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How to hide backlinks from SEO tools?

by TechMate001
25 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hey warriors,

I saw some of my competitors hided their backlinks. For example if check their website in Moz tool it only shows DA,PA but not shows any backlinks.. Why and how? How can I implement same for my website?
#backlinks #hide #seo #tools
  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    This can be done through the robots.txt file

    Here's how you do it (from dreamhost) https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/...-and-crawlers-

    Keep in mind that this doesn't protect you from SCRAPERS and others who routinely ignore robots.txt
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    • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
      Originally Posted by writeaway View Post

      This can be done through the robots.txt file

      Here's how you do it (from dreamhost) https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/...-and-crawlers-

      Keep in mind that this doesn't protect you from SCRAPERS and others who routinely ignore robots.txt
      Hmmm ... I'm not sure that is what the OP was asking (I admit, it is a little unclear from their post]. Your solution is going to block bots, crawlers, etc. from being able to crawl YOUR site and see what you are linking to - something you definitely don't want to do as far as search engines are concerned. But, you can block specific bots like the bots MOZ or Ahrefs uses.

      I understand what you are saying, but I don't think that article explains it very well, if at all. I think the OP is asking how backlink tools are prevented from seeing the sites that are linking to THEIR site. I think this article explains that a lot better.

      Keep in mind that any crawler can choose to ignore your robots.txt file and there are ways to cloak the useragent so even the htaccess file method is not foolproof. That said, combining robots.txt and .htaccess should solve the problem for most well-known backlink tools.

      The caveat here is that this will work pretty well with self-hosted sites that have access to robots.txt and .htaccess via something like cPanel (e.g. WordPress sites) but eCommerce sites using any hosted solution (Shopify, BigCommerce, 3DCart, etc.) will not have access to both of those files.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by writeaway View Post

      This can be done through the robots.txt file

      Here's how you do it (from dreamhost) https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/...-and-crawlers-

      Keep in mind that this doesn't protect you from SCRAPERS and others who routinely ignore robots.txt
      Ignore this. It only keeps YOUR site from being crawled. That doesn't hide your links at all.
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      • Profile picture of the author expmrb
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        Ignore this. It only keeps YOUR site from being crawled. That doesn't hide your links at all.

        I believe the best way to resolve it is to block crawlers individually of all those backlink tools. I don't know how it can be resolved otherwise.


        But also there is the fact that crawlers may choose to ignore and crawl anyway, as Dave said earlier.
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Originally Posted by expmrb View Post

          I believe the best way to resolve it is to block crawlers individually of all those backlink tools. I don't know how it can be resolved otherwise.


          But also there is the fact that crawlers may choose to ignore and crawl anyway, as Dave said earlier.
          No. That doesn't do anything. You would have to prevent them from crawling the sites the links are on. The only way you can do that is if you own those sites. Blocking your site doesn't do a damn thing.
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          • Profile picture of the author expmrb
            Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

            No. That doesn't do anything. You would have to prevent them from crawling the sites the links are on. The only way you can do that is if you own those sites. Blocking your site doesn't do a damn thing.

            Sorry, forget to mention that.
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          • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
            Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

            No. That doesn't do anything. You would have to prevent them from crawling the sites the links are on. The only way you can do that is if you own those sites. Blocking your site doesn't do a damn thing.
            This is true, but only if you believe that tools like Ahrefs and MOZ have crawled every site on the internet - especially the ones that are linking to yours. There's a good chance they have, in which case blocking them on your site through Ahrefs or MOZ will do nothing. If they haven't crawled those other sites, it may or may not work, but it's literally the only thing you can control, yourself.

            To add to that, having those other sites block the links to your site would defeat the whole purpose of the backlinks.

            Finally, I certainly must admit that I have no clue which sites these backlink tools have crawled and it is only my assumption that they have not crawled every site on the internet. I imagine the sites they have crawled largely depend on what sites people who use the tools have requested be crawled. Chances are, with the many thousands of people using their tools, their crawlers have crawled many of the sites linking to yours at some point.
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  • Profile picture of the author dude buddy
    yeah , it definitely the robots.txt where the website admin blocks the crawls of Tools backlink checker tools

    hence there are no chance of displaying while website audit
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Originally Posted by TechMate001 View Post

    Hey warriors,

    I saw some of my competitors hided their backlinks. For example if check their website in Moz tool it only shows DA,PA but not shows any backlinks.. Why and how? How can I implement same for my website?
    The only way you can hide links is if you own the sites the links are on.
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  • Profile picture of the author Andrew S
    I have found, major scrapers that people use to check backlinks (like Ahrefs) respect robot directives.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by Andrew S View Post

      I have found, major scrapers that people use to check backlinks (like Ahrefs) respect robot directives.
      That doesn't do any good. Go ahead and put them in the robots.txt of your site. That doesn't prevent them from crawling the sites linking to you. It only prevents them from crawling your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author RuskinF
    Yes, you can do that using robots.txt file. But it cannot stop penetrating bots that disregard this file.
    This file should be enough for regular bots from ignoring your file but cannot stop the other bots I talked about.
    SO ensure you put this file on that page.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by RuskinF View Post

      Yes, you can do that using robots.txt file. But it cannot stop penetrating bots that disregard this file.
      This file should be enough for regular bots from ignoring your file but cannot stop the other bots I talked about.
      SO ensure you put this file on that page.
      Does anyone even read a thread before commenting anymore?

      No, you cannot hide your backlinks by adding bots to your robots.txt file.

      Stop lying.
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  • Profile picture of the author Md Nadeem Raza
    As far as I know SEO one cannot hide their backlink. Maybe you are checking has not backlink. If you really want to check competitors backlink then I'll suggest you use Ahrefs.
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  • Profile picture of the author samsabir
    You can either do this manually by blocking the crawlers, but the robots.txt method or any other tool can not really erase backlinks in a quick and ensured manner.
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  • Profile picture of the author LuizKA
    in general no way but there some tools for this too.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by LuizKA View Post

      in general no way but there some tools for this too.
      No there are not. You cannot hide your links.
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  • Profile picture of the author jassica lui
    In theory, it is impossible to hide them from all major backlink data providers like Majestic and aHrefs. If you build your own links by using your own resources, you can ban or disallow Majestic and aHrefs spiders on server side by researching their browser user agent.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lurk Miki
    Put this in your robots.txt

    User-agent: AhrefsBot
    Disallow: /

    User-agent: MJ12bot
    Disallow: /
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by Lurk Miki View Post

      Put this in your robots.txt

      User-agent: AhrefsBot
      Disallow: /

      User-agent: MJ12bot
      Disallow: /

      That doesn't work. Read the thread.

      All that does is block them from crawling YOUR site. It doesn't prevent them from crawling the links pointing at your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author cbpayne
    A lot of stupid clueless people posting in this thread.
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  • Profile picture of the author TechMate001
    Can you please help with your suggestion to hide backlinks?
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  • Profile picture of the author Amara Magdalene
    Yes, you can hide your backlinks from SEO tools by using Robet.Txt it disallows boots to do not read your content, crawl or index your content. So you can apply robot.txt file which will help to hide backlinks from SEO tools.
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