If I am getting links on competitor websites, is it safe to assume those competitors are doing this to hurt our SEO?

[brits]

We have received a few notification from Google Webmaster Tools and Moz that our competitors have "mentioned" our page on their website. This is incredibly odd as you wouldn't think they'd want to do this. Further, when I go to the page that we are supposedly mentioned on, the link to our site is not on the page. What is going on? Thank you in advance for your insights!!

[EGOL]

I get some of this type of traffic.

It is coming from spammer sites.  These sites often look like a "directory" or they look like "search results".  They are usually running in industries where the cost of an adwords click is moderate to expensive.  They are always running ads - usually Adsense.

I think that they operate in a few different ways...

a) Dynamic site: you go there today and can't find a link.   That is because they are changing the data continuously - perhaps daily or by visitor.  The might think that changing the data on the site continuously will help it survive in the SERPs.    Look at this site today, then go back in a day or two, you will likely see that it is completely different,  sometimes it will "look" identical, but the destination of the links have changed.

b) Referral log spammers:  there never was a link to you on their site.  They have a computer program sending a "visitor" to your site so that they appear in your referral log.  They are doing this in industries where people pay a lot of money for clicks and pay really close attention to their visitors.  They know that you will come looking.   They hope that you will click on their ads.

c) Malware trap:  another referral log scheme to get staff from a high value business, maybe a competitor, to visit their site.  That referral in your log was "bait" and you are stepping into a malware trap. A small business in a high value niche is the most lucrative and vulnerable malware target.  Staff who are chasing reefers have access to adwords accounts, adsense accounts, checking accounts, credit card with high limits, they got your name, address and zip code.

d) Adsense/Adword:  these sites display Adsense.  Yesterday a visitor, genuine or robotic, was on their site and "clicked" your ad.  That produced a visitor to your site and income for their site.

e) Combinations of the above:   Two or three of the methods above are all being used.

Be careful.

[max.favilli]

GWT doesn't have a "mention" concept, it does list only links. If you refer to moz alert "mention" without a link, can't do anything either good or bad. If you refer to a real link, to be harmful should come from a spammy site.

[adamxj2]

I ran into something similar. Apparently the mention doesn't even have to be in link form. Just a plain text mention of the brand/domain will show up as a mention.

As stated by Alan, I'd disavow them if it seems shady.

[AlanBleiweiss]

This is a great question - except it's impossible to know what's happening if you can't find the mention (mentions can be links or they could just be that - a mention of your domain without the link).

Have you examined the source code of the examples you've seen?

There have been times when I've been auditing a site and discovered links buried in a widget contained on a page but where just viewing the page as a human would, couldn't see the links.

In some cases, even looking at the initial source code didn't reveal it either - trickier cases exist where a widget rotates out links based on various criteria and where those links are "stored" in a script - one you may not even be able to access if the script is run from a 3rd party server.

As for intent - that too can be a range of possibilities.

I've seen cases where "intent" wasn't even in play - a site has a widget that pulls "related" content from around the web (similar to Taboola or Outbrain type functionality) and other sites just get caught up in that sweep of the web.

I've also seen it where links are discoverable in the source code but hidden from human view through scripts or style sheets.

In all of those cases, the best practice is to disavow them if you can't find them, and you know they're not out there based on any valid referencing purposes outside of SEO.