Links in Webmaster Tools that aren't really linking to us

[Philip-DiPatrizio]

I've noticed that there is a domain in WMT that Google says is linking to our domain from 173 different pages, but it actually isn't linking to us at all on ANY of those pages.  The site is a business directory that seems to be automatically scraping business listings and adding them to hundreds of different categories.  Low quality crap that I've disavowed just in case.

I have hand checked a bunch of the pages that WMT is reporting with links to us by viewing source, but there's no links to us.  I've also used crawlers to check for links, but they turn up nothing.  The pages do, however, mention our brand name.  I find this very odd that Google would report links to our site when there isn't actually links to our site.  Has anyone else ever noticed something like this?

[Philip-DiPatrizio]

I considered that but didn't really see any reason this site would add links to our site and then quickly remove them.  I've seen crazier things though....

I actually just finally figured it out, though.  They are displaying our site through a damn iframe.  There's a link hidden in the jumbled mess on their site that says "View Website" -- I missed that before.  Since it doesn't actually link to us, crawlers weren't finding it and my source code search for our URL didn't find it either.  However, Google is reporting it as a link, which is strange.  The "View Website" link really just links to another page on their own site that shows our homepage in an iframe.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Philip,

I've seen this many times, Google Webmaster Tools is showing the links a couple days later in my experience since they found a link to your site during a crawl. That's why it could be that the links on the page have already disappeared. I think your move in disavowing the domain was a good one and should protect you from any low quality crap.