Why have I lost 1/3 of my backlinks (about 5,000) in 3 months?
-
In August, my client's site (I work at a marketing agency) had about 15,000 backlinks. Now they suddenly have about 10,000 backlinks. And their Domain Authority has dropped from 48 to 40!
Can someone please help me understand what could've happened?
At first I assumed this had something to do with the latest Penguin update, since I knew my client's site had some extremely spammy backlinks they hadn't cleaned up yet. (The site was hacked at some point and hidden pages were created as part of some kind of link-building scheme, and there were lots of links from sketchy sites to those pages. The hidden pages have been taken down and the URLs now redirect to my client's home page.) But that would only explain a sudden drop in Domain Authority, right? How could Penguin suddenly cause my client to lose 5,000 backlinks? And if it's not Penguin, what could it be?
Thanks in advance for any insight that anyone can share!
-
It's entirely possible that indexation issues are contributing to what you're seeing, Matt. I'd also suggest reading through this Q&A thread by Rand:
-
Mello Matt,
If it was my site I would seriously consider getting rid of any redirects from old dodgy pages, you could force Google to consider for the content still exists. If it goes to a 404 Google can then see clearly it no longer exists.
But would be interesting on what others have to say on that.I would source my back links mainly from Google search console.
Hope that helps.
-
Hey Matt,
Our site saw a massive up tick in links and then an even larger drop in links from one index to the next. Read this post below from Moz about their last index and about their not-so-great indexing over the last year. That might give you the answer you are looking for.
I can't remember everything in the article, so rather than try to explain it myself, I'll let them do it for me. Hope that helps.
-
Thanks for the response! And thanks for the advice – I'll definitely look into all those steps.
The redirects from the hacked pages are occurring automatically somehow. I guess that must've been set up by the agency that redesigned the client's website last year. They must've specified 301s for certain key pages and had all other old URLs redirect to the home page.
To answer your question, I'm using Moz for backlink analysis. Could their update be the reason I'm seeing such a drop?
BTW – Search Console shows no notifications that would relate to this issue, and no manual penalties...
-
Sorry just a question, where are you getting your back links list from? It's not unknown for tools to be inaccurate.
Another point I forgot to mention, Moz did update their index in the past few days, lots of people have seen a DA drop.
-
Firstly, sounds like you do have a penalty of some sort.
Secondly, I would not have redirected the hacked pages back to the site anywhere, you could give yourself a penalty that way. You could be passing bad authority or worse from anywhere else on the web, completely out of your control.
Thirdly, don't discount the potential of a website problem. Broken script, user damage, another hack etc
1. Do a thorough link cleanup.
2. Consider taking down any pages that are not relevant or earning any value.
3. Check search console for any notifications or manual penalties.
4. Check the website for performance and functionality.
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
-
Backlinks and SPAM
I was doing some back link review of competitors and I have noticed that many of our competition have 300+ do follow back links from Justia.com and an additional 300+ do follow links from law.cornell.edu (they share the same database). The links on Justia are from different pages and they are all going to the root of our competitors site. So the questions are as follows; 1: For the purpose of SEO is this considered SPAM 2: If not SPAM, then does it have a positive effect on the competitions website and should I attempt to emulate for my client. Thanks in advance. -Jeff
Link Building | | FriedmanSimon10000 -
Backlinks from ads on parked domains? Is this possible?
Hello Moz Friends, So as I was researching some competitive backlinks and I noticed a lot of backlinks that a clients competitor has are on parked domains and they appear to be google ads from some point. You know the pages that this page no longer exists, or hey do you want to buy this domain? and it has like 6 google ads on it? Yep those pages. My clients industry is construction and their competitor has links from zombie websites, foreign, websites and more. But the links are no longer on the page. Like when it was crawled, their ad was showing. Does this make any sense and is it usually temporary? Thank you for your thoughts friends!
Link Building | | asbchris0 -
Ways to remove spammy backlinks
Hello everyone, I got hit with an algorithm penalty and need to start removing old backlinks ASAP. Does anyone have any good resources on how best to ask webmasters for removal? Are there any other ways to remove bad back links besides the disavow tool? (An SEO consultant I talked to said that they had a proprietary software that can remove them - is that possible?) Thanks all,
Link Building | | CleanEdisonInc1 -
Lost inbound link from Huffington Post???
My website was featured on HuffPost's "7 Sites You Should Be Wasting Your Time On" in September of 2011 and somewhere along the way it no longer gets recognized as a linking domain? The site/page itself ('7 Sites' from Sept 2011) still exists through direct linking, and my site's link is still on there. I am looking at it right now (still knew the URL because I put it as a link in the 'About' section of my site). Any theories as to how/why this happened and if it is due to something on my end? Any way to get it back?
Link Building | | Pace0 -
Please let me know if I have bad backlinks...
I'm not sure of all the parameters in determining a quality backlink or not. The following is a link to my backlinks, can you please let me know what backlinks need to go now for SEO purples? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmifXCdkpTl5dEgyT1U3d2FHYUx6MUJxT0I3WVBDc0E Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | AutoGlassRescue0 -
Backlinks not showing
I have a website that is almost 2 months old and during this period I have built 477 links to my website.. however when I do a backlink check on Google.. link:mydomain.com, it says that there are no matches. How is it possible that none of my back links are indexed by Google?
Link Building | | b3pot6_gmail.com0 -
Youtube Backlink
We've had our Youtube Channel fairly optimized for several months now. Part of that effort includes the link back to our site which is allowed on Youtube. When doing link research I see Youtube links being given credit to competitors but haven't seen Youtube show up in backlinks reports for our site yet. Is there any way to speed this up? Our Youtube page with the link has been indexed and a cached version of the page is in Google's SERPs. If there are any tricks to getting this going that anyone is aware of I'd like to hear it. *The link on Youtube returns a 200 and is followable. I'm using the SEOMOZ tool and Open Site Explorer to do backlinking research.
Link Building | | dgmiles0 -
Are backlinks to a domain that redirects useless?
I am working on trying to get backlinks. We are currently redirecting a few Domains to our current domain name. One of the Domains that is redirecting is the main Domain, we will be advertising in the near future. Can I send backlinks to the redirected URL or does it only carry link juice if it is to the main Domain?
Link Building | | hfranz0