I would like to get rid of 300,000+ links, please
-
A couple of months ago, I noticed that in Webmaster Tools my site had acquired 300,000+ links from a single site, updown.com. It seems to be a reputable site, and also in the correct industry, so I wrote to them and said that we love links, but that was probably a few too many and they all go to our privacy policy page. I suggested that they had some type of error that they might want to fix.
After a month with no response, I wrote again, and still no response. This is now a month after that.
The strange thing is that I don't see the links when I visit their pages, even in the source (Google provides a list of sample linking pages). I also don't see those links in Open Site Explorer, Majestic, AHREFs, nor Screaming Frog.If I were seeing this anywhere else, I'd just ignore it as some type of glitch. But this is information from Google. I have not received any warnings nor manual actions and I am disinclined to open a disavow can of worms, since the site is doing well and I'd rather not stir things up if I don't have to.
Any thoughts about what I should (or shouldn't) do? Is this a problem, or should I assume Google knows it is a glitch and will ignore it? It has been in my Webmaster Tools for about three months.
Thanks for reading!
-
Hi Linda,
In the absence of any penalty or rankings dip, there's likely nothing to worry about as this is pretty common. If nothing else, even though Google reports those links in GWT it's very possible they discount them in every other way that counts.
On the other hand, if you are worried about it there should be no harm in proactively disavowing the domain. Lot's of agency folk that I know make this a regular practice to disavow any suspect links and 99.9% of the time, if done correctly, no harm will come to your site simply by filing a disavow file (unless you disavow links that are actually good, but that's another story)
-
Hi
In my experience there is a certain latency with the links shown in Webmastertools, I has the tendency to continue to show links, even after they have been removed (we used to have a partnership with a large telco - and had 1.5mio links coming from them - when the partnership ended it took several months before they disappeard in WMT). If you are unable to find these links using the tools you mentioned I wouldn't worry about them.
rgds,
Dirk
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
-
So many links from single site?
this guy is ranking on all high volume keywords and has low quality content, he has 1600 ref domains check the attachment how did he get so many links from single site is he gonna be penalized YD2BvQ0
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL0 -
Are These Links Junk?
I hired an SEO to create incoming links to me website insisting that only white hat techniques be used. The SEO was highly recommended by a family friend. In 3 months about 14 links to my site were obtained. The URLs for the domains where the links originate are below. I paid $8,000 for the services of the SEO provider to create the links over 4 months. When I looked at the links more carefully I noticed that the sites did not seem to have owners. That there was no phone number, physical address and scant information about ownership. I also noticed that most pages had outgoing links of a promotional nature. Also, that content created for me had grammatical and occasional spelling errors. The links did not look bad in terms of MOZ domain authority and MOZ page authority, but when I went subscribed to AHREFS a few days ago and evaluated the links, I noticed that the URL rating (somewhat equivalent to MOZ page authority) was really low. Furthermore, noticed that one of the domains solicits paid links from gambling sites. The SEO who sourced the links on my behalf says he will explain why I "have nothing to worry about". Dividing his monthly fee by the number of links and I paid $571 per link. Is it possible the the below domains could have pages that I would want links from? Would these links be potentially worth more than a few hundred dollars? O are these sites more like a cheap PBN or maybe "the hoth". If the links are in fact good I would be delighted. But if they are of poor quality could I legitimately ask for a refund? Also, are these domains so bad that it is imperative for me to get the links removed? <colgroup><col width="198"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
| https://www.equities.com |
| http://www.realestaterama.com |
| https://moneyinc.com |
| https://homebusinessmag.com |
| http://digitalconnectmag.com |
| https://suburbanfinance.com/ |
| http://www.homebunch.com |
| http://inman.com |
| https://www.propertytalk.com/ |
| http://activerain.com |
| https://www.conservativedailynews.com/ |
| http://moneyforlunch.com/ |
| http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/ |
| https://www.tgdaily.com/ |
| |0 -
What link would be better?
Hi Guys, Just wondering what would be better in this instance: finding an old post (with good authority) and getting a link from that old article or creating a brand new article and adding the link to that. Finding an old post (with good authority) and getting a link from that old article Creating a brand new article and adding the link to that. Both naturally link out to the page you want a link too. To me, number 1 as the page already has authority but then again number 2 since Google might place some weight to recency. Any thoughts? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spyaccounts140 -
Google WMT/search console: Thousands of "Links to your site" even only one back-link from a website.
Hi, I can see in my search console that a website giving thousands of links to my site where hardly only one back-link from one of their page to our page. Why this is happening? Here is screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/VleUf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Infographic links were good?
I submit infographic to visual.li, source and a little description. Are these links were good for website link profile? And can I submit same inforgraphi to other websites? http://visual.ly/divya-ashwagandha-churna
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Links in body text
From a purely SEO /link juice perspective, is there any benefit to linking from body text to a page that is in a pervasive primary navigation? The primary nav puts a link at the top of the HTML. With the tests done by members of this site, the "first link counts" rule negates the link juice value of a link in the body text if there is already a link in the nav. Now I've also seen the data on using hash tags to get a second or third link, but ignoring that, it would seem that links in the body text to pages in the nav have zero effect. This brings me to another question - block level navigation. If anchor text links pass more juice than links in the top navigation, why would you put your most coveted target pages in the top nav? You would be better off building links in the content, which would create a poor user experience. To me, the theory that anchor text links in the body pass more juice than links in the primary nav doesn't make any sense. Can someone please explain this to me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Should I link my similar sites together?
Hi I currently have two sites within exactly the same market. I've just purchased a third website from someone. Should I link these sites together? (i.e. in the page header should I cross link them or point two of them to the third?) If I do this will it harm them if they are on the same C-Class IP blocks? Is using private domains and different hosting companies considered dodgey in any way? Basically I'm a big wimp and don't want to do anything potentially that might potentially hurt my rankings;)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blendfish0 -
Link Platform Diversity? Did you get slapped rankings?
I have been working on a few clients websites and have recently had rankings plummet. Most of the links i get are coming from wordpress platform(blog posts), in the past it worked very well, has anyone else had a problem with just using wordpress platform i.e most of the links are coming from blogs......and had rankings drop?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | foreignhaus0