50,000 backlinks in webmaster tools from one site???
-
Hi All,
I'm new to evaluating backlinks, but I just saw I got over 50,000 links from a backlink that was added on ONE page at this site here: http://www.netnewspublisherDOTcom.
I presume this is not a good thing, and if I contact them to remove the one link on the one page, it won't solve the other 49,999 links that Google is seeing pointing to us, so what do I do??.
Should I contact them and ask to remove it and see if they don't and then disavow? Or would you just tell Google to disavow the whole site?
Thanks!
-
Hi there, you've received some great responses. What is the current status of this issue?
-
PS - I just realized that OSE says the 50,000 netnewspublisher .com links are NOFOLLOW - If that's the case, should I not bother with these (can no follow links cause you a problem)?
Thanks -
Hi Sha,
Yes - there is one post comment with our URL in it on one page from this site. The pages that are showing in OSE are not identical copies of each other, but unique URL pages with different content - but these pages do not have a link to my site that I can see.
As best I can tell, all the links coming from so many pages is because each page has a "recent comments" section on it. I'm "guessing" when the comment containing the backlink to my site was on each of these pages in the "comment section", it was discovered as a backlink when the page was crawled - could that happen?
I'd be happy to share a URL if I could do so privately with you?
And per what luwhosjack says, my home page that was linked to so I can't really change the URL.
And, I have seen significant drops in my traffic on some pages since May 22 when Penguin hit, but I have no manual penalties. Upon investigating my backlink profile, I have many malicious sites linked to me from Poland (Google says not to open their site) -I'm hoping I can just disavow these since Google agrees they are not good sites.
Plus, I'm seeing at least one competitor and MANY other sites linking to me, but when I go to their page, my url is in their source code, but the webpage is different than all the text that's in the source code (like the source code is a bunch of text on the subject - but the visible webpage is salescopy or optin forms). I don't know what to make of this??? I would presume this is something Google would not approve of and I shouldn't be associated with it - do you agree?
Thank you
-
Hi luwhosjack,
That's about the best you can do if the issue is as I described above - if every 404 on the site generates a new version of that one page then it is generally happening because of poor backend configuration.
Where it gets really messy is in the case where new URLs are being generated by hacking. I've seen several instances where every attempt at injection by a hacker generates a new copy of the page and if the anchor text happens to be exact match, the result is a disaster for the linked site
Sha
-
I had this same issue and it really affected my stats. I tried to contact the website with no luck to get the links removed. Then, when i looked into it more they had linked to the same pages about 30,000 times so I deleted the pages that were linked that I could afford to and slightly altered the addresses that I needed to keep. It made a massive difference
-
Hi mim12,
Afraid I am a lot more risk averse than most when it comes to unnatural links (and I have seen similar situations that emanated from nasty goings on at a couple of sites), so I have a couple of questions to clarify:
First, my read of your description is that there is a single page on that site which contains a link to your site and since you are saying there are now 50,000 links that would mean that there are 50,000 different URLs all originating from that one site and pointing to your site?
So, are you saying that these 50,000 individual URLs are actually identical copies of that one page which contains the link? If so, can you test whether new copies of the page are being generated from 404's by typing a new non-existent path and hitting enter? For example, if the URL of the page in question is http://www.netnewspublisher .com/strangepage.php, what happens if you change the address to http://www.netnewspublisher .com/anotherstrangepage.php and try to access the page? Do you simply get a not found error, or does it generate a new copy of the page with the new URL?
Alternatively, can you give us the actual URL where the original link was placed so we can take a look at it?
Sha
-
Have you seen any signs of algorithmic penalties or SERP fluctuation? If not... forget it. Yes I would ask to have it removed if it's a garbage link from an irrelevant site. But I would avoid the disavow tool and use it as a last result. I don't trust that tool as much as others seem to... You can usually do well without it too. If you start getting manual penalty warnings and your SERPs are dropping without any response from the webmasters... then it might be time to break out the disavow.
Whatever you do, DOCUMENT it! All emails, contacts, discoveries.. keep these documented in a separate folder in case you ever have to submit a re-inclusion request to Google.
That's all I can really say.
-
Actually, with 50,000 OSE might not be the best choice. I would keep an eye on your Google Webmaster Tools # of inbound links and perhaps monitor via http://ahrefs.com. There may be some other suggestions from the good folks here that I haven't thought of. Good luck!
-
Hi Dana,
Thanks for your response. Well, it's not paid. I had 8000 backlinks in WMT before, now I have 58,000. This is the biggest spike I've had before for sure (that I'm aware of) - so it is a big jump for us.
This apparently has been going for for a few weeks to a month - the post that was added to their site has linked (perhaps a blogroll is the best term) through all of their pages, creating all these links.
Still think that's "ok"?
What would I look for in OSE to see if we are "dropping over time"? Not sure what you are referring to?
Thanks! -
I wouldn't panic about this. Getting a sudden spike from a post that gets carried on a news site isn't really that unusual. Did you pay for the backlink? If not, I wouldn't worry about it. If you did pay for it, and now you're feeling a little queezy, then yes, have them take it down if it makes you feel better. I would NOT use the disavow tool. The site is a PR4, you could do a lot worse than to get 50,000 links from a PR 4 site. I'd also take this in context with your overall link profile. If you only had 10 links and now you have 50,010...yes, this might be a problem, and I stress "might." If you have 100,000 and now have 150,000 it could still be a problem, but far less of one. Also, if you've had spikes in inbound links before, then no worries.
