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.
Should i disavow yellowpages.com. Webmater tools shows 656 links coming from it.
-
We do not have any manual penalty warnings but I am still concerned that Google will see this as unnatural and be penalizing us to a lesser degree.
-
My client had 17,500 links pointing to his site from Yellowpages.com and it caused a algorithm penalty to there local search results. Here is a sample of the links. Now notice that each link contains a different city. My client city is Tacoma WA. We are positive this destroyed there NAP because they went from first place in the Google 3 Pac to not being the Google 3 pack at all, but for the same keyword they are number 3 in organics. When you go to Bing they still maintain there local search rankings.
-
Apparently Google admitted that the Yellow Pages link was given as an example link in error:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-natural-link-mistake-17326.html
Still, it's probably true that if you managed to get a keyword anchored link into Yellow pages, and it was a followed link it could be considered unnatural.
-
The disavow tool is meant to be used to ask Google not to count links that you made with the sole intention of manipulating Google's search results. A Yellow page link is almost always a nofollowed link, and as such does not need to be disavowed. But, even if it was a followed link, it would still be a good link.
Don't worry about the fact that there are a large number of links. The way that Webmaster Tools presents these links makes them look bad, but in reality, Google knows that this is just one site linking to you and not hundreds of individual links.
I've seen a lot of webmasters do damage to their site by disavowing too many good citations. Be careful!
-
You will have to keep an eye on it. The more searches are done on the YP sites, the more these links build and over time they do work against you. I agree with everyone else that they shouldn't but the reality is, we've seen them in penalty notices. Google thinks 4000 links coming from yp.com.au, yp.net.au, yellowpages.com.au and yellowpages.net.au are spammy, nofollow or not.
Jason Mun had the same issue: http://jasonmun.com/links-yellowpages-unnatural-according-google/
It's interesting to note that he's also referring to the AU version of Yellow Pages even though we've seen it with the .coms as well.
Anyhoo - I would leave it for now. Just keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't become a bigger problem.
Edit to add: it does depend on your ad itself - don't use any links within the page. And be careful with how many you let this build to.
-
Even the volume is not abnormal - suppose you have a Italian restaurant & take-away in Manhattan, then you would probably appear on pages on restaurants, italian restaurants, mediterranean restaurants, catering, take-aways in Manhatten, New York,... - all these lists are indexed in Google and all these pages would have links to your site. Depending on your business & region - you could appear in an awful lot of combinations of (sub)categories & geographic locations.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Hi Francisco
I agree with Dirk here - this isn't an unnatural link, but I would check and make sure that you are appearing in relevant and proper categories, as well as service areas.
If you find you are appearing in irrelevant categories or locations, I would contact them to make sure you can fix this, if anything from a user experience standpoint.
Hope this helps!
-
Normally i wouldn't be concerned but the shear volume of links is what makes it appear odd.
Thanks for your thoughts.
-
Normally the links from yellowpages are of type "nofollow" so they do not need to be disavowed.
Apart from this fact, given the fact that most businesses are listed in the yellow pages, these links don't seem to be very unnatural to me.
rgds,
Dirk
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
-
Should I disavow these links?
Hi all, I have a ski website that I am currently performing a toxic backlink audit on. I have noted that a lot of the links being flagged as toxic/spammy by the tool I am using seem to be the same/similar sites with different URLs. The sites are vaguely related to skiing (relating to helicopter travel options for travelling to ski resorts) but it is concerning me that there are so many of them and they are being flagged as so toxic.
Link Building | | SolveWebMedia
Do you think it is worth disavowing these? Or contacting the owner to ask them to remove the link? I have included an example of some of the links below. https://www.cannes-helicopters.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://nice-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5 Slightly different site but same favicon icon:
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://www.whitetracks-holidays.com/Helicopter_Transfers_Villars_Switzerland.htm Thanks in advance for any advice / help!0 -
Do you disavow all the links on the WhatsApp Gold site?
Do you disavow all the links on the WhatsApp Gold site? https://www.watsabgold.com/
Link Building | | JackBarrie0 -
If I disavow bad links on "disavow link webmaster" will they still show up on my moz reports?
We recently found out we have a lot of bad links linking back to our website from spam sites, I disavowed them through the google disavow link webmaster. On my moz report it still shows the links, is that normal?
Link Building | | Ryan.Cruz0 -
Backlinks vs External Links vs Referral Links vs Outbound links
Hello all, I was just wondering if you could explain the difference between all the links above? I'm confused as they all seem to be the same or similar and I would just like to clearly know what distinguishes them from eachother. Thanks for your help, Jayne
Link Building | | NCOREGSEO0 -
Submit new list of links to be disavowed
I had a question and I am hoping that some one on this community will be able to help clarify. We went through a link removal and disavow process last year. If we see more unnatural links showing up in our link profile and we want to disavow those links, what should be included in the new list of links that need to be disavowed: Only new links or domains Old list that was disavowed + new list that needs to be disavowed Thank you in advance for your help.
Link Building | | revenuexl0 -
Does link from a blog in Blogger.com helps in SEO ?
Do you guys think that adding good quality blogs to blogger.com and then getting a link from those blogs will help ?
Link Building | | Personnel_Concept0 -
Is there a tool to keep track of internal links?
I am looking for a tool that will help me keep track of internal links. We are working on a website that has roughly 500 pages of unique content. We are at a point where we plan to go through all of those pages and look for natural, internal link building opportunities (as well as pages that may have too many "over optimized" links). It would be really helpful to know the following for each page: 1. URL (we can extract this)
Link Building | | BlueTraffic
2. Meta Title (we can extract this)
3. Target Keywords (we can manually enter these) 4. Internal Links To Other Pages - A field (or fields) where we could manually enter the URL of each page that this page links to (including the anchor text used) Once all of this data is entered, it would be great if this tool could also count how many incoming links each page has (from other pages on the site) or somehow show which pages link to it. This would help to identify pages that have zero internal links. Do you know if a tool like this already exists, or even a spreadsheet with some functionality like this already built in? Thanks,
JC0 -
Why doesn't the Better Business Bureau show up in my link analysis
I've been working on SEO for one of the companies I've designed a website for and I'm confused by the company's lack of Better Business Bureau backlinks. The Company in question does have a BBB account and that account links back to the company's website. However, when I check in the link analysis for the site, the BBB link doesn't appear. My competitors, on the other hand, do have BBB links in their analyses. So, I'm wondering if I somehow don't have the right type of BBB account. The BBB seems to be a pretty good place to have a link from, and the company pays $300.00 per year for the membership, so I'd like to get the most out of it. Here's a link to the BBB page for the company http://www.bbb.org/utah/business-reviews/plumbers/platinum-plumbing-services-in-west-jordan-ut-22199778#bbblogo And here's the company's website www.slcplumbing.com Now, the company site I've just listed is 301 redirected to www.platinumplumbinginc.com, but even when www.slcplumbing.com was the main site, the BBB backlink didn't show up. Thank you Blake
Link Building | | BlakeMcGillis0