Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Link Building
    4. NoFollow & Directory Scraper Backlinks

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    NoFollow & Directory Scraper Backlinks

    Link Building
    3
    3
    807
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • National-Homebuyers
      National-Homebuyers last edited by

      I was wondering how important it was to remove/disavow:

      1. NoFollow backlinks - many ("buy viagra" etc).
      2. Directory backlinks - many questionable/generic directories.

      Obviously the focus is the equity passing links but both of the above constitute a significant proportion of backlinks to the site - I've seen that "scrapers" are seen as natural and obviously NoFollow do not pass link juice - but does the sheer number have a bearing and therefore make them equally important to address?

      Thanks in advance for your responses.

      Regards

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • MarieHaynes
        MarieHaynes last edited by

        If you've got viagra spam pointing at your site you likely won't be able to remove them.  So should you disavow?  Disavowing a nofollowed link won't accomplish anything as disavowing is simply asking Google not to count the link and a nofollow link is already not being counted.  However, when you have loads of nofollowed links from spam attacks this is one situation where I often do go ahead and disavow these.  The reason for this is that one tactic that spammers can use is to point a bunch of nofollowed links at a site and then one day turn them all to followed.  If you've got them disavowed then you've got that covered.

        Also, if you have viagra links pointing to your site, make sure you don't have a hack within your site.  Try doing a google search for site:yourdomain.com viagra and see what comes up.

        For directories, I don't worry about things like dmoz scrapers and 100searchengines and stuff like that, unless somehow you managed to sneak a keyword anchored link into dmoz.  I wrote a thorough article on my thought process for auditing directory links here:

        http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2360254/is-that-directory-link-unnatural

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Ray-pp
          Ray-pp last edited by

          Regardless of the nofollow attribute, having spammy links in your link portfolio can hurt your SEO and cause a penalty. If you've identified links that are clearly on spammy site, proactively dissavow those links. Don't think that just because they have a nofollow attribute that your site is safe from penalty, because they are not.

          Edited for directories - it all goes back to the quality of the link and website linking. If the directory is legitimate and useful to users, then consider it a good link. If the directory is a hodgepodge of links that was only generated to be a link farm, then get rid of it before it does you harm, because it isn't doing you any good.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • 1 / 1
          • First post
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • laurentjb

            Backlinks from local businesses

            backlinks backlink profile blog post backlinks

            Hello, I need to make sure I understand this correctly. Will it help my SEO if I: find local businesses with a good DA & low spam score select businesses that are somehow related to mine (Insurance Agency) offer to guest post and include a backlink on their blog ( ask them if they'd like to reciprocate) For example, businesses such as
            Roofing companies
            Contractors
            moving companies
            etc Please let me know if there's anything I'm missing? Many thanks

            Link Building | | laurentjb
            0
          • BeriCollection

            Looking strategy for Backlinks

            shopify ecommerce url

            Hi, I'm a new bee here, Just wondering if we have some good but easy strategies to get a higher rank in PA and DA?
            My Store URL is [https://bericollection.com].
            We are selling Shoes, Watches and smart gadgets.
            We do shipping worldwide but need help from the community.

            Link Building | | BeriCollection
            0
          • wikiBudgets

            Does iframe itself count as a backlink?

            Our situation is similar to YouTube. We have an original content on every subpage that is genuinely useful when embedded as a widget on 3r party websites. That is why we offer an embeddable widget that shows slightly simplified version of the content - exactly like a YouTube video embedded on your blog. The embed code is simply an iframe sourcing from our subpage: <iframe src="wikibudgets.org/subpage"></p> </blockquote> <p>1/ Does the iframe itself pass any link value at all to the subpage?</p> <p>2/ If yes, what would be the equivalent of anchor text in iframe?</p> <p>3/ If not, will any link in the subpage pass link value from the 3rd party website to my domain/subpage?</p> <p>4/ If not, will I be punished/rewarded if I ask users to put a visible, unobfuscated link to the subpage below the iframe?</p> <blockquote style="background: #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace;"> <p><iframe src="wikibudgets.org/subpage" /><a href="wikibudgets.org/subpage">rich anchor text</a></p> </blockquote></iframe>

            Link Building | | wikiBudgets
            0
          • johnohara

            Spammy no follow backlinks - what should I do?

            There is a individual/company that is creating lots of spam sites in my niche. It doesn't seem that they are trying to rank for any keywords, so I'm a little confused as to their purpose, but here's what they're doing. They scrape the top 10 Google results for each keyword and create a page - so if the niche is "widgets", they scrape the top 10 ranked sites for 'widgets', 'blue widgets', 'red widgets', and so on. A 'results' page is created for each keyword, which is linked from a home page. The results page always contains 10 websites - text is the site metadescription or similar. Each website gets a nofollow link back with the page title used as the anchor text. The host sites all have the keyword in the domain name - e.g www.widgetsxyz.com. The sites are thrown together but interestingly have a very crappy but individual logo (like 90's clipart). The host sites all have high DA/PA due to some very extensive link spam pointing to the sites, with very targeted keywords. There is seemingly no purpose to these sites that I can see - no other 'followed' links on the page or site. Whoever is doing this is churning out tens, if not hundreds of these sites. Any ideas what might be going on here, and whether I should be disavowing these sites (even though no follow). The fear is that they could switch the links to do follow, and get all the major players penalised in one fell swoop. ???

            Link Building | | johnohara
            0
          • danieldunn10

            Backlinks and PDFs

            Hi, we are trying to improve on the number of links to our website. A supplier has added a PDF file which is case study to their website. In the PDF it has a link to our website, will this count as a link or not? Thanks

            Link Building | | danieldunn10
            0
          • Berner

            Do citations count as backlinks?

            Hello, So I may have a simple question- do citations such as yp and manta for an example count as backlinks? So if they do, would this be a natural link so good for seo? or a citation where it may be a backlink, but not very helpful for seo backlink profile? Thank you to all

            Link Building | | Berner
            0
          • bloggingyourpassion

            Adding backlinks in old articles?

            I am trying to get a few more links to get a few of my pages to rank and I am thinking about adding some more backlinks on my own site on some of the old blog articles as well as some of my other related blogs. My question is - is it still beneficial to link from these articles that are say 1 year old or more, or would it be far more valuable to write new articles on the blog containing those same links?

            Link Building | | bloggingyourpassion
            0
          • vijayvasu

            Web directories

            is it any point anymore to build links from web directories. Does google consider web directories anymore? Thank you awesome Mozzers! Vijay

            Link Building | | vijayvasu
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.