Links from non existant sites?

[Noviceseo]

Hi! I'm new at all this I've taken a look at the backlink profile for one of my sites as it's seems its been hit by this last Penguin update. I'm finding links to my homepage from sites that no longer exist, like this one: http://mikimoto-pearls.org - does this hurt my backlink? I mean, I would figure it does since there's nothing there? If so, how do I get the link removed? Do I even need to? Disavow tool maybe?

Thank you!

[irvingw]

Just because a site is down doesn't mean it won't go back up again. It could be temporarily suspended or the domain could have expired by mistake or it could eventually get 301'd from another domain. If it's a toxic link I would still treat it as being toxic and disavow it to be safe in case it goes live again. But yea, there is nothing to request to take down and if it stays 404ing it won't hurt you.

[Noviceseo]

Yes, you have helped me a great deal. Thank you for your time.

[LynnPatchett]

Well yes, I guess you could look at it like that. If you lose a strong link then that could potentially reduce your domain/page authority. If you have been hit by penguin chances are you will have many more bad links than good though.

I would be careful about using the disavow tool without doing a full analysis of your link profile. Check out this recent post that runs down on the whole disavow procedure and has links for more info on identifying low quality links and trying to remove them: http://moz.com/blog/google-disavow-tool

Hope that helps!

[Noviceseo]

Oh - one other question - if the links no longer exist, that could be hurting me, in a round about way though, right? I mean, what if it was a good link and now it's gone? Too many of those will cut my backlink profile and therefore push down my keyword rankings, correct?

[Noviceseo]

Hi Lynn,

Thank you so much for your quick response! I guess I just need to keep on looking!

[LynnPatchett]

HI,

If the site no longer exists and the link no longer exists then no this is not hurting you. The moz data can be a few weeks out of date depending on when it last scanned that page/domain so it is normal to sometimes see references to links that are no longer there. If you have been hit by penguin then it is the dodgy links that ARE still there that will be doing the damage!