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.
Is this campaign of spammy links to non-existent pages damaging my site?
-
My site is built in Wordpress. Somebody has built spammy pharma links to hundreds of non-existent pages. I don't know whether this was inspired by malice or an attempt to inject spammy content.
Many of the non-existent pages have the suffix .pptx. These now all return 403s. Example: https://www.101holidays.co.uk/tazalis-10mg.pptx
A smaller number of spammy links point to regular non-existent URLs (not ending in .pptx). These are given 302s by Wordpress to my homepage. I've disavowed all domains linking to these URLs.
I have not had a manual action or seen a dramatic fall in Google rankings or traffic. The campaign of spammy links appears to be historical and not ongoing.
Questions:
1. Do you think these links could be damaging search performance? If so, what can be done? Disavowing each linking domain would be a huge task.
2. Is 403 the best response? Would 404 be better?
3. Any other thoughts or suggestions?
Thank you for taking the time to read and consider this question.
Mark
-
thanks, Alex. You make some good points.
-
1. I don't think it will, Google has got very good at ignoring these spammy sites. Creating large disavow lists isn't technically that hard, but I don't think I would spend the time doing it seeing as you haven't seen any impact.
2. I don't think either of the response codes you're returning are appropriate.
403 for the indicates that the client doesn't have permissions and therefore it could be inferred that the file does actually exist and therefore the link is valid, which is definitely not something you would want Google to think.
While you have disavowed the links you are 302'ing, I still don't think 302 is the right response. For a start, 302 has been superceded now anyway, but 302 indicated moved temporarily. That is certainly not the case. The page doesn't exist and never has. The only reason to 302 is if you are expecting traffic from these links, but I think that also sends a bad message to Google.
I would definitely suggest 404 for both cases.
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
-
Are All Paid Links and Submissions Bad?
My company was recently approached by a website dedicated to delivering information and insights about our industry. They asked us if we wanted to pay for a "company profile" where they would summarize our company, add a followed link to our site, and promote a giveaway for us. This website is very authoritative and definitely provides helpful use to its audience. How can this website get away with paid submissions like this? Doesn't that go against everything Google preaches? If I were to pay for a profile with them, would I request for a "nofollow" link back to my site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jampaper1 -
Internal Links to Ecommerce Category Pages
Hello, I read a while back, and I can't find it now, that you want to add internal links to your main category pages. Does that still apply? If so, for a small site (100 products) what is recommended? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Does Google crawl and index dynamic pages?
I've linked a category page(static) to my homepage and linked a product page (dynamic page) to the category page. I tried to crawl my website using my homepage URL with the help of Screamingfrog while using Google Bot 2.1 as the user agent. Based on the results, it can crawl the product page which is a dynamic. Here's a sample product page which is a dynamic page(we're using product IDs instead of keyword-rich URLs for consistency):http://domain.com/AB1234567 Here's a sample category page: http://domain.com/city/area Here's my full question, does the spider result (from Screamingfrog) means Google will properly crawl and index the property pages though they are dynamic?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow20130 -
Unique page URLs and SEO titles
www.heartwavemedia.com / Wordpress / All in One SEO pack I understand Google values unique titles and content but I'm unclear as to the difference between changing the page url slug and the seo title. For example: I have an about page with the url "www.heartwavemedia.com/about" and the SEO title San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | About I've noticed some of my competitors using url structures more like "www.competitor.com/san-francisco-video-production-about" Would it be wise to follow their lead? Will my landing page rank higher if each subsequent page uses similar keyword packed, long tail url? Or is that considered black hat? If advisable, would a url structure that includes "san-francisco-video-production-_____" be seen as being to similar even if it varies by one word at the end? Furthermore, will I be penalized for using similar SEO descriptions ie. "San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Portfolio" and San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Contact" or is the difference of one word "portfolio" and "contact" sufficient to read as unique? Finally...am I making any sense? Any and all thoughts appreciated...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | keeot0 -
Site dropped suddenly. Is it due to htaccess?
I had a new site that was ranking on the first page for 5 keywords. My site was hacked recently and I went through a lot of trouble to restore it. Last night, I discovered that my site was nowhere to be found but when i searched site: mysite.com, it was still ranking which means it was not penalized. I discovered the issue to be a .htaccess and it have been resolved. My question is now that the .htaccess issue is resolved , will my site be restored back to the first page? Is there additional things that i should do? I have notified google by submitting my site
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | semoney0 -
Does posting on Craigslist damage our SEO or reuptation?
We have a website that's a single person barbershop. She has been promoting on Craigslist, and that is outranking the website in the SERPs. However, the craigslist results showing up are actually expired and don't link to anything. They just seem to be cached by Craigslist. My question is, is Craigslist considered to generally not be a good avenue for directing inbound links for services on your site? Or is it a good strategy to use Craigslist to build link traffic for service businesses? I get mixed responses when I search for this. Thanks eYtdHtg.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | smallpotatoes0 -
Site being targeted by hardcore porn links
We noticed recently a huge amount of referral traffic coming to a client's site from various hard cord porn sites. One of the sites has become the 4th largest referrer and there are maybe 20 other sites sending traffic. I did a Whois look up on some of the sites and they're all registered to various people & companies, most of them are pretty shady looking. I don't know if the sites have been hacked or are deliberately sending traffic to my client's site, but it's obviously a concern. The client's site was compromised a few months ago and had a bunch of spam links inserted into the homepage code. Has anyone else seen this before? Any ideas why someone would do this, what the risks are and how we fix it? All help & suggestions greatly appreciated, many thanks in advance. MB.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MattBarker0 -
Can a Page Title be all UPPER CASE?
My clients wants to use UPPER CASE for all his page titles. Is this okay? Does Google react badly to this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | petewinter0