How to defend against link cloaking
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Hi,
I own a website where recently a lot of backlinks have been going to my old domain that 301's to my new domain. During the past 2 months I have noticed a massive amount of links pointing to my old domain. When I go to look at the links and go to the page all I see is a search bar which to me this seems like link cloaking. I am not sure what I should do. Obviously I am not doing the link building and someone is targeting anchor specific keywords from multiple domains that all look the same. My question is should I report it myself in google webmaster tools before I get hit with a filter or penalty, or would this force them to penalize me. And if I do get caught up in a penalty I would not know how to fix this since I doubt the webmaster is linking to me out of the kindness of his heart. Any advice?
Thanks
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From personal experience and from advice I've had before, you can expect google to be lenient. From what I understand, they will discredit the links, but make sure that it won't harm your site in any future updates, just make sure that you're not partaking in any suspicious activity elsewhere though. I did personally have this happen on a few separate occasions; first time round I didn't react and let it be. Then google did an update and gave me a warning on unnatural links. Got it sorted by demonstrating to Google that the links weren't our doing and demonstrated that we had tried to communicate with the site owner (found their details through Whois). Google then replied saying they had reconsidered my request and rankings went back up. The second time it happend I went straight to google with a resubmission request and explained the situation, they again came back and said they had recorded my input and no impact to site. So definately recommend going straight to them to let them know the situation Sean
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