Google lost 9,000 inbound links
-
I logged into GWT today. It typically reports that our page has about 9,000 inbound links, but today it said we have 225. There are no warnings or messages about any manual action. In fact, this site has never received any penalties or warnings.
Since November I have used the disavow tool to remove porn links that a competitor has pointed at my site. Typically I go through Google's "new" links list and add any of the obviously bad links to the disavow list. That effort seemed to be going ok, and my site does not seem to be penalized for this negative seo.
The 225 links that remain are scattered back through 2010. This site has been online since 2005 and has accumulated lots of links over the years. Some great, some not so great.
Queries are down about 1500 per day since last week, about a 15% drop. There is a slight drop in some keyword rankings, but nothing huge, and most of the SERPS I track do not seem to be impacted. The PR is steady at 4, where it's been for years.
So... what do you think I should do? Just watch it for a week and see if they come back? Try removing the "disavow" list just in case it some how messed things up (looks ok on the surface to me).
Has this ever happened to anyone else?
-
That helps lots, Matt. Thanks for being on the ball. I'll sleep better tonight.
Cheers.
-
It's a display bug.
"We are aware of this issue and are looking into it; you do not need to take any action. We hope to have the normal data shown again in the near future. The data shown there is informational and does not affect your site's crawling, indexing or ranking."
Search Engine Land had a post about it as well - same answer. It's a display bug, it's not affecting anything.
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
-
Links
Hi 64% of our links come from a .com website and only 30% from .co.uk. We only do business in the UK should I continue with the .com links as they are easier to source. Does this hurt my SEO efforts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Can Google Bot View Links on a Wix Page?
Hi, The way Wix is configured you can't see any of the on-page links within the source code. Does anyone know if Google Bots still count the links on this page? Here is the page in question: https://www.ncresourcecenter.org/business-directory If you do think Google counts these links, can you please send me URL fetcher to prove that the links are crawlable? Thank you SO much for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fiyyazp0 -
My site shows 503 error to Google bot, but can see the site fine. Not indexing in Google. Help
Hi, This site is not indexed on Google at all. http://www.thethreehorseshoespub.co.uk Looking into it, it seems to be giving a 503 error to the google bot. I can see the site I have checked source code Checked robots Did have a sitemap param. but removed it for testing GWMT is showing 'unreachable' if I submit a site map or fetch Any ideas on how to remove this error? Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SolveWebMedia0 -
Will Google View Using Google Translate As Duplicate?
If I have a page in English, which exist on 100 other websites, we have a case where my website has duplicate content. What if I use Google Translate to translate the page from English to Japanese, as the only website doing this translation will my page get credit for producing original content? Or, will Google view my page as duplicate content, because Google can tell it is translated from an original English page, which runs on 100+ different websites, since Google Translate is Google's own software?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Relevancy of link profile
Hi! I'm doing an audit of http://www.stevesims.com/ at the moment, who has had rankings for 'website designers' plummet recently. Looking at the site, there a few things to do with on-page and on-site optimisation, but nothing major. Instead, I think the link profile is the issue. There's a lot of site wide links from non-relevant sites, but I'm struggling to see anything else. Any thoughts would be much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Are links that are disavowed with Google Webmaster Tools removed from the Google Webmaster Profile for the domain?
Hi, Two part question - First, are links that you disavow using google webmaster tools ever removed from the webmaster tools account profile ? Second, when you upload a file to disavow links they ask if you'd like to replace the previously uploaded file. Does that mean if you don't replace the file with a new file that contains the previously uploaded urls those urls are no longer considered disavowed? So, should we download the previous disavow file first then append the new disavow urls to the file before uploading or should we just upload a new file that contains only the new disavow urls? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgs0 -
Content linking ?
If you have links on the left hand side of the website on the Navigation and content at the bottom of the page and link to the same page with different anchor text or the same would it help the page (as it is surrounded by similar text) or is the first one counted and this is it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Nofollow links in Google Webmaster
I've noticed nofollow links showing up in my Google Webmaster tools "links to your site" list. If they are nofollow why are they showing up here? Do nofollow links still count as a backlink and transfer PR and authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoCoGuru1