524 links from a site unknown to me - contact then disavow?
-
Hi there,
Google Webmaster Tools 'Who links the most' informs me there are 534 links from a site called econintersect.com linking to my site and 102 links from similar pages.com.
I have never requested these links and am keen to know if they are harming my site due to poor link quality?
Simon
-
Really really helpful thanks
-
That's really really helpful thanks.
-
I'm not going to lie, the /jobs/surrey/dorking page made me giggle.
You know, it might not be the links you gained, but the links you lost. Somewhere between February and July, it appears the site lost an RSS feed link from The Guardian. Which would probably account for the /blog problem. There was also a pretty good .edu link that disappeared.
With a smaller portfolio of links, if you lose a couple of good links - you'll feel it. It also looks like there may have been a little 'guest blogging' going on. It's not uncommon for the host blog to take the content and pull the link when you're not looking. Who knows, maybe they did the site a favor?
I've been reasonably assured that the UK and US versions are comparable, and Panda updated a couple of times in May. So, the more likely culprit may be the user profiles on the site. It might be a good idea to cull anything that hasn't been used in a while.
I could see where the site might look thin in places. Perhaps you could partner with some kind of video transcription service? That seems like a logical step.
-
I figured I would add a general link suggestion before I respond.
- Before you do anything, measure twice cut once.
- Plug your domain into the Open Site Explorer and see if you can find the same links that GWMT is showing.
- Head over to Majestic and verify ownership of your website and make sure you can find these links.
After those are done, if the links are indeed there, start asking yourself these questions:
- Does the potential referral benefit your website at all?
- Is the content pertinent to your website?
- Does the website make YOU uncomfortable? (My personal theory is that if it makes you uncomfortable it's going to make Google uncomfortable. That doesn't include ethics/morals etc, I am strictly referring to the website itself.)
- Check the link itself and find which page on the other website its coming from. Are the links in various comments, pictures, some block text? How are the links themselves being displayed?
At the end of the day, it's going to be your decision of how to proceed with this. After looking a bit more thoroughly and after my 2nd cup of coffee I agree with Travis wholeheartedly. With the general trend of Panda, I personally assume it's just a matter of time before those links are worthless if they aren't already. Who knows what these guys are up to, it looks to me like a project that started well and was sorta taken over by the sea of the internet!
Hope this helps!
-
Thanks, checked GWMT and all links are linking to my home page.
-
Sure thanks for looking into: www.videorecruit.com
The site was performing well organically but nose dived on May 20th and I'm struggling to get it back up.
It's the blog that was hit hardest: www.videorecruit.com/blog
-
I looked at the site. It appears to be primarily 'curated content' with citations. But this be physics. You can't hit the wall without the wall hitting back.
There are quite a few ads as well. cough scraper cough
Though I agree he should definitely wait a moment before disavowing. It's just that the site does appear to be pretty low quality. It does seem like Panda bait. But apparently content gets curated/scraped all the time.
So it really depends upon the target site.
-
Simon,
I just wanted to jump in really quick and add my 2 cents. First off, being that this is the internet a lot of times you are going to get links from sources that you don't know, or didn't ask for. In fact, it actually violates Googles TOS to write content and send it to someone for the sole purpose of getting links. In a perfect world Google world, you would be writing content/making a website for yourself/Business, and yourself/business only. You would become an expert in your field that would attract customers, referrals, etc on its on and your website would grow from there. You would gain all of these links organically. Of course that doesn't always happen, and that's why we advertise etc.
As to your original question; are these links "hurting you". This is much more in depth question that will be hard to evaluate on a forum. I say that simply because I have run into a similar problem asking questions like this on forums. Of course everybody want's to help, and motives are good, but when you start talking about removing "500+" links from a website, the potential impact is rather large, the impact could be quite small as well.
In GWMT you can see which pages are being linked by the various websites. Go to the websites and try and find how your website is actually being linked Is it in the comments? Is it in articles? Does it look like spam? Do some research on the website in question, see if it has good stats.
The backlink profile doesn't look terrible, at first glance. There appear to be some solid websites linking to it. I would have to see how that specific website links to your website.
All I'm saying, before you take any direct advice from any of us on a forum, make sure you feel confident in what it is that you are going to do. It never hurts to get a second opinion and consult with someone else who can look deeply into your backlink profile!
Hope that helps a little.
-
I would be happy to lend an opinion. Would you supply the name of the domain(s) you own?
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
-
Massive Influx of Total Links - But External Links are Dropping?
