Uncontrollable Spammy Backlinks - Disavow or Not?
-
Hey Mozzers,
I have ran a few different backlink reports, and I noticed that one of my sites has an incredible amount of spammy backlinks. These were not done by a prior SEO, they are simmply spammy links that were scraped and inserted on terrible sites, forums, directories, etc. 100% uncontrollable. The anchor text includes anything from the domain to "live sex" and "victoria's secret coupons". There are probably close to 700 or so of these backlinks from around 150-200 domains.
I have read that one should contact the webmaster, and use disavow as a last resort, but I am not sure if that advice is for spammy link building techniques, which we have no history of doing.
Is this normal? What is the best way to handle this? Is it likely that these are affecting this site's ranking at the moment? The number of spammy links drastically affects the ratio of quality backlinks to spammy backlinks.
This is so frustrating...
-
Thanks for your response Marie,
That is very helpful!
-
Google employee John Mueller has been asked about this type of thing several times in Webmaster Central hangouts. Here is an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEAQyHtRQxg&feature=share&t=23m30s (23:30). His answer is always to say that Google is usually pretty good at ignoring these links but that it's not a bad idea to disavow just in case.
You do not need to contact site owners and try to get these links removed. I mean, if you really wanted to try, you could, but you're likely to spend a huge amount of time doing this with very little reward. You will not get a manual penalty for having links like this. Manual penalties are given to people who cheat, not those who have been hacked. (The exception would be if you have malware on the site...but then that's a different warning and link cleanup is not a part of recovery.)
Most likely these links will not affect you in the Penguin algorithm, but because there's so much we don't know about Penguin, it's not a bad idea to disavow these. A quick way to do this is to gather your links on either ahrefs if you have a membership or majestic (it's free if you verify your site) and sort them by anchor text. (You can use OSE, but OSE tends to ignore these super spammy links so it's not the best choice for this type of analysis.) Filter them so that you only see the spammy links. Then, disavow those links on the domain level.
-
YES absolutelly, (Always at domain level) it prevents future new pages from the spammy domain linking your pages, only you can use subdomain level where the links comes from authority domains, for example blogs on blogspot ie: linking.blogspot.com in this case you should include on your disavow file only the subdomain linking.blogspot.com and at the TLD level ".com" which includes all the regional like .com.tw , .com.ar etc
Use to detect bad links as many tools as you can starting with Google WMT, bING WMT, yandex WMT, SeoMOZ, ahref, linkdetrox etc.
Hope it helps
-
Disavow the whole domains !
-
My friend Evan,
Google get thousand of innocent reconsideration request, saying "I'm innocent" for example if you tag any page with the robots meta tag "OINDEX,FOLLOW" it always will consider it as NOINDEX,FOLLOW they assume the pesimistic option, so if you has spammy links, you has two options, the first is remove all of them which will save your site or leave it and be penalized or rank low .....
Again my experience is assume that Google will think you're the responsible (the pesimistic option) and try to remove all the possible links and the rest should be disavowed and never try to joke the links to your site, think Google has the 90% of the market on the internet, so your site and mime are not the most important.
Recently Google has penalized to ebay and many others ....
Hope it helps
-
Hey Claudio,
I don't mean to be difficult here, I just need to be diligent.
I thought the disavow tool was more of a "i messed up, so now I will fix it" kind of a tool. We have not done any unnatural link building or directory submissions. I don't want to indicate to Google that I messed up if... well... I didn't do anything wrong... does that make sense?
I really do appreciate your answers and time with this.
Evan
-
You'll probably be okay, it appears most of it is ebbing. Though I would definitely look at your folder level traffic. Penalties can happen on the folder and page level as well. It's not so bad as to merit a domain level penalty.
I would be more concerned if the anchor text targeted something you do want.
In regard to disavows, disavow early and as often as necessary.
-
I was dealing with DISAVOW for a long time and my conclusions are:
1. Remove as many links as you can.
2. The remaining links (bad or suspicious) should be included into a DISAVOW file and upload it to Google Disavow tool.
This allow your site to keep safe for future and coming penalties or rank issues.
PS.: Google can detect all the un-natural link schemes better than you and me ....
Hope it helps
-
Hey Claudio,
I looked into this, and I have posted this question on a few different forums. The challenge is that I am receiving so many different perspectives.
I am told by some that I should not disavow. They say not to draw attention to an issue, especially if these links are not related to my industry.
Some say "well, if you get penalized, you won't rank for victoria secret coupons, so... so what". Others like EGOL say that Google is smart, and will recognize these as spammy links, and can just be ignored.
