SIte wide links by google display / adsense
-
hey guys, I had a quick question about my back links that might be coming from adsense.
I am trying to help my father our on his site and help him recover from penguin. unfortunately his company hired some shady SEOers to do "SEO". little did my dad know the BLs he were getting might be spammy, thats what I am checking now.
When I ran a BL report on him ( i use two tools, SEO spyglass and OSE ) i found that there were many "sitewide" links, but i dont think there were placed there by the webmaster, i think they come from adsense. I know he has a PPC campaign where the daily spend is 3k/ day so I know its very possible that this might be the case.
If my tool is picking up BLs from these sites ( which are niche related ) does google count these links for ranking purposes? and might this hurt my rankings if google just sees these as "sitewide links"
-
Possibly, but if you were hit by Penguin, those links might be doing you more harm than good right now. If I had a chance in this situation to remove over-optimized, site-wide links, I would.
And you nailed the conundrum of Penguin on the head
-
cyrus,
wow, thanks so much for replaying to my post, and as a side note, i really enjoyed and learned a lot from your last whiteboard friday post.
yea, i did a lil more research and it turns out that it was his affiliates that were doing it on their own pages. Turns out, they were site-wide sponsor ads on every single page.
site wide sponsor ads are def frowned upon infront of google right?
Anyways, the good thing about this situation is that we know ALL the affiliates by name and can easily contact them ( in the process) BUT, wont google see a recession of links and might count that to another rankings drop?
Hope to hear back, thanks
-
Hi David,
Sorry to hear your father's site was hit by Penguin. I agree with John that Adsense links will not count as backlinks. Neither OSE nor SEO Spyglass should record Adsense links as such, either.
When searching for links on a page, it's best to look at the source code of the page in question. (right click > view source). Then do a search (control F) and enter the URL of your father's domain. You'll often spot hard to find or hidden links this way a lot easier.
(Another method is to catch Google's cache of the page. (Use the MozBar for this by using the Page Attributes function found by clicking the Magnifying glass icon, and search for the Google cache URL) When you view Google's cached version of the page, hit the link that says "text version". Perform a source search as described above. At the top of the page, Google will tell you the date of the cache. This may indicate to you that the link was once on the page at this time, but since then the page has changed.)
Sometimes links disappear. This is often the case with paid link that require a monthly subscription.
If the links aren't in the source code, then most likely they aren't there anymore. Which is good, because it means you have fewer links to clean up
Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
hey john, I am going to get access to GWT monday, but im using SEO powersuite which i think checks it right then and there.
-
Is it possible that the links have been removed? OSE takes around 4 weeks to update as far as I'm aware, so it could be that the links aren't there anymore.
Do the links show up in GWT? It's possible that the links were being paid for on a monthly basis, which has now stopped so they have been removed.
-
yea thats what i thought, but i cant find the links?!?! they are on none of these domains.
on one domain i am showing 25 pages with BLs. but i cant find any of my links on there.
-
Hi David,
No, I don't think AdSense links would be counted towards rankings and I seriously doubt that AdSense links would hurt your rankings.
It sounds far more likely that they're paid text links (nothing to do with Google), most likely purchased by the former SEO agency. These certainly could damage your rankings, particularly if they're sitewide.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Google Merchant Shopping - UK Mainland Shipping
Hi Guys, I am setting up my first Google Merchant account. As it's only a couple of products to start, I am doing this manually rather than a xml feed, and got to shipping. If it is free shipping for UK mainland but different for scottish isles, scottish highlands and Northern Ireland, how do I reflect this? What values do i use to suggest free shipping for UK Mainland and give different values for the others? Regards Neil
Paid Search Marketing | | nezona0 -
Blocking google adwords on google.com?
Is there any chance to block google adwords (not google adsense) firefox/chrome/internet explorer 🙂
Paid Search Marketing | | FCRMediaLietuva0 -
Adwords negative keywords / keyword lists conflicting?
Does any of you had any experience on large 5k+ shared negative keyword lists impacting normal campaign negative keywords in Adwords even if they are not selected on these campaigns? And a second question; does anyone know how selected negative keyword lists can be removed from a campaign? I seem to be able to add them but not to remove them... Cheers!
Paid Search Marketing | | hellemans0 -
Best practice to separate paid from organic conversions in Google Analytics
I have a PPC campaign for a client with standalone landing pages with a form, not reachable from the website (although in the same domain). I've added the AdWords conversion code to the "thank you" page and I also added a Goal in
Paid Search Marketing | | DoMiSoL
Google Analytics whose counter is increased every time the thank you page is reached. This way I can track conversions with both AdWords and Analytics. Is that correct? Should I import back in AdWords the goals from Analytics, as suggested in the AdWords account? I have another landing page with a form in the website, where I send users coming from
organic search, so I set up a second goal in Analytics for the thank you page of this form. Is this the reason why I am supposed to import in AdWords the analytics' goals, so that I could see both kind of conversions in both accounts? But the most important question is: If I send both PPC/organic visitors to the same landing page is there still a way to separate PPC from Organic conversions? Thank you very much for your advice. DoMiSoL Rossini0 -
Google Analytics and WorldPay - Tracking Sales/Conversions
Hi there, I recently remember reading somewhere that tracking code could be used to monitor sales/conversions of eCommerce payments that went through WorldPay. I've been looking around the web for news stories, forums, discussions, but all seem to be from 2007 - 2011; was just wondering if anyone knew any up-to-date info they could point me towards? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | bricktech0 -
Google Analytics CPC and PPC not Matching
Hi Why do our CPC in Google Analytic not match our PPC in Adword, surely they should be identical? We have Auto-tagging switched on and data in our history is wrong so it is not a timing issue. Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | Studio330 -
Two google analytics accounts on one site.
I've got a client who is using a third party for cpc ads, to track these we need to give the third party admin access to google analytics. Being that we are seeing massive discrepancies in reported cpc ads and refunds etc.. have been offered, I can't trust that as an admin they won't delete the profile with all data proving reason for refund. Can we create a second google analytics account (not profile) to protect the data? We want to give access to sensis to the new account so we can start seeing the cpc separation in traffic source from now while ensuring the existing account can't disappear.
Paid Search Marketing | | salemtas0 -
Do you take Seo and ppc management on competitor sites?
I would love to hear what everyone thinks : I wanted to know what people do about seo and ppc when the keywords and industries overlap.
Paid Search Marketing | | DavidKonigsberg0