Hey Moz Community, I was checking out the Links on one of my client's sites, as they were hit with spammy external links about a year ago, and noticed a large influx of Total Links to the site. According to Moz, external links have actually dropped over the last few months, so I can only assume they are internal links. But, I don't see how my client could add so many internal links over the past 5 months, as they don't do much besides upload new products (they're an ecommerce clothing retailer) via Shopify. They haven't added much over the past half year either. Total links were about 130K in Oct 2019; today, the site has almost 1 million. I've attached some screenshots for reference via Moz to better illustrate the issue. Appreciate any insights into this. Thank you in advance! hhCCUsk lyGltZD
Technical SEO | | EdenPrez0 -
Spammy nofollow links
Hello, One of our clients - a cleaning business - has a heck of a lot of spammy nofollow links pointing to their site. The majority of the links are from comments or 'pingbacks', most with the anchor text 'cheap nfl jerseys' or 'cyber monday ugg boots'. After researching the subject of spammy nofollow links, it seems there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the negative affect these could have on your SEO efforts. So I guess my question to the community is: if your site was suddenly hit by a plethora of spammy nofollow links, what would you do and why? Cheers, Lewis
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Should we rel=nofollow these links ?
On our website, we have a section of free to low-cost tools that could help small business increase their productivity without spending big bucks. For example, this is the page for online collaboration tools: http://www.bdc.ca/EN/solutions/smart_tech/tech_advice/free_low_cost_applications/Pages/online_collaboration_tools.aspx None of the company pay anything to be on these list. We actually do quite a lot of research to chose which should be listed there and which should not. Recently, one of the company in our lists asked us to add rel=nofollow to the link to their website because they add been targeted by a manual action on Google and want their link profile to be as clean as possible (probably too clean). My question is : Should we add rel=nofollow to all these links ? Thanks, Jean-François Monfette
Technical SEO | | jfmonfette0 -
Explain me the SEO impact when a website has more internal link compared to less internal links
A website that I am working on has more than 200 internal links (Its because of the design and various kind of service that we offer). I want to know its SEO impact. I also want to know the SEO impact when a website has less internal links compared to more internal links
Technical SEO | | BoniSatani0 -
Webmaster Tools Links To Your Site
I logged onto webmaster tools today for my site and the section 'Links to Your Site' is showing no data. Also if I search using link:babskibaby.com it only shows 1 link. My site had been showing 500+ links previously. Does anyone know why this is?
Technical SEO | | babski0 -
Google is somehow linking my two sites that aren't linked! HELP
Good Morning... In my Google webmaster account it is showing an increase of backlinks between one site i own to the other.... This should not happen, as there are no links from one site to the other. I have thoroughly checked many pages on the new site to see if i can find a backlink, but i can't. Does anyone know why this is showing like this (google now shows 50,000 links from one site to the other).. Can someone please take a look and see if you can find any link from one to the other... original site : http://goo.gl/JgK1e new site : http://goo.gl/Jb4ng Please let me know why you guys think this is happening or if you were actually able to find a link on the new site pointing back to the old site... thanks a lot
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Time on site
From what I understand, if you search for a keyword say "blue widgets" and you click on a result, and then spend 10 seconds there, and go back to google and click on a different result google will track that first result as being not very relevant. What I don't understand is what happens when (and this happens all the time, i did it today) you click on a result go to that page, find it (not?) relevant and then get distracted, phone call, or someone calls you into another room in the office. You end up accidentally leaving the tab open all day long, and never go back to the google search. So your time on site to google is what? infinity? there must be an upper cap here? at some point they must say, ok, the user is gone, time on site = our maximum = 5 minutes?!? Get me? any insight?
Technical SEO | | adriandg0 -
.CA site same as .com site - are both necessary?
Dear Friend, We representa a major national brand in the auto care industry, and they have locations in both US and Canada. There is a primary content site at .com that we have duplicated at .ca. We are hosting the .ca site on a separate IP on a server in Canada - but by in large it is the same site. (there are some minor changes we made to change US English to Canadian English - though minor. When we search Google.ca we generally see strong search results for the .com site, but rarely, if ever any evidence of rankings for the .ca site. The .com site was launched several years ago about 18 months before the .ca site. Why doesn't Google.ca show the .ca site? Is this an issue of duplicate content, and Google.ca simply shows the .com version which it knew about first? Are we wasting our time, money and efforts having both? Thanks, Tim ps. this isn't about location. We use a separate site to locate local shops, and have coordinated that well with Google Places, and when looking for local auto care - we do well in both US and Canada. The sites described above are largetl content sites.
Technical SEO | | lunavista-comm0