Massive Backlinking Attack On My Site

14 years ago

Someone may be trying to Sandbox your site, while it does seem like a bizarre attack because if your site is aged well it shouldn't matter too much, and could in fact help. How old is the site?

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Tom Goodwin

14 years ago

Originally Posted by JayGreen

Hello everyone, was hoping a few of you could help me understand why someone would create thousands of backlinks to my site using blog spam tools. I know this is probablly and attempt to kill my rankings. I'm in the number 2 spot on Google for this keyword with hundreds of vistors a day with PR 0. I'm slowly building links and don't want this spam to hurt me.

Will this attack work to kill my rankings and what can I do about it?

THanks

Long-term it won't hurt. It could possibly dance your site around a bit as it sounds like you don't have that many backlinks to begin with. Out of curiosity, what anchor text are they using?

Tom

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TrafficMystic

14 years ago

yep this wont kill your site... otherwise everyone would do this to a competitor.. google are not that stupid..

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Rock Solid

14 years ago

Meh I'd just appreciate the backlinks, maybe some guy had a typo of a closely related domain/site?

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JayGreen

14 years ago

Thanks. Some of the anchor text they are using are mostly porn related. The site is 3 years old.

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martinwork

14 years ago

It will not kill ur traffic... Because everyone tries to do this with there competitor.

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jazbo 14 years ago

I don't and I'm sure most people don't, because it obviously will not work as a serious strategy. In fact it could actually help the site.

Originally Posted by martinwork

It will not kill ur traffic... Because everyone tries to do this with there competitor.
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deloriagod 14 years ago

Originally Posted by martinwork

It will not kill ur traffic... Because everyone tries to do this with there competitor.

Maybe every newbie who thinks they've stumbled onto some magical bit of gold that nobody has ever figured out. But anyone with some SEO experience knows that bombing your competition with backlinks will only waste your time and make you work harder to beat them. If someone wanted to link rape my sites, I would thoroughly enjoy it. Even if I ended up with a little dancing afterwords, I would have more link juice flowing my way.
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Jordan Kovats

14 years ago

And if it does hurt, you can always ask google for a Reconsideration request. The process is fair, and works!

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JayGreen

14 years ago

Ok, thanks.

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InternetMarketingIQ

14 years ago

Some idiot is wasting his time. As long as you don't link out to any of the sites... you have very little to worry about.

If it does become a real problem you can always contact Google... except it's pretty likely they won't care.

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teatree 14 years ago

You can't control who links to you - and if something happens, just ask Google for help - they should be able to understand in an instant that no sensible person with a mainstream site would build links to it with p0rn anchors! So you should win reconsideration easily.

However - you have inadvertantly presented us with a chance to prove and disprove a whole bunch of myths about backlinking.

1. Do massive backlinks built in a short time hurt your site?

2. Do backlinks from irrelevant sources hurt your site?

3. **This is the big one** What effect does anchor text have on what you rank for? I understand that the old googlebomb days are over and no-one can make you rank for porn if you don't have porn on your site. I believe that now they look at the anchor text, check if these words appear on your site, and if they have a match, they rank you accordingly. But nobody knows for sure.

If you could keep a note of the anchors your enemies are using, and check if your site starts ranking for those words, it would help us all. Also, check if you continue to rank for your real main keywords - does irrelevant anchor text affect what the bot thinks your site is all about? Or do on-page elements always hold the upper hand?

I know this situation is horrible for you, but you could end up cracking a major portion of G's algo as a result.
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JackPowers

14 years ago

Let's not automatically assume that this can't hurt.

If a Google employee sees this, he or she may decide to penalize the site if they think it's being done by the owner. It does happen, but probably more with low quality thin affiliate sites of the black hat variant.

If it does get penalized it will not be with worse rankings but with complete deindexation or a big -50 penalty (if those still exist).

In any case, a reinclusion request would be enough. Still, it must suck to go without that income.

Not much you can do in any case except keep building good links.

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Brad Callen

14 years ago

Right, I'm with JP, you might want to contact someone at Google just to let them know you are being attacked. How much it could influence your current rankings depends on how established your back link profile is already. Considering Google probably looks at link acquisition rate as factor too, you may want to give them a head's up if it is a full on attack.

How many links are we talking about?
Are they contextual links on spam sites? Can you provide a URL for one of the links in question?

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JayGreen

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Brad Callen

Right, I'm with JP, you might want to contact someone at Google just to let them know you are being attacked. How much it could influence your current rankings depends on how established your back link profile is already. Considering Google probably looks at link acquisition rate as factor too, you may want to give them a head's up if it is a full on attack.

How many links are we talking about?
Are they contextual links on spam sites? Can you provide a URL for one of the links in question?

Sites not very established. Right now it is a thin affliate site so it is possible to effected somewhat. (i think) Many links look-like they are coming from spam blogs like Blog Engine with about 3k outgoing links. I recently bought scrapebox to find post to post to. But I see this tool is probally what someone is using. I think in the end they're wasting their time and only helping me.

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sbsb

14 years ago

I had someone doing this to me. It was a month or two before I caught it - but the reason for them doing it wasnt as simple as you seem to think.

I found that they had created profiles with links to their money site(s) or 2nd level sites, and then were linking to those links with porn/etc related terms. They were linking to me alot. Up to 200 links per profile.

This did result in me starting to get some traffic for dodgy search terms on a completely unrelated site. I didnt lose any material traffic by the time I killed the profiles and closed the hole.

I suggest you look for WHY they are linking to the pages they are linking to. Its probably not as simple as trying to blow you off page 1. I suspect you have comments with links in them that point to their money sites.

Having strong links from high ranking pages could be the motivator for them. Check all your outbound links carefully. Then double check, especially if youre using off the shelf software - they may be nested deep in some rarely visited pages.

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Karan Goel

14 years ago

The most probable reason is to outrank you. If you know which person this is, and what site he runs, you could give him his birthday gift. (Hint: Think BH).

Karan

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redlevi

14 years ago

i wouldn't lose too much sleep over this incoming links.

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teatree 14 years ago

Any update on this situation, just out of interest?
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- Tom Goodwin 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by teatree
  
  Any update on this situation, just out of interest?
  
  Probably sitting at #1 now:rolleyes:
  
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