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.
Do links on Reference.com and Ask.com count as backlinks?
-
Hi there
Just had a quick question about links on Reference.com or Ask.com.
I have been looking at my competitors link profiles to get ideas of who and where I should/could be linking from. One of my main competitors seems to have links on Reference.com and Ask.com which are being listed in there profile. Reference.com are dofollow. Our site is also appearing on these sites, but the links are being listed under our profile. We have been up and running for more that 3 years now. The obviously have high DR and I think must be a contributing factor to their rank, having looked at other links in their profile.
It seems strange because I thought these sites are effectively search engines and therefore wouldn't count towards your backlink profile?
Can anyone explain? Would be most grateful if someone can.
Many thanks in advance.
Clojo
-
Hi Martijn
Thanks for your response. That's really useful and makes a lot of sense. I will aim for more relevant links.
For a legal website (no win no fee solicitors - specifically employment) would you have any suggestions? I am relatively new to this and find that with it being a fairly mundane niche, I am struggling to find legitimate links. We have published interesting content and posted youtube videos, but getting the links is proving a tricky task. Completely appreciate that this is tricky for everyone, but if you have any advice I would be really grateful.
Many thanks in advance.
Clojo
-
Hi Clojo,
Just like any other backlink the links from Reference and Ask.com will have value but I doubt for your competitors they will make the actual difference in your rankings versus their rankings. As you've noticed their Domain Authority is very high but in the end they also link to hundreds of thousands of other sites which will eventually also decrease the value of a link from them. What I would be focused on is getting more links from relevant sources and I wouldn't consider these two sites one of them although it would be a nice to have to get them.
Martijn.
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
-
Are backlinks in the form of Footer or Sitewide links safe?
Hi There! Some of our competitors are using sitewide links in the header, footer or sidebar…is it ok to use these type of backlinks to increase overall backlinks. The site-wide links increase backlinks dramatically. Thanks Malik Zakaria
Link Building | | mzakaria0 -
Directory Listings no longer counted in Backlinks?
Interesting situation when I looked at Google Search Console this morning, I found that back-links from directories had dropped off and am wondering if anyone else is seeing this? Specifically, I am in Australia and had links from Yellowpages.com.au and Truelocal.com.au to my primary domain. Interestingly, Yellow Pages had gone a bit crazy recently in that the number of links to my site seemed to balloon exponentially from about 50 when I first listed to 700+ to 1500+ to 1800+ and then the balloon popped. Truelocal in contrast was only ever showing the 1 link. There have not been any changes from my end, and I only ever had one listing in these directories so not sure what generated all these extra links in Yellow Pages. Anyone else in Australia noticed a sudden drop off in Google Backlinks from Directories? If not it may just be a temporary blip.
Link Building | | Excal0 -
What count as irrelevant links?
I recently had a link audit done for a client selling mechanical parts. This client supplies to the mining and construction industries. The link audit showed all links on mining or construction sites as irrelevant. When I questioned about it, they explained that my client is in the mechanical parts industry and therefor Google would penalize me as those count as irrelevant links. I don't agree, but need an expert opinion. Can anyone help?
Link Building | | seocoza0 -
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 -
Link Exchange
Hi everyone, I just started working for a client in a new niche. After reviewing the backlink profiles of his competitors I can see that the top sites are using a ton of link exchanges. They are from really spammy sites too. The kind that will link to anyone that provides a link back. Anyone else seeing much of this?
Link Building | | SixTwoInteractive0 -
Do Local Listings like Yellow Pages and yelp count for backlinks??
I am wondering if adding your company with url on a local listing like yellowpages.com, yelp.com, merchantCircle.com, etc. actually counts as a "backlink"? I'm thinking it is not considered a link because I have never seen one listing in Open site explorer, either that, or it is considered a backlink, just not one important enough for open site explorer to show it. Does anyone know for sure??
Link Building | | DTOSI0 -
Etsy.com --Getting link juice through other pages on search results?
My sister has a store page on etsy.com where she sells home made crafts. And I want to help her rank higher on google with some of the other etsy stores. So i started to look at the other etsy store pages that are ranking well on google and found that they have a page authority between 48 to 52. So i looked at the backlinks of the ones ranking well on google with high page authority and found that many of their best links came from the internal search results page on etsy.com, and some only had one link from just an arbitrary etsy.com search page. I'm thinking this is because another product being listed on the seach page has a high page authority which then passes some of its link juice onto every other product on the page. But what is interesting is products are always being sold or getting added so even though you are on a search results page that happens to benifit from the link juice of another product the next time the page gets crawled you will be on a different search page. So i am thinking in order to maintain high page authority to you just have to have a lot of products listed so that there is a greater likely hood that you will find yourself on the same search page as another high authority page. I have not been doing SEO very long so i would love to hear what others think. I really have no idea, am i on the right track with this? (edited post) Thanks
Link Building | | doug5650 -
Links on the same keyword
When is linking from one particular keyword to much. At what point could link building from one keyword be considered spam and potentially delist a site ? Is it possible for a site to be delisted for having to many links from the same keyword ? Heard linking from the website name is more important following recent changes. I try and link from a selection of 3 to 4 keywords. Thanks for your help
Link Building | | onlinemediadirect0