Sudden spike in backlinks - should we disavow?
-
A kitchen remodelling firm in Australia has noticed a big increase in spammy backlinks to their website since April this year. Majestic shows that referring domains and backlinks during that period have gone up from 400 domains (10,000 links) to 1,070 domains (47,000+ links). About 100 are sitewide links.
The vast majority are "follow" links directed at image files on the site - ending in .jpg. Ahrefs now shows the number one anchor text (23%) is a period (full stop) "." Most of the links come from .us domains, eg:
cowboysr.us
blackphoto.us
alldpic.comGoogle Search Console isn't showing any of these links, there's no penalty on the site and there's been no noticeable change in rankings (if anything organic clicks went up over May, June, July) ... so we're wondering what action - if any - should be taken.
Are these links likely to have a negative impact on the site and homepage? Should we disavow these links?
Appreciate any advice. Thanks.
-
Thanks Igor - none of these sites look legit. All have low to non-existent metrics like trust flow. We'll go through the list and disavow.
Any thoughts on what the purpose of these scraped image links are - is this a form of negative SEO?
-
Even if flow metrics on those links are good, the sudden spike is already a red flag for search engines.
If those links aren't organic get rid of them.
I'd get a list of referring domains and bulk check the domain metrics (age, pr, trust flow and etc) and if there's nothing good - get rid of them.
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
-
Which backlink is better for increasing my MOZ DA ?
Hello Moz Community, I have sports niche website bongdatructuyen.site. I am in process of link building for my website. May i know what should i do to increase DA of my site? Is there any way to increase my site Authority through increasing DA of my site and Keyword difficulty? Thank you !
Link Building | | gogoanimetp0 -
Backlinking and Redirect links
Can anyone properly explain that whats the basic differnce between redirects? and backlinks? my site lottery sambad is getting some 301 redirects, is that good or bad??
Link Building | | Mubashir_Baloch0 -
Existing links on domain with previous history - keep or disavow?
Our client has bought a domain with a history for a different type of venue in another location. Inbound links exist related to this prevous venue - should we disavow these?
Link Building | | designlobby0 -
Backlinks from non-relevant site
There's a forum I used to participate in that allows you to include a link to your website in your signature block. I have over 500 posts in the forum so that provides a lot of backlinks to my website. However, I recently decided to remove my website link from my signature for two reasons: The forum is 95-99% dead. Hardly anyone uses it anymore. BTW, the website that houses the forum is still popular within is niche (articles, etc). Just the forum appears to be dead. The website and its forum really have no connection whatsoever to my business. I'm in a completely different niche. However, I have no idea if I've made the right decision. Will removing my signature and the backlinks hurt my site? Or will it help it since the other site really isn't related to mine? Thanks for any thoughts on this!
Link Building | | emh19690 -
Backlink lag time or not indexed?
I've looked through a few questions relating to backlinks not showing up in Open Site Explorer and I've got the same problem. I want to understand whether my backlinks aren't showing in SEOmoz due to a lag time (some say 5 - 8weeks) or because google hasn't indexed them.
Link Building | | EdoubleD
For example: http://www.marquee-hire-directory.com/oxfordshire_marqueehire_2.html Or http://www.weddingdayangel.com/listings/katalystic-events/ My link is http://www.katalysticevents.com Am I doing something wrong here?0 -
How do I see competitor backlinks with SEOmoz?
I want to get a report on all the back links to some of our competitors. How can I filter out competitor back links that also back link to our site? Does SEOmoz have instruction and/or a video on how to increase back links? Where?
Link Building | | lbohen0 -
Wikipedia Backlinks
Does wikipedia nofollow backinks help your site to rank higher in google? I got a niche related backlink from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_(film) The page has pr 5... does this backlink count? (My backlink is in the bottom of the page anchored "Movies 2012")
Link Building | | prunarevic0 -
Backlink booster - boosts and helps to index links?
Hello all, We are using a tool called backlink booster that works in the following way: you view a page with a backlink to your site click on a boost link saved in favourites the link is pinged to rss directories and web 2.0 sites The idea is to get your links indexed faster. Has anyone used this or something like this and had any benefit from it? Thanks Shehzad.
Link Building | | Gareth_Cartman0