Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?

    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.

    Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?

    Technical SEO
    4
    6
    2137
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • usDragons
      usDragons Subscriber last edited by

      My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html

      The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links.

      Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there.

      The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞

      Thanks in advance for any assistance!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • rjonesx. 0
        rjonesx. 0 last edited by

        Hey, this is Russ here at Moz.

        Do the redirects point to the homepage or to the current URL? For example, does the http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html redirect to http://newsite.com or http://newsite.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html

        If it does redirect to the same URL on newsite.com, I would try using wildcard robots.txt entries to simply block the offending content altogether. For example, if all the spam is off the styless.asp page, you could simply block styless.asp?* in your robots.txt and prevent Google from ever crawling those spammy links.

        However, if you are redirecting everything to the homepage, I think you will need to go back to the old webmaster and figure something out. While Google is great at detecting spam, once you are under a penalty it can be difficult to recover. No one is perfect, including Google, and you don't want to be one of their "mistakes".

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • iQi
          iQi @usDragons last edited by

          Hi usDragons,

          Having too many crawl errors is not healthy. Usually a few number of pages are deleted every now and then, but having hundreds or thousands of 404s means something is wrong with the website, and from your description it's obvious that something is wrong. In fact, redirecting unnatural/thin content pages to your website can harm it, as its in a way links that send traffic (through 301 redirects) to your website, so you need to disavow these.

          Because you have no control over the website, you should treat it as an external site that is spamming you. So don't think of it as a site that you own but have no access to.

          The disavow tool requires you to create a .TXT file that have an explanation of why you disavow each group of domains/links. So you should explain that these are bad links that send you traffic, and you tried to "request" deleting these links and you got no help from whoever controls it, which i guess is true in your case.

          Try to explain everything in your comments (in the .TXT file) (See attached)

          Good luck and I hope I could help in anyway.

          link-disavow-file-example-1024x288.jpg

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • usDragons
            usDragons Subscriber @iQi last edited by

            Thanks. We've been through this bad link cleanup process before, but not this kind of situation. Some advice I read said Google doesn't care about those 404s because it's obviously unrelated spam, but I would think having so many crawl errors can't be healthy for the site and I don't like the idea of redirecting them to the new site.

            Now the trick is we don't have control of the old site, so we can't verify it in Google Search Console. The old site is just a redirect to the current site, so there is no website to work with. Looks like the disavow tool wants you to select a website property, but we can only use the new domain name. Will the disavow tool understand that these bad links to the old domain are redirected to the new domain name?

            iQi 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • GlobeRunner
              GlobeRunner last edited by

              usDragons, the best way to deal with these links is to use Google's Disavow Links tool to disavow them.

              First, you need to identify all of the links, and you an do that by downloading all your links from Open Site Explorer, Majestic.com, ahrefs.com, and Google Search Console. Combine the lists and remove the duplicates.

              You'll want to manually review all of them, make a list of the ones you want Google to ignore, then upload a list of the domain names using Google's disavow links tool. Google has more info about their disavow tool here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • iQi
                iQi last edited by

                Hi there,

                Seems to me that you should follow the standard process when you have unnatural links. You should:

                1. Compile a list of links and domains.
                2. Contact Webmasters of these domains, requesting removal of links (include the pages where these links are added in your email)
                3. Save all your sent and received emails to/from Webmasters
                4. Ones that don't reply to you, email them one more time a couple of weeks later
                5. Create a disavow file for domains that you couldn't get links removed from, state the reason and dates of emails.
                6. Submit the disavow file to the disavow tools

                I know its not straight froward nor fast, but thats how you maintain the public link profile of any website since the Penguin Updates started.

                I hope it helps

                usDragons 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • DGAU

                  Can I use a 301 redirect to pass 'back link' juice to a different domain?

                  Hi, I have a backlink from a high DA/PA Government Website pointing to www.domainA.com which I own and can setup 301 redirects on if necessary. However my www.domainA.com is not used and has no active website (but has hosting available which can 301 redirect). www.domainA.com is also contextually irrelevant to the backlink. I want the Government Website link to go to www.domainB.com - which is both the relevant site and which also should be benefiting from from the seo juice from the backlink. So far I have had no luck to get the Government Website's administrators to change the URL on the link to point to www.domainB.com. Q1: If i use a 301 redirect on www.domainA.com to redirect to www.domainB.com will most of the backlink's SEO juice still be passed on to www.domainB.com? Q2: If the answer to the above is yes -  would there be benefit to taking this a step further and redirect www.domainA.com to a deeper directory on www.domianB.com which is even more relevant?
                  ie. redirect www.domainA.com to www.domainB.com/categoryB - passing the link juice deeper.

