Is this a 'real site' or a spam site for backlinks
-
I have been asked what type of site this is?
What kind of page is this? [http://www.gotocostarica.com/](http://www.gotocostarica.com/) In my opinion it is site put up to create back links and should be avoided
(especially in the light of the new Penguin and Panda updates coming).
But I don't want to give wrong advice. What are your opinions?
-
Hi Rose,
Indeed some hosting companies will throw up these ready cpc templates as soon as a domain expires and/or a hosting account goes into arrears. Bad form if you ask me, but it happens.
-
Thank you!
My site recently went down, as I has a problem with the payment renewal and meanwhile Verio put a similar site up, whilst my site was being restored.
So it seems some hosting companies could have a stock of these advertising sites when a new site is being built or is down?
-
Hi Rose,
As Stefan says it is a parked domain (a domain which is either for sale or just not being used right now). The links in it are cpc ads which are likely sourced from adwords (and maybe elsewhere also). If you click through to say 'yoga retreats in costa rica' and then do a google search for the same phrase, you will see most of the same ads on both pages.
So basically, it is neither a real site nor a spam site, it is a parked domain showing ads. In that respect, you would have to set up an adwords account with the relevant key phrases and targeted to search partner networks to try to get a link on it, and as far as I know these links would never show up as backlinks in your site's profile. So apart from the (low in my experience) possibility of conversions from users finding your site through the parked domain, the value of the link is pretty much zero, but there is no danger of getting a penalty from having your site show up in the list since they are in all likelihood sourced from google's own adwords system.
-
If they are paid links, then it would almost certainly hurt your rankings to advertise on there. This is because they are not marked as sponsored links - Matt Cutts' article should shed some light:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/why-did-my-pagerank-go-down/
However, we should note that those links aren't specifically paid links, but are automated links to pages with advertisements on there so there may be some ambiguity.
My advice would be to look elsewhere for quality, related linking domains.
-
You can avoid the penalty by intermediate URL creation like Google Ads(Double click URL). It will not pass any juice to your website and your advertisement will also continue.
Otherwise it is great possibility of penalty.
-
But the question is .. if you advertised on this would google see it as spam links?
-
Looks like a "parked" domain with ads on it.
Some web hosting companies put up search pages with ads hoping to make some cash on not used domains.
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
-
Does building backlinks help improve Google rankings? If so which links work nowadays?
Hi Guys, Please only reply of you have real experience.... So as the title implies does building backlinks work in improving the rankings in Google? I know they are not on the same level as some are spammy, in blog networks etc but how about other backlinks that are of higher quality? If yes, what sorts of backlinks work nowadays in boosting rankings but not risking getting penalized? So should you build backlinks ongoing? If so how many per month? I have a real struggle trying to get backlinks on really high quality sites. Any advice? Cheers John
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | whiteboardwiz1 -
Spammy Website Framed My Site & Stole Rankings
Hi One of the pages of my website was starting to gather some real traction in Google rankings and hit 3500 visitors per day. This is the page: http://www.naturallivingideas.com/drinking-apple-cider-vinegar-benefits/ On 11th January search traffic to this page fell to virtually 0. The rest of the site rankings were unaffected. Yesterday I tried searching for some of the main keywords I was ranking for and instead of my search listing, this was appearing: Image: http://www.naturallivingideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/weird-rankings.jpg It is in the exact position I was ranking in, but instead this evn . moe site has stolen my ranking. Upon opening the website, it is simply my original article page in an iframe. If you look at the source code of the offending website, you will see what I mean. Hopefully now you are getting a 403 forbidden error as my host blocked referrals from that site but they still hold my rankings. Has anyone ever seen this before? How was this done? And how can I get my ranking back? Thanks in advance, James
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JamesPenn0 -
Linking Authentic Sites Together - Semi-PBN?
Recently I've had a lot of ideas of sites to build that all would have some sort of relevance to each other, all that would be relevant to my current business. For example, say you have sites for: bars/clubs, music festivals, cinemas, etc, one site for each. While these aren't all directly related to each other, they all kind of fall within a category of entertainment and having fun. Now, I'm not thinking about this as if I were to build a Private Blog Network, but instead each site would actually be valuable to visitors, be content rich, have regular updates and thriving social media etc, as if each were its own individual business. What would be your opinion on actually linking these together at some point down the line? I must stress that these would not be like typical PBN sites where the themes are the same, content is spun or badly written, no human touches or actual value, anything spammy etc, these would actually be authentic quality sites that you would reasonably expect to have a thriving community. Personally, after changing my ways from blackhat to weary-of-linkbuilding whitehat when Penguin 1 was released, I'm aware of what a bad linkbuilding strategy can do and would rather steer clear, however when I compare the plan of these authentic sites I have in my head to the obvious, low quality PBNs that I find competitors use to rank well all the time, I'm coming around to the idea that they may not pose a threat with the way I intend to implement them. Can I get some thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Leads.Bz2 -
How to ignore spam links to page?
