Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Spammy links
-
Hi Guys,
I have a case which seems to occur more often for our customers. The websites of our customers seem to receive tons of backlinks from websites all over the world (China, Russia, Ukrain, etc).
It’s spam we never asked for, we didn’t buy any dodgy linkbuilding packages or anything.
Do any of you guys have experience with this matter? We try to disavow the links but it takes too much time and we will never manage to disavow 100% of all links.
Examples are www.keukensduitsland.nl and www.m2beveiliging.nl
Hope anyone has experience and maybe even solutions for this matter.
Thanks!
-
Hi Russ,
Did you read the question? We can't find out where the links are coming from....
-
The two sites you presented are wholly different cases...
1. Sorry, but m2beveiliging.nl was hacked...
Look at the backlinks you are receiving. They point to pages like...
http://www.m2beveiliging.nl/aysg/kaa3g0wy.html
Which no longer exist. But if we check the Google cache, we can see they are filled with
The content translates to ... "Adidas soccer spike type, Adidas spike baseball order non-standard-size Free Shipping!"
2. http://www.keukensduitsland.nl/ on the other hand received a ton of directory links. I dont know if you, an employee, or the client themselves did this, but is doubtful that it was intended to be malicious. All of these directory links originated in the last few weeks, matching up with the search in referring domains and links.
-
I've uploaded some data of one of our new customers. They used to have only 6 backlinks. Within 1 day, the backlinkcount raised to about 50. All from spammy directories form China, Ukrain, Brazil, etc.
So I'm talking about a real spam problem, not the typical spammy links in Analytics, copy of content or just a few % of all links referring to the website.
An example of a linking domain: http://dokuo30.kuronowish.com/cgi-bin/oekaki/up.cgi
I tend to think it has something to do with 404 page's being indexed.
-
Yep, the links are there. It's not the typical Analytics spam
-
We all get 'some' spam but I'm talking about loads of links. Ahrefs tells us that only 8% of the links is from Holland. It's a Dutch website and most of the links come from Ukrain, China and Russia.
-
Hi,
I agree with the guys. As soon as the website gets popular, authoritative and valuable, other websites tend to simply copy stuff that you produce, including whole paragraphs of content and sometimes they don't even bother removing the links from the content.
Try to disavow as many as you can, but don't spend all of your time on it. As Dmitrii said, it is important to keep your spam score low. Hence, try to focus on building quality links that will easily outweight spammy ones.
Thanks,
-
I have a domain that has been on the web for a long time. It has hundreds of thousands of these links. If you visit the pages where the links are placed they are rubbish directory-listings or mashup pages that contain paragraphs grabbed here and there from sites across the web. The websites that host these pages are spam.
I have never disavowed any of them. I don't worry a bit about them. The only thing that I have done is add code to my htaccess file that strips parameters off of them. Google has a service in Webmaster Tools that allows you to exclude parameters, but I'd rather handle it myself with htaccess than rely on Google to do it for me.
-
Have you checked those pages to make sure there are actually links to your site on the referral path page you're seeing in analytics?
If they don't actually have links to your clients sites then it's possible they are just spamming your analytics. There are several ways to exclude this data from your analytics though. https://moz.com/blog/how-to-stop-spam-bots-from-ruining-your-analytics-referral-data
Hope that helps.
-
Hi there.
Well, it's quite usual for this to happen. It happens to every website, no matter what you do. Now, there is no really way to fix besides disavowing. And yes, it takes time and effort. However, here is a thing. Unless those spammy websites' backlinks are significant part of your backlink profile (i'd say more than 3-5%), it wouldn't affect your website "health". You can look at MOZ's spam score. If it's less than 3 - you're good.
So, to sum up - no, there is no way to fix it, but disavow. And the way to "fix" it without fixing it is to have large backlink profile with lots of quality backlinks to ensure that even if you have those spammy links, their share would be so small, it wouldn't matter to search engines.
Hope this makes sense.
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
-
Value of Links? What is each link worth?
