How to deal with link echoes of former hacked websites?

[madcow78]

Hi all,

I'd know which is the best way to deal with link echoes of former hacked websites that Webmaster tool reports.

to clarify: when you download the backlink report from Webmaster tool you'll have a list of backlinks discovered, but if you follow one of those links you will see that on that page there is no link to your website. the source code is also clean, no hidden links or other dodgy technique. Since that the topic is usually miles away from my industry I have to assume at some point that site has been hacked by a spammer who placed that backlink.  In this case what should I do? Ignore it, disavow the domain or what?

Moreover, which is the best procedure  when you have to face a site which points a lot of backlinks from only its sub-domains? For example: this dodgy spammy website : http://px949z32.com/ is apparently a desert, but when you do site:http://px949z32.com/ you'll discover 55,200 results! Would be it be enough to just disavow the root domain http://px949z32.com/? 
As I don't want to wait too long before taking any action, my plan is to disavow all those domains without any mercy, although I can't find a current backlink in one of their pages. I will do this, as at the minute my concern is they will be hacked again and I have to face the same issue again and again

Thanks to all,

P.

[madcow78]

Hi Tom,

thanks for you reply.

I had you same concern about informing Google I have suspicious links in my profile although we aren't  currently suffering from a Google penalty. Unfortunately, what today made literately me scared was that I found brand new echoes that I couldn't find in Google cached and it seems like they have been adding new link a daily basis for days. 
I can count around hundreds made from this site http://haeri26.kr/ since mid August, so I don't know what expect in the future. Moreover, as I changed site structure and made changes in the keywords I expected the current fluctuation for the tracked keywords' rankings, how can I be sure these are common ranking fluctuations and not a kind penalisation?

To details a bit the fluctuation experienced: it was first a drop of around 15/20 positions, but in less than week I saw a fast recovery - usually improving the initial benchmark - soon followed by a new sad drop of a couple of pages for all the keywords.

I'm scared an external agency we got rid in July is getting its childish revenge in this way.

Thanks,

P.

[TomRayner]

Hey P

If you're set on taking action, then being aggressive with them is actually a good approach. Both in Cyrus Shephard's great Moz blog post on the disavow tool and also advice from Google itself says if you suspect an entire domain to be spammy, go ahead and disavow all of it.

However, from my own perspective, I would only go through and create a disavow file if I knew for sure that I was suffering from a manual or algorithmic penalty.  I have seen very little benefit in being proactive with that tool (eg rankings are good, you spot bad links in your link profile and disavow them to be safe) and, in fact, I have seen a number of cases when a disavow was submitted "prematurely" - ie, a site was ranking fine and then disavowed some links and saw rankings fall.

If we want to look at it from a slightly skeptical point of view - if you're not suffering from a Google penalty, do you really want to inform Google that you have suspicious links in your profile?

However, that is a matter of preference based on my own experience.  I would certainly take note of the links you think are bad (and perhaps put together a file ready to go, just in case). Keep in mind though that if you visit the page and the link is not there - and especially if you do a google search for cache:http://www.example.com and see that the cached version contains no link - there's a very good chance that the link has already been discounted anyway and so would not be flagged in a manual or algorithmic check.

Hope this helps