I am curious if anyone has experience with disavowing spammy links, and what their results are. It seems like the SEO community is not entirely sure how to handle this issue... nor am I.
I welcome any further comments or suggestions.
Thanks!
-
Dear Evan,
You could get a Google manual-penalty, or simply be affected by an algorithm penalty (Penguin), so the best practice is:
1. Contact the webmaster of these sites and ask for link removal.
2. The remaining links should be included on the DISAVOW file at domain level.
You should be use to construct your link profile several sources, such as Google WMT, Bing WMT, Yandex WMT and of cours several tools such as ahref, SeoMoz, LinkMajestic and LinkDetrox, and other tools, each bad link you detect and get remove from there is a goal and prevent future penalties or gradual downgrades of your rank.
Good luck
-
Hey EGOL,
I really appreciate your feedback. Thanks you so much!
I would also like to here others weigh in on this question too...
-
My concern is that the number of these scraped and spammy links is getting close to the number of good links.
I agree. Some of my content is related to commodities and investments and those pages can be linked to from thousands of these crap sites.
In my opinion, most webmasters are not looking at their backlinks and if Google started slapping people down for these types of links there would be very few sites left standing.
So, I am not worrying about them.
-
Yeah, there seems to be a lot of those. I am finding a lot from sites with other languages as well.
My concern is that the number of these scraped and spammy links is getting close to the number of good links. Granted the good links have a much higher DA and trust flow. I am mostly concerned about what the link profile looks like to search engines, or do they just understand these situations and ignore them?
Thanks EGOL!
-
Is this normal?
Lots of people run scrapers and use the data to make phony directories and mash-up pages. They mostly have keyword links to websites and bits of content (kinda like Google
My sites all have lots of these links. I am not doing anything about them. I think Google understands how these sites are made.
-
Hey Travis,
I was doing some research, and I saw that it is generally advised not to use disavow unless the site has been penalized. This isn't the case - in fact it is doing quite well. I just want to keep the link profile clean, and I am wondering if something so uncontrollable is something to worry about...
-
Hi Evan,
I would probably disavow the domains. Though it's pretty hard to thoroughly answer without a reference to any domain.
To the question of normal, I would say it isn't terribly uncommon. I've seen scenarios like this enough over the years.
I'm unsure whether or not this is adversely affecting your site. I don't have a site to reference. Though if you would like to private message 'the deets', I can take a closer look. If you would like to post it publicly, so all the other kids can play, that's fine too.
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
-
Bit.ly backlinks
Hi all, what experience do you have with Bit.ly links? Can I use it for backlinking management?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormar3 -
Backlinks to internal pages
Hi, Our website of 3K+ pages currently has more links coming to internal pages (2nd & 3rd Level), compared to links to homepage. Just wanted to know if this is bad for rankings ? Please share your thoughts. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Umesh-Chandra0 -
Are these good backlinks?
I am trying to understand how to build good backlinks. I've read or been told that anchor text is bad (understood), websites with unrelated subjects is bad (understood), paid-for links are bad (?), "submitted" and article to get the link is bad (?), or it is a link/farm directory are bad (?). This is actually really confusing to me! Please bear with my silly questions, I am an engineer with an MBA, stay-at-home/homeschooling mom that helps run my husbands business. My brain gets full fast! Ha! I thought maybe if I post some of the links we have built, someone could look at them and tell me if they are good or bad. This way I can go forward understanding better. Articles... I thought that writing articles was a GOOD thing! Now I see that submitting articles isn't? So what about these two articles where my husband, as an expert in his field, wrote an article for a popular mag/blog. http://coastalanglermag.com/red-snapper-season/ (they did the hyperlink wrong and I am trying to get the publisher to fix it) http://www.bdoutdoors.com/article/shark-encounter-capt.-gregg-rapp/ (this is a pretty funny story if you read it) Blog stories... what about when someone copies your blog post as a story on their website? Or someone scrapes your content? http://jeremyrymill.tumblr.com/ http://www.bdoutdoors.com/article/heart-pressure/ http://www.sportfishermen.com/board/showthread.php?t=2627767&p=3294972 (we post fishing reports and they get copied) Un-related Directories... http://www.mobileresources.net/mobi/Glowing_Deep_Sea_Fish/ (I didn't create this!!! I guess they just crawl and link?) Related "farm" Directories http://www.sportsmansresource.com/ffishtarpon.htm Other directories/citations such as yellow pages, city search, etc. These are okay right? Local hotels and what not... concierge's link to me, I don't even ask them to http://laquintacocoabeach.com/things-to-do/index.cfm Paid - I pay for MOZ Local! Isn't that paying??? AND, I paid for a whois listing on enom... is that bad too? NOW FOR THE BAD.... these are bad right? http://darman.niniyoo.com/Sea-Leveler-Sport-Fishing-Charters-Inc-FL.html (I have no idea how this got there) http://teensnow.comwww.whoisbusinesslistings.com/Other/10/23490/Sea-Leveler-Sport-Fishing-Charters.html (what the heck is this??? how can they even append a website on a website?) http://forums.gq.com.au/member.php?u=1813973 (I think this was created on my behalf by my part-time SEO) If you have read all the way down to here, my sincerest thanks! Thank you for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CalicoKitty20000 -
I should keep looking at the IP address location on my backlink prospects?
