Large Number of Links appearing in Google Webmaster Tools
-
Hello,
In the last week we have noticed an extremely large number of backlink links appearing in Google Webmaster Tools.
One of the sites which links to us now have over 101,000 backlinks pointing to us, when in reality it should only have 300-600. We have check the websites have not been hacked, with hidden links etc, but we can not find any.
Has anyone else experienced problems with Google webmaster tools lately, displaying way too many links?
Or could this be a negative SEO attack, which is yet to emerge.
Thanks
Rob
-
Thanks for the update. Glad you got it figured out.
-
Hello,
Thank you for answering my question guys. I think it is a problem with a wordpress calender plugin, which is generating an large number of pages in the future, as follows,
calender/2014-12-28/
calender/2099-12-26/
Rob
-
It sounds to me like the site where the links are coming from could be at fault.
Do you know if they have made any changes recently? It is very easy for bad coding to produce thousands of pages that the site owners aren't even aware of (speaking from past experiences here). When you look at some of the pages where the links are coming from, do they look like nonsense pages?
It's a little difficult to tell exactly what is at fault without actually looking in more detail, but as this is just one site, it shouldn't cause you any issues - if it were an attack of some kind, then you would be seeing links from different domains, rather than just the one.
-Andy
-
Hi Rob,
You can check in Web master tolls the exact source (as exact urls) for the source of the links. if all are coming from the same domain - there is a problem there. If you think those links are bad for you - just disavow the entire domain, one line - and problem solved.
If you need links from this domain, but "not that many" you should take it up with them to solve it.
However - for this "boiler plate" type of links - I wouldn’t worry that much. If there are some issues with the links, google will just ignore and won't count them.
Cheers.
-
It could be a parameter problem.
For example. You might have a page with this URL... example.com/hiking/boots.html
But, google has found bad links to it like this.... (the crap after the ? is a parameter)
example.com/hiking/boots.html?sa=Xeiy7z8U5v5CsGgyQThyICgAg&
If you have a parameter problem you can...
use rel=canonical
Declare them in Webmaster Tools >> Crawl >> URL parameters
Strip them off with htaccess and a 301 redirect
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
-
Should We Remove Content Through Google Webmaster Tools?
We recently collapsed an existing site in order to relaunch it as a much smaller, much higher quality site. In doing so, we're facing some indexation issues whereas a large number of our old URLs (301'd where appropriate) still show up for a site:domain search. Some relevant notes: We transitioned the site from SiteCore to Wordpress to allow for greater flexibility The Wordpress CMS went live on 11/22 (same legacy content, but in the new CMS) The new content (and all required 301s) went live on 12/2 The site's total number of URLS is currently at 173 (confirmed by ScreamingFrog) As of posting this question, a site:domain search shows 6,110 results While it's a very large manual effort, is there any reason to believe that submitting removal requests through Google Webmaster Tools would be helpful? We simply want all indexation of old pages and content to disappear - and for Google to treat the site as a new site on the same old domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d50-Media0 -
Google displaying a content box above the listing link for top ranking listing in SERPs
Hi, In the attached Google SERP example the first listing below the paid search ads has a large box with a snippet of content from the relevant page then followed by the standard link. Does anyone know how you get Google to display a box like this in their SERPs? I checked the code on the page and there doesn't appear to be anything special about it such as any schema markup. It uses standard list code. Does this only appear for particular types of content or sites, such as medical content in this case? Is the content more likely to appear for lists? Does it only appear for high authority sites that Google has selected? We have a similar medical information based site and it would be great to try to get Google to display a similar box of content for some of our pages. Thanks. Damien ZmPJVSl.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | james.harris0 -
Will Google View Using Google Translate As Duplicate?
If I have a page in English, which exist on 100 other websites, we have a case where my website has duplicate content. What if I use Google Translate to translate the page from English to Japanese, as the only website doing this translation will my page get credit for producing original content? Or, will Google view my page as duplicate content, because Google can tell it is translated from an original English page, which runs on 100+ different websites, since Google Translate is Google's own software?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Why is my servers ip address showing up in Webmaster Tools?
In links to my site in Google Webmaster Tools I am showing over 28,000 links from an ip address. The ip address is the address that my server is hosted on. For example it shows 200.100.100.100/help, almost like there are two copies of my site, one under the domain name and one under the ip address. Is this bad? Or is it just showing up there and Google knows that it is the same since the ip and domain are from the same server?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Charity links
Quick question - Are links on charity websites with a small mention about what your company does good links to go for?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson1 -
Link Building
We have just recently launched a new website in Australia and as l am new to the SEO community, l was looking for a little advice on link building. Where is best to start? There are not many authorative websites for our industry. Are there specific websites that are good to link to? Are there any good tools to assist with this? Any help would be great. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
Does having multiple links to the same page influence the Link juice this page is able to pass
Say you have a page and it has 4 outgoing links to the same internal page. In the original Pagerank algo if these links were links to an page outside your own domain, this would mean that the linkjuice this page is able to pass would be devided by 4. The thing is i'm not sure if this is also the case when the outgoing link, is linking to a page on your own domain. I would say that outgoing links (whatever the destination) will use some of your link juice, so it would be better to have 1 outgoing link instead of 4 to the same destination, the the destination will profit more form that link. What are you're thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TjeerdvZ0 -
Getting a site to rank in both google.com and google.co.uk
I have a client who runs a yacht delivery company. He gets business from the US and the UK but due to the nature of his business, he isn't really based anywhere except in the middle of the ocean somewhere! His site is hosted in the US, and it's a .com. I haven't set any geographical targeting in webmaster tools either. We're starting to get some rankings in google US, but very little in google UK. It's a small site anyway, and he'd prefer not to have too much content on the site saying he's UK based as he's not really based anywhere. Any ideas on how best to approach this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PerchDigital0