Morning Everyone, I just had this thought and wondered what everyone's opinions were in terms of link value in monetary terms. We'll assume for the purposes of this that the links come from contextually relevant sites and that the sites in question have got the Moz DA from being high quality and have a good quality incoming link profile. Its a bit of a theoretical question, but i guess imagine if the only way you could get links was to pay for them, what would they be worth to you. This is link value for SEO purposes, they will have in addition value from traffic from good sites, that no doubt varies wildly depending on topic. I assume everyone also agrees on: The first link from a domain is the most valuable High DA sites are worth more than low ones. So could anyone who has an opinion on the link value suggest a monetary value for links. Its really just using a monetary amount to see how best to target my time. Here is my example of what might be expected, but I am hoping people with more knowledge will perhaps correct it. DA Rating First Link 2nd-5th Link 5th-10th Link 10Plus Links 5 $5 $2 $1 $0 15 $7 $3 $2 $1 25 $25 $10 $5 $2 35 $45 $20 $7 $3 45 $65 $30 $11 $4 55 $95 $45 $19 $5 65 $200 $100 $45 $6 75 $350 $120 $65 $9 85 $700 $240 $95 $15 95 $1100 $450 $200 $30
Link Building | | wellandpower1 -
What is the best way to remove a link that redirects to a spammy site?
I've got a new client and I'm trying to clean up their backlinks. There are several links that all redirect to this spam site http://www.expert-lender.com. All of the websites appear to be real, i.e. http://www.sammorganhomes.com/ but the actual links i.e http://www.sammorganhomes.com/wp-fav/backup/supplement/semitruckleasing.html are in a sub-directory and redirect to the spam site. I don't know if these links were from the previous SEO company or if they paid someone to create these or if these sites have been hacked. Can anyone tell me what is going on here and what should I tell these site owners?
Link Building | | Total-Design-Shop0 -
Are links with space considered to be the same as links with %20?
I wonder if Google would consider those three links to be the same? http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test+page.html
Link Building | | lucek0 -
Reciprocal links
Are they worth anything, if they are from relevant sites? I'm I better off avoiding linking back wherever possible?
Link Building | | littlesthobo0 -
A link with "return false"- OSE sees as a No Followed Link
Hello, I couldn't find a clear answer to the impact on SEO for a link written in this way: [" class="expert_info" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">](w</span>ww.yourwebsite.com<span style=) [Does the "return false" act as a "no follow"? I came across this in our link data in Open Site Explorer which lists these links all as "no follows." However, an engineer I spoke to said that it shouldn't impact search engine behavior. Any ideas? Thank you in advance! -Sarah K.](w</span>ww.yourwebsite.com<span style=)
Link Building | | OneMedical0 -
Linking to sites that link to porn or casinos, my site getting penalized?
I have some link exchanges with some sites to get web traffic but when i ran the bad neighborhood link checker, i found that one site links to some casinos and another site has one link to a porn site. Is this getting me penalized? should i remove the links to these sites? Thanks, Ron
Link Building | | Ron100 -
Does the ratio of external nofollow links to external "do follow" links matter in terms of SERPs ranking?
My site has an external link nofollow:dofollow ratio of approximately 1:1 That is, there are about as many nofollow external links as "do follow" external links. I have an impression that the ratio of no-follow to "do follow" links is a factor in the way that our website shows up in SERPs. I have the impression from reading a variety of sources, and from looking at Seomoz, that calculate "trust" factors as if they mattered (in SERPs), that seem to value a relatively low nofollow:dofollow ratio. Am I correct about that? Thanks,
Link Building | | tcolling
Tim PS - I don't know whether or not this matters, but our website is at: www.trustworthycare.com - Tim0 -
Link Building Ideas?
Hi everyone, I am currently working on a site where people can buy mail-order bagels, i.e. the bagels are shipped via postal mail. It's a good alternative for places that have no good bagel stores nearby, especially in small, rural towns. I am about to launch a link-building campaign for the website, but am a little stuck as to where to begin. My first thought was guest posting, but it seems like the vast majority of food blog owners are very protective of their blogs and rarely, if ever, allow guest posts. I also thought about doing sponsored reviews (i.e. sending mommy bloggers free samples in exchange for a review), but that's essentially a paid link, i.e. a no-no. There are of course generic web directories, but those only get you so far, and article marketing is out of the question (too spammy). Was hoping I might be able to bounce off some ideas off of you all. Any thoughts? Thank you in advance for whatever tips/ideas you might be able to share 🙂 Lukas
Link Building | | TampaSEO0