Can your site be penalised by backlinks?
-
Hi,
I just wanted to get some clarification on whether Google would penalize your site if you had many links coming from a questionable site.
We've been struggling with rankings for years even though we have one of the oldest sites in the industry with a good link profile and the site is well optimized.
I was looking through webmaster tools and noticed that one website links to us over 100,000 times, all to the home page. The site is www.vietnamfuntravel.com. When I looked at the site it seems that they operate a massive links exchange, I'm not sure what the history is and why they link to us so much though.
Is there any chance that this could impact us negatively? if it is then what would be the best way to deal with the situation? I could ask them to take the links down but can't guarantee they would do it quickly (if at all). Would blocking their domain from our htaccess file have the desired effect?
-
Worthwhile having a watch of this http://www.seomoz.org/blog/preventing-linkbased-penalties-whiteboard-friday
-
although backlinks can, its more onpage stuff that Google hates. Otherwise everyone would be attacking their competitors
-
This is a sensitive subject, there is a chance but you really need to look at it on a case/case bases. You would have to contact google webspam team and start an investigation. To be more of a judge I would really need to take a look at your keywords/competition as it is really case/case and your competitors could just have better quality links/content.
Oh & blocking them from your .htaccess will have no effect whatsoever on the links! If your niche is competitive it could negatively effect your ranking, so just be sure before you ask them to remove the links.
-
There is always a chance that this could cause you harm so I would proceed with caution and do what you can to remove it. On the one hand it could cause you problems, on the other, it might not. Then there is somewhere in between where it might have just a small impact.
Truth is, where best practice is concerned, that is not a healthy link so I would consider getting it removed.
Regards,
Andy
-
Hi maximise,
The url you gave is wrong, beware there is your site's url. Anyway, the vietnamfuntravel website won't give any juice, it looks really suspicious and link exchange is in the menu !
I don't think these backlinks could impact negatively your site, but I would recommend to remove them anyway. They don't give you much, and this would sanitize your backlink profile.
-
Yes, there is a very good chance that this is negatively affecting you.
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
-
Penguin recovery, no manual action. Are our EMD sites killing our brand site?
Hi guys, Our brand site (http://urban3d.net) has been seeing steady decline due to algorithm updates for the past two years. Our previous SEO company engaged in some black-hat link building which has hurt us very badly. We have recently re-launched the site, with better design, better content, and completed a disavow of hundreds of bad links. The site is technically indexed, but is still nowhere in the SERPs after months of work to recover it by our internal marketing team. The last SEO company also told us to build EMD sites for our core services, which we did: http://3dvisualisation.co.uk/ http://propertybrochure.com/ http://kitchencgi.com/ My question is - could these EMD sites now hurting us even further and stopping our main brand site from ranking? Our plan is to rescue our brand site, with a view to retiring these outlier sites. However, with no progress on the brand site, we can't afford to remove these site (which are ranking). It seems a bit chicken and egg. Any advice would be very much appreciated. Aidan, Urban 3D
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aidancass0 -
Can links be hidden?
I was wondering if anyone can help me with some advice on agency work. We have just employed a new SEO agency to conduct work on one of our websites. I took a look on OSE and GWT to see if we had any new links since the agency started working (1 month ago) but there's was nothing new. When l asked for an update as to what link building efforts had been completed last month, l was told they don't give out a list of links as it could compromise the agencies techniques. They told me that they use software to hide links form link aggregators so that our competitors don't know what we are doing. Can anybody confirm that such software exists or is this agency just taking us for a ride? If there is such a software, could this not hinder what links the search engines could see? Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
Why do some sites have several types of sitemap?
Hello Mozzers, I often seem to work on websites with several types of sitemaps - e.g. an html sitemap - an xml sitemap - almost always with identical structure and content. Does anybody know the thinking behind this? Currently looking at site with php and xml sitemap sitting alongside one another. I'm guessing one is for site users to read (and also to aid indexing) and the other for search engines, to further aid indexing. Does Google have any preferences? Is there anything you should be wary of re: Google, if there are multiple sitemaps?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
How to make an AJAX site crawlable when PushState and #! can't be used?
