Black linking exploitation
-
Hi all
After watching our ranking for some primary keywords drop on Google from page 1 to 20 and then totally off the charts in relatively short period I've recently discovered through moz tools that our website along with other competitor sites are victims to black linking (may have the terminology wrong).
Two primary words are anchor linked to our domain (www.solargain.com.au) being sex & b$tch through over 4000 compromised sites - mostly Wordpress - many which are high profile sites.
Searching through the source code through half a dozen compromised sites I noticed that competitors are also linked using other derogatory terms, but the patterns indicate batch or clustered processing. The hacker has left some evidence as to whom they are representing as I can see some credible discussion forums which contain negative feedback on one particular supplier also among the links.
Although this is pretty good evidence to why our ranking has dropped there are some interesting questions:
A) is there any way to rectify the 4000 or so black links, mass removal or other. (Doesn't sound feasible)
B) some competitors who dominate organic ranking through better optimization don't seem to be affected or apparently affected as much as our site at least. Which questions how much we are affected as a direct result from this hack.
C) is there action or support for industrial espionage?
D) can you request from google to ignore the inbound links and would they not have a duty of care to do so?I'm fairly new to this ugly side of the Internet and would like to know how to approach recovery and moving forward. Thoughts ideas very welcome.
Thanks in advance.
-
Hello again,
From what I know, If there is no manual action, then you don't have to worry about reconsideration request. You have to clean up the backlink profile by the next Penguin update.
Try to contact each webmaster first. If they don't answer in a decent time span then use the disavow tool. If there are too many links, then disavow the their whole domain. This should simplify your work. Don't worry about nofollow links, they hurt only in some very extreme cases -> watch this video from Matt Cutts about nofollowed links.
Good luck!
-
Thank you Remus for your repsonse.
There are no manual actions in webmaster tools.
Open Site Explorer picks up the bad links, and google only lists a small amount. There are approx 4000, so its not realistic to approach every webmaster - saying this we have approached some.
Ive seen that Penguin changes released at the end of May 2013 have targetted "unnatural linking" and this incident happened over a few weeks around April/May 2013. So it is likely we were affected.
Like you said if they were followed at some stage and as a result we were indeed affected, then surely we have a case for Google to fairly reposition us?
There is no doubting this attack was deliberate as I've found source code on some of the affected sites which lists not only our website but other compititors in the industry. In fact every major player except for one, which is highly suspicious in itself. Also among the affected links are links to forums and discussion boards to bad reviews of the company which does not have unnatural links.
Its a tough one I know, my first priority is to restore our SEO ranking with Google. Ive researched Googles recommended actions to request reconsideration, but there are no manual actions so Im not sure how to submit that request.
Its seems extremely unfair that someone elses deliberate actions to effectively sabotage your ranking gets great positioning where you get penalised.
-
Hi again Michael,
Yes, strange things with those nofollows. However. In the current setup, if they are nofollowed, they should not have a dirrect effect on your website's ranking, so this is a good thing. But it they were followed and nofollowed at a point in time, you should know that it takes a while until your website recovers the ranking (if only them were the problem).
To identify better what happend you can do the following:
-
Check Webmaster Tools for messages - if you got anything related to manual actions on your website, then you should read more about "reconsideration reqests".
-
If there are no messages in Webmaster Tools section, then it was probably an algorithmic update that affected your website. If it's related to inbound links than there is a big change it's a "Penguin" update. You can search more about Penguin update on Moz or Search Engine Journal. SEJ has a pretty good article about how to identify which update affected your site.
Then use Google Analytics and Mozcast and see exactly what algorithmic change happened when your website lost it's rankings.
- It could be the case that this was some kind of attack against your website. Then removing those links should be enough to get your website's ranking back. If this happens keep an eye regularly on the link profile. If something bad pops up, write fast to those people and use disavow tool if they don't answer fast.
Hopes this helps, send more questions if you have!
-
-
Thanks for your tips Remus - yes the links are inbound links.
There are no follows on the offending links according to open site explorer, which is possibly why Google doesnt list them in Webmaster tools.
