Drastic surge of link spam in Webmaster Tools' Link Profile

[Hermski]

Hello all

I am trying to get some insights/advice on a recent as well as drastic increase in link spam within my Webmaster Tools' Link Profile.

Before I get into more detail, I would like to point out, that I did find some relevant MOZ community posts addressing this type of issue. However, my link spam situation may have to be approached from a different angle, as it concerns two sites at the same time and somewhat in the same way.

Basically, starting in July 2017, from one day to the other, a multitude of domains (50+) is generating link spam (at least 200 links a month and counting) and to cut a long story short, I believe the sites are hacked. This is because most of the domain names sound legit and load the homepage, but all the sub-pages linking to my site contain "adult" gibberish.

In addition, it is interesting to see, that each sub-page follows the same pattern, scraping content from my homepage including the on-page links - that generate the spammy backlinks to my sites - while inserting the adult gibberish in between (basically it's all just text and looks like as if a bot is at work).

Therefore, it's not like my link is being inserted "specifically" into pages or to spam me with the same anchor text over and over. So, I am not sure what kind of link spam this really is (or the purpose of it).

Some more background information:

As mentioned above, this link spam (attack?) is affecting two of my sites and it started off pretty much simultaneously (in addition, the sites focus on a competitive niche). The interesting detail is, that one site suffered a manual penalty years ago, which has been lifted (a disavowal file exists and no further link building campaigns have been undertaken after the cleanup), while the other site has never seen any link building efforts - it is clean, yet the same type of spam is flooding that websites' link profile too.

In the webmaster forums the overall opinion is, that Google ignores web spam. All well. However, I am still concerned, that the dozens of spammy links pointing to the website "with a history" may pose a risk (more spam on a daily basis on both sites though). At the same time I wonder, why the other "clean" site is facing the same issue.

The clean sites' rankings do not appear to be impacted, while the other website has seen some drops, but I am still observing the situation. Therefore, should I be concerned for both sites or even start an endless disavowal campaign on the site with a history?

PS: This MOZ article appears to advice so: https://moz.com/blog/do-we-still-need-to-disavow-penguin

"In most cases, sites that have a history of collecting unnatural links tend to continue to collect them. If this is the case for you, then it’s best to disavow those on a regular basis (either monthly or quarterly) so that you can avoid getting another manual action."

What is your opinion?

Sorry for the long post and many thanks in advance for any help/insight.

[rkdc]

Hi James,

You are saying do not add to it more than 4 times, but what if they appear every single day.

[rkdc]

Here is my 50 cents to fighting this problem.  In addition to google disavow tool, do the same for Bing through Bing webmaster disavow tool.

[Hermski]

Hi James

Many thanks for your answer/opinion.

Yes, I am considering disavowing the links for the domain, which had a manual penalty before. Although, if anyone from the search engine spam team was to check the link profile, he/she should see for him/herself, that these links could never be built on purpose. Then again, of course there are the algorithms too, that can mess with the rankings...

I just wonder, if it's such a good idea to also upload a disavowal file for the website that has been clean from the start. The tool is always mentioned as a last resort, IF you have been building many links (good or bad) on a certain domain.

If you don't mind me asking: Have your rankings been impacted by the negative SEO you are facing? If so, has updating the disavowal file (which must be getting massive) made any changes for the better?

Thanks again and all the best!