Accidentally generated navigation links that point to American site from Australian site.
-
Somehow we ended up getting hundreds-of-thousands of links coming from our .au (Australia site) to our .com (America site). We believe that something happened during a change that turned a handful of our example.com.au navigational and footer links into back links pointing to example.com and sub-domains of the American version.
We are currently fixing this, but we are wondering if this could potentially be problematic in terms of a penguin penalty due to an unnatural linking campaign or back link scheme. Could this error create major problems for us in the near future if we have corrected the issue? Your thoughts are welcome!
Thanks!
-
Thank you, Cyrus. Your response is very much appreciated.
Since I posted this question, our reports have been showing the links are starting to drop off. I will update this thread if something happens.
-
Probably not too harmful. Unfortunately, it's really hard to predict. There are three likely outcomes:
- You get dinged because Google sees these links as manipulative, or alternatively over-optimized.
- The extra linking (and cross-traffic) actually help you
- Nothing. Google often ignores links from sites with an administrative relationship
I seriously doubt this would trigger a long term Penguin issue, but as long as your cleaning it up I really don't see what else you can do other than to per-emptively disavow links form the cross-sites. But before doing this, I'd seriously question if this is the route you want to take, as there could be other ramifications.
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
-
Link building strategy - my weak link!
Please help me understand link building. I've read the articles on Moz, but they seem vague to me. Specific questions: 1. How do I get my webpage on good quality sites? 2. Guest blogging? Good or not? 3. What about when people pick up one of our blog stories and publish it on their site with a link back? Is that bad now because it is duplicate content??? 4. Forum posts with a link in the signature? Good or not? 5. Directories - I get it that these are no longer good... are they severely negative? Should I take them down. 6. PR - Looks like this is bad... right??? 7. Youtube - any value? 8. Pinterst, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram? Any value to backlinks here? 9. What about sites like redit? 10. Anything else I should consider?
Link Building | | CalicoKitty20000 -
Links between own sites cause bad pagerank?
Many people say PR does not matter, but for me its an indicator that links from a domain with higher PR may rank better. My client has a about 4 different travel-sites of very different kinds of travelling. His sites are not ranking bad but all sites have just a PR 0-2 although the content is unique. I made the experience that even sites with few content will have at least a PR of 3 after some years with no SEO effort. One reason is may some part of duplicate content (4 Tours begin in Manaus, so the description for Manaus is on all the 4 Tour pages the same) but another is that the pages have few external links but many of other sites he is owning... like: also check out this -> link to another own site. Question: If I take all these links away (they even don't cause many referrals at all) - will this have a positive effect on rankings? Means trying to have always more external links from not self owned sites is a good start? Thanks for sharing your experiences Holger
Link Building | | inlinear0 -
Sites with more than 18,000 links to my!
Tem um site enviando mais de 18 mil links para o meu site, como eu posso bloquear esses links e isso me prejudica ?? São Mais de 18 mil links com o texto acompanhantes RJ, isso prejudica meu posicionamento no google ? Have a website sending over 18mil links to my site, how can I block these links and this harm me? More than 18,000 are links to the text accompanying RJ, it undermines my position in google?
Link Building | | WebMaster210 -
My site has more than 1,341,796 total links but only 500 external links after months of SEO. Please help me ,not sure what went wrong.
My site has more than 1,341,796 total links but only 500 external links after months of SEO. Please help me ,not sure what went wrong.
Link Building | | rsethia1230 -
Why does Open Site Explorer list SEOMOZ forum links so high ?
When I was checking my back links in Open Sight Explorer I was surprised to see that because I have asked three questions recently here on the forum about my business website www.endeavourcottage.co.uk and they are now listed near the position 3 to 5 Of course I was not putting my business website link on their with the motivation of gaining some SEO benefits but when you get these no follow links do they have any usefulness in that direction? I read that say no follow links have no link juice so is any beneficial aspects? I It wouldn't be the ideal situation to encourage that kind of activity, but if they have no value at all why does Open Site Explorer list them? seo.JPG
Link Building | | whitbycottages0 -
Site wide links
I have a few website that centralize spefic news (business news) from other sites and show the article source. The question is: The sites provide about 100.000 backlinks to 3 other sites. Do i remove the site wide links and keep them only on the front page or i keep them? Tjank you
Link Building | | petrescucld0 -
Inbound links from porn sites into a professional business services site - remove help?
The website in question was hacked four years ago and there was porn on the servers. It was used as a peer to peer torrent streamer. The images were deleted. We have just found inappropriate inward bound links (with great link juice!!) - how can we remove these links - or should we? any advice would be appreciated thanks
Link Building | | GardenBeet0