I'm yet to work out if Google has been affected by the hack - even if it doesnt list them, I'd think at some point however before the no follows were applied there would have been some impact.
How and who applies these no follows? If it wasnt the webmasters of the compromised site you would expect that these links would have been removed from the web pages by them?
-
Hello,
Yes, it looks like you might be the victim of some kind of attack.
I just have one question, are these links:
-
linking to your website
-
posted on your website.
If they are just links to your website, then there is an answer to all your following questions:
The Google Disavow Links Tool - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main
You can read more about it here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en
First contact them to remove the links, if it does not work, use this tool.
If the links are posted on your website just clean everything up, then remove backdors and stuff
-
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
-
Linking Anchor Text is simply "." what is the purpose of this?
I have several backlinks with high spam scores. The anchor text as listed is either just a period, or it says there is no anchor text. These links don't generate traffic and there is no way for me to contact the website owner. Is this a case for the Search Console Disavow Tool?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Harley.Helmer0 -
Paid Link/Doorway Disavow - disavowing the links between 2 sites in the same company.
Hello, Three of our client's sites are having difficulty because of past doorway/paid link activity, which we're doing the final cleanup on with a disavow. There are links between the sites. Should we disavow all the links between the sites? Thank you.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Advice on links after Penguin hit
Firstly we have no warnings or messages in WMT. We have racked up thousands of anchor text urls. Our fault, we didnt nofollow and also some of our many cms sites replicated the links sitewide to the tune of 20,000 links. I`m in the process of removing the code which causes this problem in most of the culprit sites but how long will it take roughly for a crawl to recalculate the links? In my WMT it still shows the links increasing but I think this is retrospective data. However, after this crawl we should see a more relevant link count. We also provide some web software which has been used by many sites. Google may consider our followed anchor text violating spam rules. So I ask, if we were to change the link text to our url only and add nofollow, will this improve the spam issue? We could have as many as 4,000 links per website, as it is a calendar function and list all dates into the future.......and we would like to retain a link to our website of course for marketing purposes. What we dont want is sitewide link spam again. Some of our other links are low quality, some are okay. However, we have lost rankings, probably due to low quality links and overuse of anchor text.. Is this the case the Google has just devalued the links algorythmically or is there an actual penalty to make the rankings drop? As we have no warnings in WMT, I feel there isnt the need to remove the lower quality links and in most cases we havent control over the link placements. We should just rectify that we have a better future linking profile? If we have to remove spam links, then that can only be a good reason to cause negative seo?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | xtopher660 -
Will my association's network of sites get penalized for link farming?
Before beginning I found these similar topics here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-domains-on-same-ip-address-same-niche-but-different-locations http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-domains-on-1-ip-address We manage over two dozen dental sites that are individually owned through out the US. All these dentists are in a dental association which we also run and are featured on (http://www.acedentalresource.com/). Part of the dental associations core is sharing information to make them better dentists and to help their patients which in addition to their education, is why they are considered to be some of the best dentists in the world. As such, we build links from what we consider to be valuable content between the sites. Some sites are on different IPs and C-Blocks, some are not. Given the fact that each site is only promoting the dentist at that brick and mortar location but also has "follow" links to other dentists' content in the network we fear that we are in the grey area of link building practices. Questions are: Is there an effective way to utilize the power of the network if quality content is being shared? What risks are we facing given our network? Should each site be on a different IP? Would having some of our sites on different servers make our backlinks more valuable than having all of our sites under the same server? If it is decided that having unique IPs is best practice, would it be obvious that we made the switch? Keep in mind that ALL sites are involved in the association, so naturally they would be linking to each other, and the main resource website mentioned above. Thanks for your input!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DigitalElevator0 -
Link-Building - Directories
Hello, The SEO world is a bit confuse in the last months with the Google Antartic updates. Its normal since Google is trying to kill SEO to have more Adwords publicity results. My most recent doubt is about directories. I heard Matt Cutts from Google in a recent Google Hangout saying that registering a website in directorys was ok, but not the ideal method to become relevant in the internet world. However it seems that this procedure is not against the Google policies. Now, here in the forums, I already saw someone writing about adding your site to directories and how dangerous that situacion is. So, whats your opinion about adding your site to free and pay directories as first link-building strategy? If directories are out of the question, why SEOmoz as a huge list of paid directorys? Is SEOmoz outdate?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PedroM1 -
How do I place the product link on my blog?
