Hundreds of Thousand Spammy Backlinks Overnight
-
Hello,
I have a client who unfortunately got breached (not sure how) and as a result 6 HTML files promoting gucci bags and Louis Vuitton bags were put in the root.
I found the files within a week of them being put there but what I didn't realise (and only found yesterday when looking at the backlink profile) was that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of spammy domains pointing at these files.Some of the sites 404 but some are posts on other bloggers sites who auto accept comments and they total 10,000 links so impossible to remove.
Question is:
-
Will Google understand what has happened and ignore these links (especially because the pages don't exist on the server?)
-
Should I use the Disavow tool to block these 1000 odd domains (can it do any harm?) and more links are being found every day so do I just keep doing it?
-
Is there another way to explain to Google what has happened?
Your help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
James -
-
Wanted to add one more thing. If it's possible, you may want to use the url removal tool to remove these new nasty pages from the Google index.
-
If you remove these pages so that they serve a 404 or 410 error then it will essentially remove the links and Google will pay no attention to them. More info: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2296653/Removing-Unnatural-Links-by-Removing-Pages-on-Your-Website
You could definitely disavow these links and it would not harm your site to do so. Do it at the domain level, not the url. With that being said, if all of the links point at pages that are now removed then there's no need to do so.
Google is usually pretty good at understanding what is going on. This type of link really shouldn't cause you harm. With that being said, I would run the site through sucuri.net to look for malware as often hacked sites will be hosting malware. If Google determines that there is malware on the site then it will try not to send users your way and you'll get a malware warning in WMT.
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
-
301 Redirects Backlinks?
I am wondering how many people still getting results from 301 redirects from high authority expired domains..? I read few case studies on detailed dot com where the shared some people still making big bucks from this strategy which i think 10beast also implemented few years back.? Is it worth it to test out 301 redirects to money sites.? How many people on the moz community here have implemented this strategy in practical and can share some insights and pros and cons of doing 301 redirects? Many Thanks.
Technical SEO | | asifseo0980 -
Backlinks
Hi, Does anyone have any experience with acquiring backlinks and their impact on DA and ranks? I am not asking about how to get backlinks, but how soon in your experience you noticed any positive results? Please, can you be specific? I.e. "once I acquired 8 backlinks from websites with DA 70+, my DA changed from x to x and my average rank improved in 4 positions overall/per page". Or any other tangible results. Many thanks. Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
Backlinks from an Association Site
My company is joining an Industrial Association. Part of the membership is a link to our site from theirs. I've found that going to their site triggers a "threat alert" through our company malware detection system and shows a link that may be infected with malware. With all of that said I have (2) questions... Since this is a paid membership, will Google penalize us for having a link to our company from this association's website? Since a link on their site has potential malware issues, should we add our link to their site or could it be harmful to us? Any helpful advice is appreciated.
Technical SEO | | SteveZero121 -
Hundreds of 404 errors are showing up for pages that never existed
For our site, Google is suddenly reporting hundreds of 404 errors, but the pages they are reporting never existed. The links Google shows are clearly spam style, but the website hasn't been hacked. This happened a few weeks ago, and after a couple days they disappeared from WMT. What's the deal? Screen-Shot-2016-02-29-at-9.35.18-AM.png
Technical SEO | | MichaelGregory0 -
Backlinks from unindexed pages - disavow ?
Hi I was analyzing my sites's backlinks and see a lot of the domains are not indexed by google.
Technical SEO | | VaiSam
I assume google has unindexed them - may be these domains are penalized. Should I request removal of my site's link from these pages ? What is the recommended approach in such a case? Thank you for your inputs.0 -
My backlinks do not register on your software but are registered on my google webmaster tools
Why are my back links not being recognized by any software other than google webmaster?
Technical SEO | | SteveK640 -
Backlinks to unique login pages
Hi There, This has turned out to be slightly long winded! Congrats to anyone who manages to follow what I am on about and cheers to anyone that can help! The company I work for has several hundred backlinks from customer sites (authority sites) that link to their unique login pages (e.g. customer.oursitesname.com/unique-identifier). From these pages they can access our learning platform. For maximum SEO benefits we have been trying to think of a way to get these customers to link to our start page. This is what we have come up with. Customers would link to us using a URL with this format www.oursitesname.com/#customer-unique-identifier. (I have read somewhere that Google “ignores” everything after a #). This URL would then cause a Jscript pop-up or drop-down to open. The pop-up or drop-down would be hidden for the normal user and only be visible for users that visit over the unique URL. The pop-up or drop-down would be unique for each customer (mainly for branding purposes). The pop-up or drop-down would contain signup/login fields. So now to my question, will this get us in trouble with Google? Is there a better solution than this? Are we over thinking it and should we just do something like this: www.oursitesname.com/customer-login/unique -identifier and set www.oursitesname.com/customer-login/ as the canonical? Does the Google bot get suspicious of hundreds of canonical tags pointing back to the one URL? Thanks in advance! Henry
Technical SEO | | hnydnn0 -
Are there any tools to measure backlinks to email addresses?
Does anyone know of a tool that will allow you to track links to an email address hyperlink like mailto:user@domain.com
Technical SEO | | dsonenberg0