New un-natural links to my website that i didnt create.. and lots of them!
-
Hi There
In the last few months my search organic traffic has gone down and i am looking into links to my website through webmaster tools.
It looks like there is some sort of automated robot that is building new links to my website at a rate of 5 per week! All are spammy, directory links. It looks like this has been going on for a few months now.
I have no idea how to find and stop this. But i have a feeling this might explain why my traffic is down.
ALSO non of these links are in MOZ Open site explorer or Majestic SEO.. they are just showing as just discovered in webmaster tools. I am assuming that means its pretty accurate ?!
ALL help is appreciated! Thanks!
Paula
-
Hi,
The guys here have already left some great comments. It's hard to guess why / where the links are coming from without seeing them, but I agree with William that five per week seems low for an automated bot. Those things usually do thousands, unless it's being run by someone who doesn't want you to notice the activity. Either way, a person is probably behind the activity at its root - do you have any idea who might want to maliciously hurt your website?
There is a possibility that the activity is not being carried out in order to directly hurt you, but that your site is part of someone's larger negative SEO attack against someone else. Some negative SEO attacks will target a business (let's say Nordstrom's, for purpose of example). They'll point thousands of links to http://shop.nordstrom.com/ from some terrible pages, but will sometimes mix in links to other sites to muddy the waters a bit. Are there any other sites linked to from the same pages as yours? Any trends you can spot?
Moz and OSE sometimes miss the real underbelly of the internet - the stuff that's available if you know where to look for it (and Google usually knows where to look for it) but for the purposes of regular marketing / SEO, is fairly irrelevant. My former agency built its own backlink analysis tool and did the same thing. We could do deep crawls to find this crap if we needed to (and so can Moz) but it's thankfully rare that situations like this come along that require such a deep look at links. Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs, etc. will show you links from the part of the internet that they believe counts. Frustrating when things like this happen, but if you are finding these in WMT then you should have sufficient information to go through with a disavowal and / or reconsideration request.
-
A disavow report is a must. Also make sure there's no manual action message in Webmasters that may require a reconsideration request.
Definitely contact all the webmasters to request removal and document the requests, they will be useful for the reconsideration if needed.
If it was a bot, it seems like there would be a lot more than 5 links a week. A number that low looks more like someone manually adding things, which could be a sign of negative SEO tactics by a competitor (if it's not an SEO company you hired that is just bad at their job).
-
My first course of action would be to start using the Google link disavow tool, then I would try to make contact with the website(s) and ask them to stop.
-
Have you ever hired an SEO company that may be responsible? If these links appear spammy, request to the site's webmaster to remove, document and disavow asap.
Also, why do you believe it's an automated robot? Is the post the same?
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
-
Dodgy links across top ranking sites in a certain industry - Could this be negative link building?
Hi, I've noticed repeated low value / high spam backlinks directing to a site that I manage, and despite disavowing, new links showing similar anchor text keep appearing. See sample in the table below: <colgroup><col width="514"> <col width="407"> <col width="364"></colgroup>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Alexanders
| biz.mfso.info/files/images/vertical-blinds-for-bifold-doors.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers vertical blinds for bifold doors |
| nmr.mfso.info/files/images/mould-on-vertical-blinds.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds |
| nmr.mfso.info/files/images/install-vertical-blinds.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers install vertical blinds |
| nmr.mfso.info/files/images/cutting-vertical-blinds.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers cutting vertical blinds |
| rre.uere.info/files/images/high-quality-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers high quality vertical blinds rre.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers high quality vertical blinds |
| dig.uere.info/files/images/mould-on-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds dig.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds |
| dig.uere.info/files/images/mould-on-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds dig.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds |
| hja.uere.info/files/images/cost-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers cost vertical blinds hja.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers cost vertical blinds | I also looked across 5 high ranking sites in the same industry and noticed they too have these 'dodgy' links in their backlink profiles. Could this be negative link building? If so, does anyone know a way to trace it or get it stop?0 -
Weird Links Should I Disavow?
I have noticed some weird backlinks in Google Search console and Referals for Google Analytics. For example a reddit page I have never commented on or been on has referred over 900 visitors. The page has no relevance to my site whatsoever, when I check the source code I cannot see the link, so perhaps its been removed. Also seeing links in Google Search Console from sites that are just domain name for sale type pages, and sites/pages that don't seem to exist anymore, or which redirect to others. All of these links have disappeared as well, nothing in source code . And numerous pages that used to link to 404's on my site, many domain name for sale type pages, another which makes my bitdefender plugin go crazy. And seeing common referral patterns in Google Analytics, i.e. numerous /try.php pages on different domains that presumably used to link back but which now redirect to another site. I cannot say there are thousands of these, but I guess they are causing more harm than good. My instinct is to I go through all the links I can and disavow, the link types described above, but am I safe to do so? And is it a good idea or a waste of my time? NB: I haven't built any of them.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GrouchyKids1 -
Outranked by link farm
Hello Mozzers, I got a questions about some rankings. Some of my sites always had no. 1 rankings for most of the competitive terms per niche. I recently made the change to a full responsive design for more mobile friendliness. No all of the sudden I see different competitors that are not mobile friendly outranking me for some of my most important keywords but also I see some link farm sites (like: camping.startpagina.nl) outranking me for some terms. I was under the impression that Google doesn't like link farm sites? Also I provide a lot of good unique content on my pages and my competitor does no such thing. Still for some terms he outranks me. I understand that it can't be just 1 thing and that there are a lot of factors playing a rol in the big picture but still, you must understand that this is pretty frustrating. I obey the rules of the search engines and see competitors do no such thing and still being outranked by them. Further details of this matter can be send to you in PM if you need it. Looking forward for your thoughts on this. regards Jarno
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JarnoNijzing0 -
Do I lose link juice if I have a https site and someone links to me using http instead?
We have recently launched a https site which is getting some organic links some of which are using https and some are using http. Am I losing link juice on the ones linked using http even though I am redirecting or does Google view them the same way? As most people still use http naturally will it look strange to google if I contact anyone who has given us a link and ask them to change to https?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Lisa-Devins0 -
Are links from directories good or bad?
I've done a lot of competitive link analysis lately and found that a lot of my competitors links for a certain keyword are coming from low quality directory sites and they're outranking my site. This leads me to my question which may or may not have an answer(I at least hope it fuels a good discussion)... Are links from directory sites good or bad for SEO?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TylerReardon0 -
Backlinks from foreign language websites?
I have faced an interesting situation about linkbuilding strategy. Currently I am doing SEO for one of my clients located in United Arab Emirates, so accordingly he has a website in English language. And keywords are in English. So what do you think, can the links placed on Russian language websites pass some link juice (make a positive impact on rankings) and in which language (Russian or English) should be the text surrounding the keyword? Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Russel
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | smokin_ace0 -
Does anyone have any suggestions on removing spammy links?
I have some clients that recently got hit by "Penguin" they have several less than desireable backlinks that could be the issue? Does anyone have any suggestions on getting these removed? What are the odds that a webmaster on these spammy sites are going to remove them, and is it worth the time and effort?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin3 -
How does Google rank a websites search queries
Hello, I can't seem to find an answer anywhere. I was wondering how a websites search query keyword string url can rank above other page results that have stronger backlinks. The domain is usually strong, but that url with the .php?search=keyword just seems like it doesn't fit in. How does Google index those search string pages? Is it based off of traffic alone to that url? Because those urls typically don't have backlinks, right? Has anyone tried to rank their websites search query urls ever? I'm just a little curious about it. Thanks everyone. Jesse
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | getrightmusic0