Spider 404 errors linked to purchased domain
-
Hi,
My client purchased a domain which based on the seller "promising lots of traffic". Subsequent investigation showed it was a scam and that the seller had been creative in Photoshop with some GA reports.
Nevertheless, my client had redirected the acquired domain to their primary domain (via the domain registrar).
From the period on which the acquired domain was redirected to the point when we removed the redirect, the web log files had a high volume of spider/bot 404 errors relating to an online pharmaacy - viagra, pills etc.
The account does not seem to have been hacked. No additional files are present and the rest of the logs seem normal. As soon as the redirect was removed the spider 404 errors stopped.
Aside from the advice about acquiring domains promising traffic which I've already discussed with my client, does anybody have any ideas about how a redirect could cause the 404 errors?
Thanks
-
Hard to say, I doubt you would be penalized for only incoming links if your site is clean. But you may always have that history. You could add the site to webmaster tools and submit a reinclusion request explaining the situation. They maybe be able to "wipe the slate clean" for you.
-
Hi Steve, Many thanks for replying.
I checked the acquired domain in OSE and there are 302 redirects from an online pharmacy (that according to the wayback machine existed back in 2009) to pharmacy pages on the acquired domain. In turn OSE shows the linking site has a single link from a dodgy looking russian site called picto.ru. So, I guess the spiders are simply following the links.
Assuming my client wants to use the acquired domain will they get penalised for the existing spammy links?
-
The purchased domain used to have those pages, and when you redirected it, the engines were looking for them on your domain.
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
-
UTM source errors in google search console
Dear Friends, I need help with UTM source and UTM medium errors. There are 300 such errors on my site which is affecting the site i think, The URL appended at the end is utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign= How do i resolve this? Please help me with it.Thanks ccEpFDn.png ccEpFDn.png
Reporting & Analytics | | marketing910 -
Ecommerce site product link. How to handle a link that doesn't exist.
Suppose we have this product A, and we just have a single item for this. When the item is sold out we do not want to show it on the website saying "out of stock". Instead we would like to remove the product from out store which will now result in a url that doesn't exist. And google webmaster tool and Moz analytic will show them as page not found after they crawl over the site. Should i be generating a new sitemap.xml and update ? How do i handle those pages that don't exist anymore ? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | MindlessWizard0 -
Ok. I'm just going to cut loose with my stupid question. What is internal link equity? What distinguishes an internal link with equity from one without equity?
What distinguishes an internal link with equity from one without equity? Is there a limit to how many of these I want? What's the rule-of-thumb? Cheers, Wes
Reporting & Analytics | | wrconard0 -
How to track link building? What metrics?
I'm an SEO newbie (my main roles are front-end designer and content manager).
Reporting & Analytics | | RSGregC
I've been managing our company's effort to generate links. In the past, trying to develop relationships has gone nowhere. As a result, we're currently mostly creating good content ourselves and posting it on Web2.0 sites (weebly, etc.) and linking back to our site, and then using UAW (unique article wizard) to create a second tier of links to those links. We've been doing this for a while, and our traffic from SEO is going up - but we don't really know how to track our work. Can you please
a) give your opinion about our approach, and
b) tell me which metrics we should be using, and which tools for these metrics? Thank you so much
Greg0 -
How effective is OSE in crawling press release links?
How effective is OSE in crawling press release links? We have released a few press releases recently (over the last couple of months) and OSE doesn't seem to have found them.
Reporting & Analytics | | deuce1s1 -
Difference between page/domain authority
could anyone explain the difference between Page Authority and Domain Authoity to me or give me a link to a site where it is explained? Sorry if It's really obvious and I'm just too stupid to find out, but I've searched and haven't found anything.
Reporting & Analytics | | mtueckcr0 -
What is the most effective link building technique?
Hi seomoz community! My question is this: Which is more effective in a) generating traffic and b) increasing authority in the long and short term? Press releases or back-linking through blogs and forums? Some more detail: You have $6000 to spend over a 6 month period on which ever technique you choose. $6000 can buy you 20 press releases, each distributed to over 250 online news outlets (yahoo finance, td waterhouse, ABC, etc), emailed to editors of publications in your industry niche, and tweeted by 10 to-15 influential tweeters. Every release is published by the same news organization plus 5-10 new sources per release. The news organizations all have relatively high domain authorities (60-90) and generate 2500-3000 unique pageviews in total for each article. They also all link back to my site through the articles. $6000 can buy you 6 months of back-link building - outsourced overseas in India. Based on keywords that our target audience are using to find our competitors (long-tail included), we post links through blog/forum comments that appear in results when those search terms are queried. The blog/forums have varying domain authorities in our industry but none higher than 60. Again the question: Which technique is more effective in a) generating traffic and b) increasing authority in the long and short term? Press releases or back-linking through blogs and forums? My current website has a domain authority of 66. Please share your opinions or thoughts. Thanks 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | fourthdimensioninc0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
I'm getting the warning of "Too many on-page links". I have a number of affiliate marketing sites, all Wordpress, all with sidebars. In the header navigation bar is a link that offers "reviews" and links to each product/brand. This is not a drop down link but leads to a page with product links. Also, in the sidebar I have links that also lead to the products/brands. Redundant yes, but in the beginning this seemed to be a good practice in site design. It would be easy to simply remove the widget that contains the link process in the sidebar. The problem may simply be that the sidebar is the same for every page in the site(s). Is this hurting total SEO as my sites are all over 95-percent indexed. One site in particular does very well in traffic and sales so is removing these links potentially going to improve my SEO and ultimately by success? Thanks, Don
Reporting & Analytics | | JavaManOne0