Site being targeted by hardcore porn links
-
We noticed recently a huge amount of referral traffic coming to a client's site from various hard cord porn sites. One of the sites has become the 4th largest referrer and there are maybe 20 other sites sending traffic.
I did a Whois look up on some of the sites and they're all registered to various people & companies, most of them are pretty shady looking.
I don't know if the sites have been hacked or are deliberately sending traffic to my client's site, but it's obviously a concern. The client's site was compromised a few months ago and had a bunch of spam links inserted into the homepage code.
Has anyone else seen this before? Any ideas why someone would do this, what the risks are and how we fix it?
All help & suggestions greatly appreciated, many thanks in advance.
MB.
-
"in a case like this is it sensible to preemptively remove the links with the disavow tool?"
Once again, the Disavow tool was offered as a last resort by Google. Many webmasters seem frustrated the tool is not working as they expected, and the issue is typically they ignored Google's instructions for the tool's usage.
Prior to using the Disavow tool, you need to make an exhaustive effort to remove the links. Send a polite letter to the WHOIS address for the domain explaining the problem and identifying specific links from that domain which are pointing to your site. If there is no response within 3 days, send the same letter to an email address found on the site itself. If you still do not receive a response, check for a Contact Form on the site.
Try to learn what is going on with the site. Ask site owners how these links were created. It surely can be the result of negative SEO, but in the overwhelming majority of cases I have worked with, it is either the client or an agent acting on behalf of the client. Try digging a little deeper.
-
Hi again Ryan/Gordon,
Sorry to bring this one up again, but we could use some more input if possible. It turns out the number of referring URLs is way higher than we originally thought. I've also done some digging in OSE and have found a huge number of links from dubious sources. It's going to take some time to refine the list but we're probably looking in the thousands.
There's no doubt that this is malicious as we have never done anything to build links like these.
We've not yet noticed any penalty or received any warnings but in a case like this is it sensible to preemptively remove the links with the disavow tool?
One other thought: it seems suspicious that this has happened around the same time that the site itself was hacked with similar links inserted into the homepage.
My best guess is that the site hasn't been specifically targeted but has been caught up in some kind of automated spam attack. I've looked at some of the other offending sites and all the links are in odd places - hidden in the code or in strange anchor text. Is it possible that a robot has crawled all these sites and inserted spam links to create some kind of massive "link wheel"?
In this case what's the best preemptive solution before we get slapped with a penalty?
Thanks again...
-
There are not any general endorsements I can share. Your chosen expert may vary depending on your hosting environment, site software and budget.
-
I appreciate your time & help Ryan. I will pass all those suggestions on.
If they choose to bring in a security expert in to take a look, do you have any recommendations?
-
"As for the client's site hacking, as far as I'm aware their webmaster & in-house team dealt with that when it happened."
The webmaster and inhouse team likely had a gap which was exploited. It may be best to bring in an outside security consultant to review the matter.
"if our messages go unacknowledged, what else can we do about it?"
In my experience, 25 - 60% of removal requests are honored, depending on the site. If you are working with numerous site owners, either some of them will respond or you are likely doing something wrong. Ways to contact a webmaster:
-
use the WHOIS information to send an email
-
use information from the site. Before you say they don't have anywhere, check thoroughly.
-
use the site's Contact Us form
-
call the site with the number on the site or their WHOIS phone number
-
mail the site
-
check for social pages such as facebook and contact them via that method
You shared there are around 20 sites linking to your client's site. Some of them should respond.
-
-
That's good. Sorry, but I had missed the part where you said your clients site was compromised previously....
-
Thanks Gordon,
The links are no-follow so for the time being I'm not too worried about link spam penalties. We'll try to contact the site owners first and will then disavow the links if nothing else works...
Cheers, Matt
-
Thanks for your detailed reply Ralph As for the client's site hacking, as far as I'm aware their webmaster & in-house team dealt with that when it happened. I will pass your notes on to the team and check they are 100% confident that the security lapses are fixed. We are in the process of identifying & contacting the webmasters of the referring sites to requests the links be remove. However, if our messages go unacknowledged, what else can we do about it? The links are mostly no-follow which is a minor blessing and we haven't seen any link manipulation warnings in GWT yet. Still confused on their motives/reasons though.
