Spammy no follow backlinks - what should I do?
-
There is a individual/company that is creating lots of spam sites in my niche.
It doesn't seem that they are trying to rank for any keywords, so I'm a little confused as to their purpose, but here's what they're doing.
They scrape the top 10 Google results for each keyword and create a page - so if the niche is "widgets", they scrape the top 10 ranked sites for 'widgets', 'blue widgets', 'red widgets', and so on. A 'results' page is created for each keyword, which is linked from a home page.
The results page always contains 10 websites - text is the site metadescription or similar. Each website gets a nofollow link back with the page title used as the anchor text.
The host sites all have the keyword in the domain name - e.g www.widgetsxyz.com. The sites are thrown together but interestingly have a very crappy but individual logo (like 90's clipart).
The host sites all have high DA/PA due to some very extensive link spam pointing to the sites, with very targeted keywords.
There is seemingly no purpose to these sites that I can see - no other 'followed' links on the page or site.
Whoever is doing this is churning out tens, if not hundreds of these sites.
Any ideas what might be going on here, and whether I should be disavowing these sites (even though no follow). The fear is that they could switch the links to do follow, and get all the major players penalised in one fell swoop.
???
-
Hi,
I'm completely agree with Andy because if a spammy link is nofollow then there is no reason to worry.
"When a link is disavowed, the next time that Google crawls that link they essentially add an invisible nofollow tag to the link."
You can also read this @ http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2330944/7-things-you-may-not-know-about-googles-disavow-tool
Thanks
-
Hi John,
As these are nofollow, I wouldn't worry about this at all. A nofollow flag is essentially what you get when you disavow a site through Webmaster Tools (Search Console).
There is no harm in disavowing these links if you feel there is a potential to switch to dofollow, but by the sounds of things, this probably wouldn't happen - even if it did, it sounds like a spammy technique that wouldn't cause you issues. Google would probably see hundreds (thousands?) of links all of a sudden appear with a dofollow tag and just ignore them.
-Andy
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
-
How to handle pre-existing backlinks on new site.
Hi - We built a new site on a URL that had previously been used. We are noticing a lot of spammy backlinks pointing to our current site and ending up on a 404 page. Any recommendations on how to handle this?
Link Building | | JJKM551 -
Backlinks from different TLD's impact
Hi MOZ'ers, I'm wondering what the impact of different TLD backlinks is for same language pages. For example: we're on a website that has a German national TLD .de. We're earning backlinks and they are coming from .de as well as .ch (Switzerland) or .at (Austria) pages. What would be more desirable, and how big would you consider the difference? Looking forward to hearing your responses 🙂 Justen
Link Building | | Justen_H0 -
Backlinking question
Hello everyone! I currently work for a software company that sell's CRM software for product sellers and one of our options along with this service is a website builder option that can provide the client with a website with several different templates to choose from. Currently, we have over 500 clients using these website templates and I noticed that they are all under the same IP address. My question is, in terms of a backlinking effort, would it be beneficial if we included a link to our company's website on the footer on each of these templates? Example could be: Powered by: (company's name) and have the name a link to our site. I'm worried that this could be seen negatively by Google if we dofollowed these links or the fact that they are all under the same IP. Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks
Link Building | | KathleenDC0 -
Backlinks vs multiple domains
Hello, Our main website is setup on a .com domain and a .ca is setup as a 301 Permanent redirection to the .com. We just signed up to Majestic and found that we had a bunch of backlink linking to the .ca instead of the .com. My question is, is the SEO juice (for DA) being passed by from the .ca to the .com or I should start contacting those websites to get the backlink changed to .com? Thanks
Link Building | | GlobeCar0 -
Backlink Report Totals Discrepancy
I have been having a tough time getting my customer backlinks developed. However; I noticed when I run a backlink report for http://www.mycustomer.com, www.mycustomer.com and customer.com that I get three different backlink totals. Is there any way to forward to of the above URL's to one or am I doing something wrong when I am developing the backlinks?
Link Building | | InfinityTechnologySolutions0 -
Backlink lag time or not indexed?
I've looked through a few questions relating to backlinks not showing up in Open Site Explorer and I've got the same problem. I want to understand whether my backlinks aren't showing in SEOmoz due to a lag time (some say 5 - 8weeks) or because google hasn't indexed them.
Link Building | | EdoubleD
For example: http://www.marquee-hire-directory.com/oxfordshire_marqueehire_2.html Or http://www.weddingdayangel.com/listings/katalystic-events/ My link is http://www.katalysticevents.com Am I doing something wrong here?0 -
"Bad" backlinks
Hello dear community, I am new here and quite new to SEO. Perhaps someone could give me a hint on a following question: Which tools can help me to track "bad" baclinks, e. g. links which would rather downgrade my SEO performance?
Link Building | | hochzeitsfotograf0 -
No follow from a national newspaper
A national newspaper wrote an article about our product and included a link to our site. I'm sure that's a good thing, but what exactly are the benefits to our site when they use a no follow? Best,
Link Building | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0