Detected a bad site linking to you? what to do?
-
I have detected on linkdetox site that had stolen a face photo of a smile from a star my website and is linking to the page.
I uploade a disavow with that site very bad domain. But my question is if should a take that picture of my site or rename so the link goes to 404.
It is not an important or relevant page for my website
-
There's no harm in disavowing the link but it's probably not necessary. The point of the disavow tool is to allow webmasters to ask Google to not count links that were made for SEO purposes. If you had placed this here so that you could increase your rankings then sure, I'd disavow it. It's unlikely that it's a negative SEO tactic...not with just one link. But, if you had a pile of these and you felt it was negative SEO then I'd disavow.
Every site, even the ones with the cleanest backlink profiles have bizarre links that appear like this. I would just ignore it.
If, however, you are trying to get it removed because you don't like the idea of your face residing on a page filled with porn, then if you can't contact the webmaster, you can try reporting the site to its host. Sometimes the host will remove spam pages/sites.
-
That's really helpful. Thanks Jeff.
-
You can always email -
postmaster@
and/or
webmaster@
Those two should go through to some one who looks after the site. Disavow will be enough to stop the link causing you any problems.
-
This bad site has no contact information. Impossible to reach the webmaster to ask for removal.
I am wounder if the disavow will be ok. But in this case i will rename the page and delete the photos.
-
Agree with Peter & Jeff,
If you're really upset with a link you can disavow it if you want to do it correctly you should email them prior, but if you jsut want it done, add the domain to the disavow list and job done.
-
FYI, Google's Matt Cutts has broken from the previously stated mantra on the disavow tool, and now is encouraging Webmasters to use it if they are worried if a link is from a bad domain, due to poor SEO (or someone else trying to hurt your site by creating bad links):
-
I would ask the site owner to remove the photo and link. If that fails then if the page is not important to you then it will be simpler to remove it than wait for the disavow to take effect.
Peter
-
I have more than 3000 original pictures on my website with the water and they are constantly stolen. I dont mind about that.
In this case is a porn site. On other cases among with good sites there are sites that i dont want the link of the credit and i delete the linked picture the link remains but goes to a 404.
I mean deleting the photo because i community advice deleting or rename the page i wild do that also with the disavow.
What would you do?
-
So a site is using a photo from your site but giving you credit for the photo by giving you a link?
How are you sure it's a "very bad domain" ?
The disavow will be fine it tells Google you don't want that site linked to your in anyway. If you don't want people stealing your images you could look into water marks.
-
Hi Dario
The first thing you should really do it contact the site who created the bad link and ask them to remove it and the photo if you are not happy about that also. If they are unresponsive then sending in a Disavow should really be done after speaking to the offending site's owner.
If though, as you say, the page is not important to you, then if the above doesn't work then yes, just remove the page.
Peter
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
-
Is are Scoopon type sites a good place to get a link?
We have noticed that our competitors have links with equality from sites like this: http://www.groupon.com.au/ Scoopon type sites like this can be an effective way to generate sales for a business, I'm just wondering if these types of sites also have added value for SEO as sites like these do have a strong Domain Authority? Any thoughts on this subject would be most appreciated. Thanks!
Link Building | | Gavo0 -
Total Links vs Google Webmaster Site Links
I am interested why the numbers between SEOmoz and Google are so different. In SEOmoz we only show 17,000ish links from 190ish domains. In Google, we show 200,000+ links from 370 domains. Why is there such a dramatic difference?
Link Building | | webspecdesign0 -
Will placing links in articles on my site help my rankings?
I have a few page rank 2 articles on my site. Will placing links to other pages on my site with appropriate anchor text in the body of these articles help the other pages to rank higher for the anchor text i place in these links in the articles? Thanks in advance! Ron
Link Building | | Ron100 -
Are reciprocal links bad (if overused)
Hi, is it possible that having too many reciprocal links on my website may cause damage to my SEO campaign? One of my main competitors has a page dedicated to links to other pretty relevant companies (probably around 20 in total) but is doing extremely well. Lots of other relevant websites are allowing me to link to them, in exchange for a link back. How many is too many if so? Thanks! Helen
Link Building | | heleni0 -
Why does my site only have 4 internal followed links/internal links?
When using Open Site Explorer my site is winning in many categories but lacking in others as compared to competitors. I intend to improve on this but am a little confused by the extremely low number of "internal followed links" and "internal links" at just 4. My competitors have much more than that. Does this mean links to the root domain? Total internal links? I have many internal links so I'm having a hard time figuring this one out. What four internal links are getting noticed? I just went through and changed all the links that went to index.html to link to the root domain at www.njlimocarservice.com as I just found a Q&A that indicates this was better. So as of Wed at 5:45 PM all my links to the homepage went to index.html and not the root which is no longer the case. Not sure if this matters. At the same time I also just put a 301 from index.html to redirect to www.njlimocarservice.com. Any help appreciated! h9QuF.png
Link Building | | kabledesigns0 -
How do you check to see if your site (site A) has already been linked to by another site (site B) when you have a large site with lots of links
There are some basics in SEO relating to finding out about who has linked to whom that I could use some help with.
Link Building | | hughman0 -
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links ...
Hi, We recently got "the message" from Google about unnatural links for two of our 50 sites. Ranking has dropped significantly since, we did not take any action to remove the links. All our 50 sites were managed by the same SEO company but only two got this message. We are in the process of understanding the best ways to deal with this situation, but currently there are two main approaches we can detect: Remove the links, resubmit for reconsideration Ignore the message and do not do anything, if you do something it is actually like admitting you did something wrong, and Google can not prove that you did... Any insights on what approach we should adopt? Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | jid1