Hello Everyone, I'm doing a backlink research and we are considering how to define a strategy. My website is located in Spain and I am focusing on ranking my website on Google.es for public coming from Spain. The thing is that until now I used to look carefully at the IP address of my backlink prospects, to check if the website was really hosted in Spain. I know Matt Cutts used to say very long ago that hosting location of a website was important. But taking into account that nowadays with cloud servers, CDNs, AnyCast and such technologies it's no longer possible to accurately identify the location of a website, specially if the CDN of the websites uses AnyCast, so that an IP address can be used by different machines in different locations. Do you guys think I should keep looking at the IP address location on my backlink prospects?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | C.A0 -
Getting Rid Of Spammy 301 Links From An Old Site
A relatively new site I'm working on has been hit really hard by Panda, due to over optimization of 301 external links which include exact keyword phrases, from an old site. Prior to the Panda update, all of these 301 redirects worked like a charm, but now all of these 301's from the old url are killing the new site, because all the hyper-text links include exact keyword matches. A couple weeks ago, I took the old site completely down, and removed the htaccess file, removing the 301's and in effect breaking all of these bad links. Consequently, if one were to type this old url, you'd be directed to the domain registrar, and not redirected to the new site. My hope is to eliminate most of the bad links, that are mostly on spammy sites, that aren't worth linking to. My thought is these links would eventually disappear from G. My concern is that this might not work, because G won't re-index these links, because once they're indexed by G, they'll be there forever. My fear is causing me to conclude I should hedge my bets, and just disavow these sites using the disavow tool in WMT. IMO, the disavow tool is an action of last resort, because I don't want to call attention to myself, since this site doesn't have a manual penalty inflected on it. Any opinions or advise would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn0 -
Link Building, when to give up on a possible backlink provider
Hello, I'm doing content marketing, it's working but it's slow and steady. I'm looking for some wisdom here from people that have done a lot of linkbuilding. Phone calls are tending to be a great resource in our niche. But I've got about 10 sites that I've called about ten times each and they're taking up a lot of time. I've mostly narrowed down who to contact but that person won't answer the phone. My question is, when do you give up on a good lead? Do I just try to contact a good person 5?, or 10? times then leave a message, leave a message a week later, then give up? I don't think leaving a message for content marketing in this case would help much. Thanks for the advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Disavowing Links for Subcategory of Site
Has anyone tried using Google's Disavow tool with only a specific subcategory of their site? We're an ecommerce company and our site took a small hit with this recent Penguin update. We're certain previous linkbuilding efforts are the cause. But we'd like to try the Disavow tool with 1 subcategory to start, see if our rankings for that category improve (we used to be top 3, now ~12 or 13), and if so then roll it out through the rest of the site. Looking for input from others on if they have any experience with this or if it'd be better to just go for the whole thing at once. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
Do you have to wait after disavowing before submitting a reconsideration request
Hi all We have a link penalty at the moment it seems. I went through 40k links in various phases and have disavowed over a thousand domains that date back to old SEO work. I was barely able to have any links removed as the majority are on directories etc that no one looks after any more etc and / or which are spammy and scraped anyway. According to link research tools link detox tool, we now have a very low risk profile (I loaded the disavowed links into the tool for it to take into consideration when assessing our profile). I then submitted a reconsideration request on the same day as loading the new disavowed file (on the 26th of April). However today (7th May) we got a message in webmaster central that says our link profile is still unnatural. Aaargh. My question: is the disavow file taken into consideration when the reconsideration request is reviewed (ie is that information immediately available to the reviewer)? Or do we have to wait for the disavow file to flow through in the crawl stats? If so, how long do we have to wait? I've checked a link that I disavowed last time and it's still showing up in the links that I pull down from Webmaster Central, and indeed links that I disavowed at the start of April are still showing up in the list of links that can be downloaded. Any help gratefully received. I'm pulling my hair out here, trying to undo the dodgy work of a few random people many months ago! Cheers, Will
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArenaFlowers.com0