Links from non existant sites?
-
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!
-
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.
-
Yes, you have helped me a great deal. Thank you for your time.
-
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!
-
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?
-
Hi Lynn,
Thank you so much for your quick response! I guess I just need to keep on looking!
-
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 The moz data can be a few weeks out of date depending on when it last scanned that page/domain so it is normal to sometimes see references to links that are no longer there.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!
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
-
Relaunching a site that has had thousands of posts linking to the same 20 articles. How to properly setup internal linking?
I'm in the process of relaunching a music news site (www.prefixmag.com) that once did quite well in search (over a million monthly search visits in its prime). The site got crushed by Panda, etc. and we stopped updating it. I'm starting to do more research but one thing that I noticed was we have modules in the right rail (desktop) that are found on all of our article pages that point to the same posts. (Edit: Added attachment. The links in the right rail under Editor Picks, Features, News, Media, etc. are found on every page of the site). In other words, we have thousands of posts that all link to the same 20 or so articles. Should we not do this if we're not trying to emphasize these posts in Google? Assuming this is the case, what is the proper way to do internal linking? Do we simply setup a sitemap and link to it? I'm hoping to have the thousands of articles we've published over the years have a chance to rank in search again. Also, we have a number of posts that are thin in content should those pages not be submitted in the sitemap? Thanks in advance! 2KmX0
Link Building | | leggo0 -
AllTop Linking Me to Other Sites Feeds, Webmasters Reporting Lots of Broken Links
I submitted my blog to All Top awhile ago and something seems to be wrong with their feed. They're sending people to mysite.com/truth-o-meter.com/this-is-a-post. It's not just truth-o-meter either. I'm getting links that are supposed to go to all kinds of political blogs. As a result, I'm getting a ton of broken links reported on Google Webmasters. I couldn't find any real support option on alltop.com, and when I log in, there are no sites for me to manage. Instead, I resubmitted the site with the correct feed address and in the comments, I mentioned the problem. All I got was a message saying the site was rejected. I believe because I already added the site. But I'm thinking they didn't pay attention to the comments. (In fact the message may have gone through an auto-filter considering how quickly it was rejected.) Is there a way to solve this? Is this a situation in which I would use the disavow tool? If All Top continues to create bad links, how do I stop the issue once and for all? Thanks!
Link Building | | eglove0 -
Too many links from one site?
In webmaster tools in 'links to your site' I have a totla of 819 links but 580 have appeared from one site. Is this bad for SEO?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
I found a link to my customer's site with an over-optimized
I found a link to my customer's site with an over-optimized anchor text using the OpenSite Explorer tool, but when I opened the link, my customer's link is nowhere to be found. Here is the link Opensiteexplorer gave me: http://www.derbymadness.com/my-profile/demolition-derby-groups/viewgroup/12-web And here is my customer's link: 1896omalleyhouse.com The link is not on the cached version of the page either. Can anyone tell me how this might happen? Thanks!
Link Building | | Acorn-IS0 -
If Google truly penalizes sites for bad linking, could my competitor sabotage me?
I am sure this has been discussed before (I am new). I am very paranoid about upsetting Google with questionable SEO practices. The white hat people sometimes claim that google will penalize you for bad linking, paying for links, buying social bookmarks etc. If this is true, could my competitor do this for my site to lower my rankings? I would never know about it until it was too late. If they can't do this to me, then what's to stop me from doing it to my own site? Maybe I am missing something here. Thanks for your input.
Link Building | | frankthetank20 -
List of links pointing out of my site?
What is the best way to produce a list of links pointing out of my site and the web page they appear on?
Link Building | | MiroAsh0 -
Do http:// links to a http://www. site count the same to Google?
In terms of links to one's site helping your position on Google, if your site defaults to http://www.example.com (automatically adds "www." even if it isn't typed), does Google count links that appear as http://example.com (without the www.) with the same "weight"? Thanks.
Link Building | | celife0