Hi all,
I was recently doing some competitive analysis on external links/DA and came across something peculiar. A competitor of ours had their external links go from 175,179 in August to 1,141,365 in September. I've attached a screenshot showing the increase. The competitors domain authority also increased from 82 to 89 in the same time span. Has anyone else come across such a large link increase in such a short period of time, while also being rewarded for it? Obviously at first glance it seemed extremely black hat and unnatural, but I would love to be proven wrong.
Thanks!