Hidden Backlinks
-
Hi,
I hope someone can help me with this. We have a competitor who appears to be ranking No1 for a competitive search term with a very lame site and above some authoritative sites. He has been here for some time as well. When we check out his back link profile through OSE, Majestic and Ahrefs they show as only 3 backlinks from no PR sites.
However, someone pointed out that they could be using a link network that is blocking every crawler apart from Google, Yahoo and BIng.
I would like to know if there is a way to confirm this. For instance I know that we can use screaming frog to mimic Googlebot, however, if there a way to reveal the real backlinks to a site like this using any tools.
Thanks
-
You could try searching NerdyData for a search operator like below:
href="http://example.com
Make sure to leave the closing quotation mark out to account for any sub pages.
This may or may not return some different results, it's worth a shot.
-
Thanks for the advice, looks like they are creating a Silo effect and mass linking to the home page. Spotted a few links by using links:http://theredomain.com . To be honest at first because I didnt see the links I just wondered what they were doing so well to rank, but now I know they are not actually doing anything well at all, just guess I will have to sit back and wait.
Thanks
-
I know it's probably matter of curiosity and frustration. You just want to know why. In the end, however, we know what tends to win out over time, a good site that is well optimized and created quality, new content that is remarkable and getting that content in front of people. Oh, and doing an awesome job with your business. So, just focus on what you need to do to grow your own company/website and don't worry so much about your competition. It usually just wastes your time and makes you mad. Not worth it.
Good luck with your site.
-
Oh it's hard to find those types of links. Try what Chris said. You should also try putting just the URL in the google search bar to see what else comes up. There are other tactics you can do but in the end it's worthless because you can't really do anything about it. Even reporting it wont help.
Ive seen plenty of those before the last update, but now most are nowhere after the update so the algorithm has gotten better detecting those "ghost" networks.
-
I suspect that you're not going to find anything else but you could go straight to google and use the link:www.domain.com search operator to see what Google shows as back links. That search won't show you everything but should give you an idea if there's more to the picture than what's showing up in those services.
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
-
Backlinks on sites that aren't relevant, how does google determine relevancy?
I have a competitor who I've talked about on here before about how they passed us in ranking for our main keywords and that they were a new site ( less than 6 months old ). Well after further digging a few things were found out: Our site seems to have a penguin penalty causing our keywords ( a group of synonyms as well ) from ranking better than rank 30. As well our competitor has been using this weird backlink tactic of using SEO sites ( a friend? ), a parent site to prop it up ( footer links and others ) as well has links inside articles that aren't relevant as in having a commercial niche page inside a lawyer site page talking about phone dialing. Then the low DA directory sites. I'm curious as to if penguin algo will catch them once it comes out, if not penguin a manual review would certainly catch their tactics, but this site is doing everything else other than proper SEO. What do you think?
Link Building | | Deacyde0 -
Does backlinks in images equal naked backlinks?
I've discovered few backlinks in images came from websites points to my home page. What is the value of these links?
Link Building | | Eslam-yosef0 -
Paid for News Media backlinks
We have been lucky to have some great coverage and resultant backlinks on some very high domain authority news sites such as The Times in the UK. Now that a lot of their content (including our articles and backlinks) is now gated because they are a subscription based, does: Google site attribute the same domain authority to the subscription sites? Does Google site crawl this content? Does the same Google Juice flow once the site is gated? Is the value of 'paid for content sites' eroded?
Link Building | | Switch_Digital0 -
Backlink Lists
I am trying to create a valid list of backlink domain to disavow after a 50% traffic cut by Penguin......problem is I have now pulled lists from 4 tool and the lists are all different. I find a toxic domain from the tool run on LinkResearchTools and look on Google and Site Explorer and the toxic link does not even show. I look at the page and sure enough the link from year ago on a link farm is there. Is there really a rue definitive tool that will give me a list of all links? Better yet is there a tool that will help me evaluate which domain to disavow ? I want to follow Dr. Pete's advice and go slow but I am also anxious to cut ties with SEO work done by someone else in the hay day of link farm SEO and frankly looking at resent links some Bad SEO by competitors.
Link Building | | freestone0 -
Quick question : Is it ok to get 300 quality backlinks ...
Is it ok to get 300 quality backlinks ... from different authoritative domains in one month...I think google might find it strange and I might get penalized...
Link Building | | ksbnok0 -
Concerned about quality of backlinks - should I take action?
I regularly work on websites to which previous SEOs have built questionable backlinks. This morning I've just been analysing some backlinks - found 40 odd were coming from 20 odd websites which all had the same gentleman as personal registrant, who happens to be the boss of an SEO company. The SEO company name is mentioned in registrant details too, and often on the websites in question (including weblinks from some of these 20 odd websites to the SEO company). I did note the IP addresses / hosting for these websites did vary though, as did the postal address of the individual in question, perhaps throwing Google off the scent a bit. I should add that these websites are virtually all tourism related/themed, with up to a few dozen backlinks per page - usually articles. It's very clear they are backlinking to keyphrases. Now, this kinda thing<a></a> sets the alarm bells ringing. Firstly, this looks like an infringement of Google Webmaster Guidelines. Secondly, it doesn't sound like a White Hat technique for building links! Am I correct? I guess it might be denied they are partner pages due to the quality of content, perhaps, which isn't as spammy as it might've been. However, I suggest these are at least paid links because there is no other clear way of getting content on these pages, as far as I can see.<a></a><a></a> Should I demand these backlinks are taken down? What level of risk is posed do you think? I don't want this website to suffer a Google penalty at some point, particularly not after I've started work on it. Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.
Link Building | | McTaggart0 -
Backlinks from PR sites not showing in Open Site Explorer
Hi, Over the last year I have used a range of different PR sites to post news articles that link back to various pages on my site. However, barely any show up as link backs on Open Site Explorer, neither follow nor nofollow links. Can anyone explain why this is and whether or not the dofollow links count towards SEO if they are not picked up by OSE?
Link Building | | pugh0 -
Backlink booster - boosts and helps to index links?
Hello all, We are using a tool called backlink booster that works in the following way: you view a page with a backlink to your site click on a boost link saved in favourites the link is pinged to rss directories and web 2.0 sites The idea is to get your links indexed faster. Has anyone used this or something like this and had any benefit from it? Thanks Shehzad.
Link Building | | Gareth_Cartman0