This can happen for a number of natural reasons. For example, we have an industry publication that occasionally posts a ton of info about our products. It can add 20-30K links in one month, and they might all be gone the next month.
Honestly, I'd sit tight for a couple of days and watch OSE and Fresh Web explorer to see if they are dropping off over time. My guess is they will and anything that you may have done while in "panic" mode may end up hurting rather than helping.
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
-
Merging 5 Sites
Hi there We have 5 separate sites which handle different regions/niches that we work in, and we are planning to merge into one so we have a logical path for 301 redirects. The sites have DA's as follows: Site 1 - DA 36
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ben10001
Site 2 - DA 31
Site 3 - DA 29
Site 4 - DA 27
Site 5 - DA 20 Does anyone have any experience with how the DA would flow through to the new site? Each site currently relates to a different niche that we work with, and we are planning to keep the content structured similarly, probably like this: https://newtoplevelsite/site1/products, https://newtoplevelsite/site2/products and so on. That makes 301 redirects easy and also gives us more control in managing users and different teams in Wordpress. We would link the different niches through the top menu and links within the pages. Is there a better solution? Would it make more sense to have https://newtoplevelsite/products/site1, https://newtoplevelsite/products/site2, and so on? Thanks for the ideas0 -
Page dropped after backlink
This is a bit of a odd one... I put two new pages on to my website. And built one backlink to each page (each from separate domains). The pages and backlinks have indexed quite quickly. The odd thing is that one of my pages has dropped significantly in ranking but the other has boosted significantly in ranking! The 1st page has come to page 1 of google, the other pages dropped to page 3 of google. Prior to building the links the ranks was stable. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Tools to scan entire site for duplicate content?
HI guys, Just wondering if anyone knows of any tools to scan a site for duplicate content (with other sites on the web). Looking to quickly identify product pages containing duplicate content/duplicate product descriptions for E-commerce based websites. I know copy scape can which can check up to 10,000 pages in a single operation with Batch Search. But just wondering if there is anything else on the market i should consider looking at? Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Is my site being penalized?
I've gone through all the points on https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015 but the site only ranks for its brand name after months. The website is not ranking in the top 100 for any main keywords (2,3,4 word phrases), only for a handful of very long phrases (4+). All of the content is unique, all pages are indexed, the website is fast and doesn't contain any crawl errors and there are a couple of links pointing to it. There is a sitewide follow link in the footer pointing to another domain, its parent company and vice-versa. This is not done for any SEO reasons but the companies are related and also the products are supplementary of each other. Could this be an issue? Or is my site being penalized by something else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robbern0 -
Webmaster tools 404
Hey, I'm getting a soft 404 error on a webpage that has content and is deferentially not a 404. We've redirect a load of urls to the web page. The url has parameters which was used before the redirect but are no longer used on by the new url, these parameters have been carried over in the redirect. Is this whats causing the soft 404 error or is there another problem that may need addressing? Also a canonical has been set on the webpage. Thanks, Luke.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey1 -
Micro Site Penalty?
I have been carrying out On-Page optimisation only for a client www.shade7.co.nz. After three months or so I have been getting some great results, improving to the top three positions for at least 30 of 45 keywords targeted. Couple of more tweaks and I would be a very happy camper. Disaster overnight! Rankings CRASH! Unbeknown to me the client a month or so back decided to link just about every product/link on a micro site he owns (www.shademakers.com/ ) plus one other site he owns. Explorer I think discovered over 350 back-links (follow) from these sites! As this is a site he owns and it is targeting the same keywords I presume this falls into the EVIL bucket of SEO. Two part question do you believe I am correct that this is the reason for this rankings crash and what would be the best way to resolve this! server-side 301 redirect for the micro site? Delete the micro site (drastic measure) Remove all the links other than maybe one in the contact page saying visit our other site shade7 other options? The client or I have not received any bad link Emails from Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Moving-Web-SEO-Auckland0 -
Site Structure Question
Hi All, Got a question about site structure, I currently have a website where everything is hosted on the root of the domain. See example below: site.com/men site.com/men-shorts site.com/men-shorts-[product name] I want to change the structure to site.com/men/shorts/[product-name] I have asked a couple of SEOs and some agree with me that the structure needs to be changed and some say that as long as I dictate the structure with internal links and breadcrumbs the URL structure doesn't matter... What do you guys think? Many thanks, Carlos
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
Critique My Site For SEO
Hi Everyone, I was wondering if someone might critique my site and let me know what you think. I've done pretty much everything I know to do proper seo for my site. I'd love to hear some critiques about what I am doing wrong. I'm not sure if my titles are okay, being that they are similar amongst pages. The other thing is that for all the javascript buttons on the top I have no followed them since they don't have any anchor text. The way google will crawl my page is through the links in the footer. I was thinking of moving them throughout the body of the page since I hear google isn't giving as much weight to footer links. I also wanted to hear what you think about putting a blog on my site and updating with fresh content as opposed to creating a separate blog and then linking back to my website with anchor text. Thanks for all the help. And glad to be a member Bill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wsh150