Link Audit

[AL123al]

Reviewing a list of links from webmaster console for a client and there are links to their website which render a page but there' s no mention of the clients website on that page. Why does this happen? Why is Google thinking that there is a link to the clients website yet on the page there is no mention of that clients website. There's no comments etc. I don't understand this and if anyone can shed a light??

[Andy-Halliday]

yeah i was going to suggest searching the code of the page for a link - just because you cant see it, it doesnt mean its not there. I have links from full stops before etc.

[sq1SEO]

Console tends to show historial data, so those odd sites might not exist anymore. Another thing to do is to see if the actual URL is placed in the HTML, and just hidden by CSS of some kind, whether intentional or not. Focus time and effort reclaiming the real links and doing white-hat work, Penguin runs in real time now.

[Hurf]

Hear hear!

"hand-to-hand spam fighting" made me smile

Thanks, EGOL.

[EGOL]

I have never disavoed a link.   Not one.

Yes, lots of these spammy websites link to my websites, but I think that Google is smart enough to know that they are not meaningful sites.   I simply don't think that it is a good use of my time to query who is linking to me, go out and sniff those pages, decide if they are worthy, and spend time on disavow.

I think that it is more important to get my next page up and keep focused on advancing my business.  I don't think that Google expects me to engage in hand-to-hand spam fighting - especially against automated content built by spammers.

[Hurf]

Disavowing should not be the go-to option. It's really only something you'd consider as a last resort (and in the case of high volumes of spammy links). Before you consider disavowing anything, you'd be wise to read this:

"[Google Disavow] is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results. We recommend that you disavow backlinks only if you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you. In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool."

Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

[AL123al]

Ah ok. If it were a really spammy website, would you still recommend disavow even though you can't see a link?

[EGOL]

There are a lot of dynamic websites out there that shuffle content several times per month, week, day or hour.  Your client's link might have been indexed but is really only there 5% of the time.