
Link Building | | apolloseo1 -
Building Links to Exact Match Domains
What are the pros and cons having exact match domain and how can you create a brand name and build backlinks? Say we have a domain personalizedbirthdaygifts.com We are quite stuck with what anchor text we need to use and how do we vary it? I've heard that we have to stay away from using commercial keywords as anchor text heavily. We have to also use our brand name. And here we get stuck as we don't have a brand name. In this case Our brand name should be personalized birthday gifts but this is also commercial keyword. I have seen before similar websites droped from ranking because they have commercial keywords in their domain and most of their backlink anchor texts are commercial. If I had a website called twentyfive.com selling birthday gifts it would be a lot easier. But when you have a website personalizedbirthdaygifts.com and trying to rank for personalized birthday gifts and birthday gifts it's tough. OR isn't it? I hope I explained it well and didn't confuse anybody... Thanks
Link Building | | Jvalops0