Dear Mozzers, Does anyone know a solution to make an AJAX site crawlable if: 1. You can't make use of #! (with HTML snapshots) due to tracking in Analytics 2. PushState can't be implemented Could it be a solution to create two versions of each page (one without #!, so campaigns can be tracked in Analytics & one with #! which will be presented to Google)? Or is there another magical solution that works as well? Any input or advice is highly appreciated! Kind regards, Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ConversionMob0 -
Strange situation - Started over with a new site. WMT showing the links that previously pointed to old site.
I have a client whose site was severely affected by Penguin. A former SEO company had built thousands of horrible anchor texted links on bookmark pages, forums, cheap articles, etc. We decided to start over with a new site rather than try to recover this one. Here is what we did: -We noindexed the old site and blocked search engines via robots.txt -Used the Google URL removal tool to tell it to remove the entire old site from the index -Once the site was completely gone from the index we launched the new site. The new site had the same content as the old other than the home page. We changed most of the info on the home page because it was duplicated in many directory listings. (It's a good site...the content is not overoptimized, but the links pointing to it were bad.) -removed all of the pages from the old site and put up an index page saying essentially, "We've moved" with a nofollowed link to the new site. We've slowly been getting new, good links to the new site. According to ahrefs and majestic SEO we have a handful of new links. OSE has not picked up any as of yet. But, if we go into WMT there are thousands of links pointing to the new site. WMT has picked up the new links and it looks like it has all of the old ones that used to point at the old site despite the fact that there is no redirect. There are no redirects from any pages of the old to the new at all. The new site has a similar name. If the old one was examplekeyword.com, the new one is examplekeywordcity.com. There are redirects from the other TLD's of the same to his (i.e. examplekeywordcity.org, examplekeywordcity.info), etc. but no other redirects exist. The chances that a site previously existed on any of these TLD's is almost none as it is a unique brand name. Can anyone tell me why Google is seeing the links that previously pointed to the old site as now pointing to the new? ADDED: Before I hit the send button I found something interesting. In this article from dejan SEO where someone stole Rand Fishkin's content and ranked for it, they have the following line: "When there are two identical documents on the web, Google will pick the one with higher PageRank and use it in results. It will also forward any links from any perceived ’duplicate’ towards the selected ‘main’ document." This may be what is happening here. And just to complicate things further, it looks like when I set up the new site in GA, the site owner took the GA tracking code and put it on the old page. (The noindexed one that is set up with a nofollowed link to the new one.) I can't see how this could affect things but we're removing it. Confused yet? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0 -
Similar Sites on Same Class C
Hi there, I asked a similar question a while ago - please pardon the dupe. I figured being more specific may help. Here's the scenario: I have two customers which sell very similar products. They both host with me so they are both on the same class C of ip addresses. Content on sites is similar due to the nature of the business/industry. There are no links between the two sites - they do not link to one another The HTML is about 50% the same, content near zero other than site structure. They have similar category structures. Question - could being on the same Class C adversely effect rankings of either. One site did particularly well until Panda came around and it's sloooowly coming back. Some advise has been given to the client that the IPs being on the same Class C is killing rankings. I am trying to either validate or refute the claim. All help/feedback appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisInColorado0 -
How can I penalise my own site in an international search?
Perhaps penalise isn't the right word, but we have two ecommerce sites. One at .com and one at .com.au. For the com.au site we would like only that site to appear for our brand name search in google.com.au. For the .com site we would like only that site to appear for our brand name search in google.com. I've targeted each site in the respective country in Google Webmaster Tools and published the Australian and English address on the respective site. What I'm concerned about is people on Google.com.au searching our brand and clicking through to the .com site. Is there anything I can do to lower the ranking of my .com site in Google.com.au?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Benj250 -
Can your site be penalized for changing the url structure and if so how long till you get back?
I'm doing well on yahoo and bing and the only reason I can think of for why I'm not showing on Google is because I changed the url structure a couple of months ago. I have solid on and off page done for this site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deciph220