                  Technical SEO | | DGAU
                  0
                • shawnbeaird

                  301 Redirect for multiple links

                  I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old 
                  domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
                  domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
                  domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New 
                  domain.com/urban 
                  domain.com/urban/tempe 
                  domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale

                  Technical SEO | | shawnbeaird
                  0
                • DanielKiely6

                  Hreflang tags with link to redirect loop

                  Hi guys, I'm having a bit of an issue on a client site that I'm hoping someone can help me with. Basically, the client has two domains, one serving users in the Republic of Ireland (http://www.americanholidays.com), showing Euro prices, and the other serving users in Northern Ireland (http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/) showing £ prices. The issue I'm having is that the URL for the Northern Ireland page has a 302 on it and goes through another 2/3 301 redirects until it resolves as http://www.americanholidays.com, however it does then show the £ prices. You can see the redirect chain here: http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker/?page=single&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanholidays.com%2Fgb_en%2F&useragent=1&typeProtocol=11 The homepage is using the Hreflang tag, and pointing search engines to serve the http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/ page to users using EN-GB as their language. The page is also using a self-referencing canonical, which I believe may negate the whole Hreflang tag anyway? My main question is - is the fact that the Hreflang for the gb_en page is pointing to a chain of redirects negatively affecting it? (I understand too many redirects are never good). Also, is the canonical negating the Hreflang? Any help/info would be great as I just can't get my head around it! Thanks guys Daniel

                  Technical SEO | | DanielKiely6
                  0
                • One2OneDigital

                  My old URL's are still indexing when I have redirected all of them, why is this happening?

                  I have built a new website and have redirected all my old URL's to their new ones but for some reason Google is still indexing the old URL's. Also, the page authority for all of my pages has dropped to 1 (apart from the homepage) but before they were between 12 to 15. Can anyone help me with this?

                  Technical SEO | | One2OneDigital
                  0
                • Liggins

                  Updating inbound links vs. 301 redirecting the page they link to

                  Hi everyone, I'm preparing myself for a website redesign and finding conflicting information about inbound links and 301 redirects. If I have a URL (we'll say website.com/website) that is linked to by outside sources, should I get those outside sources to update their links when I change the URL to website.com/webpage? Or is it just as effective from a link juice perspective to simply 301 redirect the old page to the new page? Are there any other implications to this choice that I may want to consider? Thanks!

                  Technical SEO | | Liggins
                  0
                • artdivision

                  How can I block incoming links from a bad web site ?

                  Hello all, We got a new client recently who had a warning from Google Webmasters tools for manual soft penalty. I did a lot of search and I found out one particular site that sounds roughly 100k links to one page and has been potentialy a high risk site. I wish to block those links from coming in to my site but their webmaster is nowhere to be seen and I do not want to use the disavow tool. Is there a way I can use code to our htaccess file or any other method? Would appreciate anyone's immediate response. Kind Regards

                  Technical SEO | | artdivision
                  0
                • bewoldt

                  How to create a delayed 301 redirect that still passes juice?

                  My company is merging one of our sites into another site. At first I was just going to create a 301 redirect from domainA.com to domainB.com but we decided that would be too confusing for customers expecting to see domainA.com so we want to create a page that says something like "We've moved. please visit domainB.com or be redirected after 10 seconds". My question is, how do I create a redirect that has a delay and will this still pass the same amount of juice that a regular 301 redirect would? I've heard that meta refreshes are considered spammy by Google.

                  Technical SEO | | bewoldt
                  0
                • gallantc

                  Starting a new product, should we use new domain or subdomain

                  I'm working with a company that has a high page rank on it's main domain and is looking to launch a new business / product offering.  They are evaluating either creating a subdomain or launching a brand new domain.  In either case, their current site will link contextually to the new site.  Is there one method that would be better for SEO than the other? The new business / product is related to the main offering, but may appeal to different / new customers.  The new business / product does need it's own homepage and will have a different conversion funnel than the existing business.

                  Technical SEO | | gallantc
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.