I have a shop and also a blog where I explain better the products on the site, such as: how to use, tips, recipes and more. How do I place the product link on my blog? Should I put a link with nofollow? Should not I put link? To put the link anchor text or just put the page URL? Don’t I need to worry about it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | soulmktpro0 -
Is widget linkbaiting a bad idea now that webmasters are getting warnings of unnatural links?
I was reading this article about how many websites are being deindexed because of an unnatural linking profile and it got me thinking about some widgets that I have created. In the example given, a site was totally deindexed and the author believes the reason was because of multiple footer links from themes that they created. I have one site that has a very popular widget that I offer to others to embed into their site. The embed code contains a line that says, "Tool provided by Site Name". Now, it just so happens that my site name contains my main keyword. So, if I have hundreds of websites using this tool and linking back to me using the same anchor text, could Google see this as unnatural and possibly deindex me? I have a few thoughts on what I should do but would love to hear your thoughts: 1. I could use a php script to provide one of several different anchor text options when giving my embed code. 2. I could change the embed code so that the anchor text is simply my domain name, ie www.mywebsitename.com rather than "my website name". Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarieHaynes1 -
Is OSE data reliable and removal of malicious inbound links?
I ran a report on my site (www.rentscouter.com) using OSE and it is reporting some very strange inbound links like: anchor text = Megan http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/mmnr/smr/Paul_Henderson_Interview_Full_Clip_REVISED.f4v?m=pc&a=bookmarkList.view&target_user_id=1&search_type=tag&keyword=蒲田・大森・羽田周辺 http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/mmnr/smr/Paul_Henderson_Interview_Full_Clip_REVISED.f4v?m=pc&a=bookmarkList.view&target_user_id=1&search_type=tag&keyword=熱闘!甲子園%2F高校野球ゲーム http://www.hawkeyesports.com/photos/schools/stan/sport/m-baskbl/04-05action/Thumbs.db?pages10=10&size=9?pk=1 anchor text = Alexa's Mom http://www.lg.com/it/products/documents/LE8800.epk?action=view&pageId=214&start=69164 http://www.michigan.gov/documents/techtalk/SEM-0601_191695_7.dot?blogname=mahdid&sub=5&tpl=0 anchor text = http://fansofdavid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/4v5sh3k1.htm?seccion=busqarag_s&busq=Huesos&?seccion=basearag_c&id=3&?seccion=busqarag_s&busq=Huesos&?seccion=basearag_c&id=3&_pagi_pg=596 However, none of these seem to show up in my Google Webmaster account. And generally when I go to some of these links I can't find any reference to my site - is the OSE data bad or are these really shady links someone is building to knock down my site? What is showing up in GWT are a bunch of growing crappy links that redirect to some advertising site - does anyone know of a way to get these removed by Google as I doubt I'm going have any luck trying to contact the owner(s) of these sites: | http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/252213-best_penis_enlargement_methods.htm |
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BoulderJoe
| http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/252426-plumbers_and_gasfitters_needed_urgently.htm |
| http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/252451-the_importance_of_plumbers_and_more.htm |
| http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/253039-football_betting_systems_can_they_be_profitable.htm |
| http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/253131-my_teen_wants_to_know_how_sex_was_and_is_for_me_what_do_i_say.htm |
| http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/254364-why_marriage_counseling_is_good_for_you.htm |
| http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/254449-herpes_dating_service_what_is_it.htm | Yes, I know Google will theoretically and maybe eventually "ignore" such links, but that will be on Google time 4 weeks or 4 years - who knows. Plus, with a younger site with a thinner link profile - anything like the links above can't be helping me...... I'm trying to figure out why my site keeps bouncing between #5 and #255 for specific keywords and determining if I have a google penalty which is being discussed in this thread: http://www.seomoz.org/q/help-with-diagnosing-google-penalty0