Hey Moz pals, So for some reason someone is building thousands of links to my websites (all spam), likely someone doing negative seo on my site. Anyway, all these links are pointing to 1 sub url on my domain. That url didn't have anything on it so I deleted the page so now it comes up with a 404. Is there a way to reject any link that ever gets built to that old page? I don't want all this spam to hurt my website. What do you suggest?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WongNs0 -
Are the Majority of SEO Companies 'Spammers, Evildoers, & Opportunists'?
This may not be the most productive Q&A discussion, but I've had some really interesting experiences this last month that have made me even more distrusting of "SEO" companies. I can't help but think of this post (not much has changed since '09). Even though it takes a pretty extreme stance, I agree with the core of it - _"The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web." _ I didn't start doing this type of work wanting to have such a negative opinion of SEO companies, but I just keep having the same experience: I'll get referred to someone who isnt' happy with their SEO company. They send me their web address, I check out the site, and seriously can't believe what I find. MISSING PAGE TITLES, EVERY CANONICAL URL ISSUE IMAGINABLE, AND 10'S OF THOUSANDS OF BOT SPAM EMAT LINKS FROM PAGES LIKE THIS...AND THIS and just recently a company a called one of my clients and conned him into paying for this piece of spam garbage, obviously scraped from the site that I made for him. and what's worse, sometimes for whatever reason these companies will have all the client's FTP and CMS logins and it can be hell trying to get them to hand them over. There's no webmaster tools set up, no analytics, nothing.... These businesses are paying a good chunk of change every month, I just can't believe stuff like this is so common...well acutally, it's what i've come to expect this point. But I used to think most SEO companies actually had their clients best interest at heart. Does every honest consultant out there run into this same type of stuff constantly? How common is this type of stuff really? Now, on to the positive. This community rocks, and I feel like it represents real, ethical, solution-oriented, boundary-less SEO. So thank you Mozzers for all you do. and I love using the tools here to help businesses understand why they need an honest person helping them. If anyone has thoughts on the topic, I'd love to hear 'em...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SVmedia3 -
Dealing with internal pages with bad backlinks - is this approach OK?
Hi all, I've just been going through every page of my company website, and found a couple of internal pages with nasty backlinks/profiles. There are a significant number of article marketing and rubbish directory pages pointing to these internal pages. These internal pages have low PR, yet are performing well in terms of SERPs. I was planning to: (1) change URLs - removing current (soon to be former) URLs from Google via Webmaster Tools. Then (2) remove website's 404 for a while so nasty links aren't coming anywhere near the website (hopefully nasty links will fail to find website and broken links will result in link removal - that's my thinking anyway). PS. I am not planning to implement any kind of redirect from the old URLs. Does this sound like a sensible approach, or may there be problems with it? Thanks in advance, Luke
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Have I created link spam.....
Howdy fellow Mozzers.... Since Googles Penguin Update I am overly cautious when reviewing our link profile. I spotted 2 domains linking to us yesterday, 80+ links from each domain to our homepage. This looked superstitious, site wide links effectively. At first inspection I couldn't spot the links....they turned out to be two individual comments, but as the site had a plugin with "most recent comments", 1 link became 80. The link is an exact match of the individuals name who made the comment. And is a result of filling out the comment form. Name: Website: Comment: By filling out the name and website the name becomes the anchor text for the link to the website. Long story short...do you think this is penguin esq. link spam? Is it not? Or is it just not worth the risk and remove them anyway???
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
Dramatic fall in SERP's for all keywords at end of March 2012?? Help!
Hi, Our website www.photoworld.co.uk has been improving it's SERP's for the last 12 months or so, achieving page 1 rankings for most of our key terms. Then suddenly, around the end of March, we suffered massive drops in nearly all of our key terms (see attached image for more info). Basically I wondered if anyone had any clues on what Google has suddenly taken a huge dislike to with our site and steps we can put in place to aid with rankings recovery ASAP. Thanks n8taO.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cewe0