-
"The client's site was compromised a few months ago and had a bunch of spam links inserted into the homepage code."
Has the issue been fully resolved? What steps have you taken to ensure the site's code is clean and remains clean? Some examples:
- placing the code on a test server and having an expert examine the code
- crawling the site and examining all links
- upon completion of the code analysis, implement a system which detects any coding changes and notifies you of the change
- ensure you are using professional development services with professionally developed extensions
- check your hosting. At a minimum, VPS hosting should be used. Do you have a firewall in place? What type of precautions does the host take (i.e. are you with a major host such as Rackspace, HostDime, etc? Or a host no one has heard of?)
- Use a service such as Symantec or McAfee SSL which offers daily site malware scanning
Every time I have worked with a compromised site, there have been major gaps or a complete lack of site security.
With respect to the links, the Disavow Tool can be used as a means of last resort. Google is very clear the tool should not be used until all other methods have been exhausted.
Have you tried contacting any of the webmasters to inquire about the links? That would be a start. You stated they are from independently owned sites. If that is true, then some of those webmasters will likely be cooperative and help you understand why they are linking to you.
We are happy to help Matthew. There is a lot more detailed information required which is missing from your question. There are dozens of possible causes and solutions.
-
Hi Matthew,
Sorry to hear this, and it's not good news. As to how/why it's happened, I can only guess one of two resaons. Either someone who knows nothing about SEO has decided s/he would "help" the whole SEO process and buy some links in. Or, and possibly more likely it may be a competitor who is doing a negative SEO campaign with the desire to lower your organic rankings, ensuring you will be penalised by Google.
You can now use the Google Webmaster tools and use the disavow tool to tell Google to ignore those links.
Hope that helps and all the best.
Gordon
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
-
Pharma Hack/Grey hat SEO. Cannot get site to rank, tons of incoming bad links
I have been working on a website trying to get it to show up in the SERPs again. It is being indexed which is great, it has some errors that I'm fixing now. But for the most part it should be ranking. It don't show any penalties going on, but when I did a backlink search we keep getting the cialis, viagra etc inbound links. First thought was Pharma Hack. But it's not a WP site and I recently rebuilt it. So whatever bad code could have been there it's not anymore. It doesn't show up in google either for the search site:www.mysite.com viagra cialis etc... So I'm wondering if anyone has any insight in a direction to point me? I don't understand what would be causing this to still not rank. Only thing it ranks for is it's name. Any suggestions would be very appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WeBuyCars.com0 -
Google webmasters tools, Majestic and Ahref in a simple case study (Bad links and Good links)
Hey guys, This case study started from here. A simple summary, I discover that I got +1000 backlinks from Blogspot though Google webmasters tools after making a connection with owners of these blogs which points to my new blog. Before starting I proudly invite Thomas Zickell and Gary Lee in this discussion. I wish you accept my invitation. Let's go to the main point, I've used Google webmaster tools so I will start with. Then Ahref which used by **Thomas **and then Majestic which used by Gary. Take a look at "001" screenshot, you will see that Google webmaster tools discovered 1291 links points to my site. Take another look at "002" screenshot, you will find that there are 22 domains points to my site. Most of them are good links since they are coming from websites such as Google.com, Wikipedia.org, Reddit, Shoutmeload, WordPress.org, ...etc. Beside +1000 backlinks came from Blogspot.com (blogs). Also, there's some bad links such as this one came from tacasino.com Necessary to say that I've got some competitors and they nicely asked me to stop the competition for some keywords and I've ignored their request. So, I'm not surprised to see these bad links. At "002" screenshot, we can see that Google didn't discover the bad links as they discovered the good links. And they discovered a lot of backlinks which not discovered by any other tools. **Let's move to Ahref, ** I will use screenshots provided by Thomas. At "003" screenshot, you can see Ahref report that say 457 links from 10 domains. By the way, social engagements data are wrong. I got more than zero engagements .. really. At "004" screenshot, you can see domains points to my site, links with anchor text. Take a look at the second link you will find that it's a spammy link coming from PR2 home page since it's is over optimized. the third link is also a spammy link since it coming from a not-relevant website. Beside other bad links need to be removed. So, Ahref didn't discover all of my good links. Instead of that it discovered few good links and a lot of bad links. In a case like this a question come needs to be answered since there are some people trying so hard to hurt my site, Do I have to remove all this bad links? Or, just links discovered by Google. Or, Google understand the case? **Let's move to majestic, ** Gray Lee provided data from majestic which say "10 Unique Referring Domains, with 363 links, 2 domains make up a majority." Since Gray didn't take any screenshots I will provide mine. At "005" screenshot, you can see some of the bad links discovered by Majestic. Not all of them discovered by Ahref or Google. In the other hand, Majestic didn't discover all of my Good links. Also, there's a miss understand I would like to explain here. When I published the Discussion about +1000 link. Some people may think that I trying to cheat you by providing fake info and this totally wrong. I said before and I'm saying that again you are so elite and I respect you. Also, I'm preparing for an advanced case study about this thing. If any expert would like to join me this will be great. Thank you for reading and please feel free to share you thoughts, knowledge and experience in this Discussion. EE5bFNc jYg21cf Xyfgp28.png iR4UOwi.png D1pGAFO
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eslam-yosef1 -
Pleasing the Google Gods & Not DeIndexing my site.
Hey Mozzers, So plenty of you who follow these threads have come across my posts and have read bits and pieces of the strange dark dark gray hat webspace that I have found myself in. So I'm currently doing some research and I wanted all of your opinion too. Will Google always notify you before they stop indexing your website? Will Google always allow you back if you do get pulled? Does Google give a grace period where they say "fix in 30 days?"? What is every bodies experience with all of this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Is this a 'real site' or a spam site for backlinks
I have been asked what type of site this is? What kind of page is this? [http://www.gotocostarica.com/](http://www.gotocostarica.com/) In my opinion it is site put up to create back links and should be avoided (especially in the light of the new Penguin and Panda updates coming). But I don't want to give wrong advice. What are your opinions?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Llanero0 -
Link directories question
Looking over a clients site and they have a bunch of link directory links that seem very skeptical to me, but the mozrank and authority seem to be ok on the home page. One directory is addlinkzfree and they have the same template and layout as a few other directories this client has. Link page has no juice whatsover, but home page has PA 54, MR 5.04 and root domain is DA 45. At first glance this would appear to be respectable numbers right? But the title of the directory and multitude of links lead me to think its nothing but a link farm. Should I advise the client to run and try to remove links from these type sites even though home page has decent scores? Im of the mindset that anything diredctory with links, free, partners etc in title need be avoided. Would appreciate any backup on this or am I just being paranoid?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anthonytjm0 -
Best way to build links?
i want to build high piority links and some high pr one's. what tool should i use? i was thinking of using scrapbox. any insights? i already have 2 high ones from youtube and google +1
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Radomski0 -
Are unusual chinese links likely to be black hat?
Hello, I noticed that this onepage website: http://www.clearpixel.net/ ranks at #11 for web design London so I did some research using SEO Moz Pro. Turns out that alll their links are from Chinese directory style sites. Does this demonstrate black hat SEO? If not, how do I go about getting links on Chinese sites with .gov urls. Many thanks, Martin Hofschroer
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MartinHof0 -
Partners and Customers logo listing and links
We have just created a program where we list the customers that use our software and a link to their websites on a new "Customers" page. We expect to have upwards of 100 logos with links back to their sites. I want to be sure this isn't bordering on gray or black hat link building. I think it is okay since they are actual users of our software. But there is still that slight doubt. Along these same lines, would you recommend adding a nofollow or noindex tag? Thanks for your help.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PerriCline0