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
-
Sitemap - What are the recommendations on the number of links
Hi, I have a sitemap(s) which is very large(.i.e. 60000) links, is it recommended to have so many links and how come when I do a site search(site:mydomain) the number of links are less than on my site map?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FreddyKgapza0 -
If Fetch As Google can render website, it should be appear on SERP ?
Hello everyone and thank you in advance for helping me. I have a Reactjs application which has been made by Create-React-App that is zero configuration. Also I connect it using Axios to the API using Codeigniter(PHP). Before using Reactjs, this website was at the top Google's SERPs for specific keywords. After Using Reactjs and some changes in URLs with no redirection in htaccess or something else, I lost my search engine visibility! I guess it should be caused by Google penalties! I tried using "react-snap", "react-snapshot" and so forth for prerendering but there are so many problem with them. Also I tried using Prerender.io and unfortunately my host provider didn't help me to config the shared host! Finally I found a great article that my website eventually display in Rendering box of Fetch As Google. But still in Fetching box, the dynamic content didn't display. But I can see my entire website in both "This is how Googlebot saw the page" and "This is how a visitor to your website would have seen the page" for all pages without any problem. If Fetch As Google can render the entire of the website, is it possible to index my pages after a while and it would be appear on Google's SERP? mokaab_serp.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hamoz10 -
Link Research Tools - Detox Links
Hi, I was doing a little research on my link profile and came across a tool called "LinkRessearchTools.com". I bought a subscription and tried them out. Doing the report they advised a low risk but identified 78 Very High Risk to Deadly (are they venomous?) links, around 5% of total and advised removing them. They also advised of many suspicious and low risk links but these seem to be because they have no knowledge of them so default to a negative it seems. So before I do anything rash and start removing my Deadly links, I was wondering if anyone had a). used them and recommend them b). recommend detoxing removing the deadly links c). would there be any cases in which so called Deadly links being removed cause more problems than solve. Such as maintaining a normal looking profile as everyone would be likely to have bad links etc... (although my thinking may be out on that one...). What do you think? Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NaescentAdam0 -
Google + under Google business domain email account
Hello there, I have a quick and straight question and I am hoping to find answer here. What do we do with a G+ profile that was set up through a business domain's email account that is used by more than one person? We want to use the company name, but we can't as it is considered personal email account although it is under business domain verified by Google. Is there a way that we ask Google to change it and allow us to use the name of the company or should we just deactivate it? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | montauto0 -
404 in google webmaster tool
I have redesigned my website with new web address over 6 months ago and in the google webmaster tools it still shows my old urls with a reponse code 404 and still crawls those pages. How do I make sure they don't appear anymore in the webmaster tool and don't get crawled anymore ? or should I do a re-direct ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Should I use both Google and Bing's Webmaster Tools at the same time?
Hi All, Up till now I've been registered only to Google WMT. Do you recommend using at the same time Bing's WMT? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
400 errors and URL parameters in Google Webmaster Tools
On our website we do a lot of dynamic resizing of images by using a script which automatically re-sizes an image dependant on paramaters in the URL like: www.mysite.com/images/1234.jpg?width=100&height=200&cut=false In webmaster tools I have noticed there are a lot of 400 errors on these image Also when I click the URL's listed as causing the errors the URL's are URL Encoded and go to pages like this (this give a bad request): www.mysite.com/images/1234.jpg?%3Fwidth%3D100%26height%3D200%26cut%3Dfalse What are your thoughts on what I should do to stop this? I notice in my webmaster tools "URL Parameters" there are parameters for:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
height
width
cut which must be from the Image URLs. These are currently set to "Let Google Decide", but should I change them manually to "Doesn't effect page content"? Thanks in advance0 -
Link anchor text: only useful for pages linked to directly or distributed across site?
As a SEO I understand that link anchor text for the focus keyword on the page linked to is very important, but I have a question which I can not find the answer to in any books or blogs, namely: does inbound anchor text 'carry over' to other pages in your site, like linkjuice? For instance, if I have a homepage focusing on keyword X and a subpage (with internal links to it) focusing on keyword Y. Does is then help to link to the homepage with keyword Y anchor texts? Will this keyword thematically 'flow through' the internal link structure and help the subpage's ranking? In a broader sense: will a diverse link anchor text profile to your homepage help all other pages in your domain rank thematically? Or is link anchor text just useful for the direct page that is linked to? All views and experiences are welcome! Kind regards, Joost van Vught
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoostvanVught0