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Blocking bad Backlinks

by ausip
13 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Is it possible to block bad backlinks using the .htaccess?

I have read quite a few small articles relating to this. If I create a .htaccess rule for the offending IP address which returns a 403, will Google ignore backlinks from the blocked host and it's websites?
#backlinks #bad #blocking
  • Profile picture of the author danielthomas
    You cannot block people linking to your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author sham2
    You cannot block other peoples to link to your sites but if you are creating backlinks from your own sources then you obviously can.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brendan Mace
    I really wouldn't worry about it that much. The chance of someone actually submitting a negative SEO campaign against your website(s) is incredibly rare. I would cross that bridge when you need to. There's no reason to be paranoid.
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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel Ray
    You can.

    Here's how to do it, even though this link was built for hotlinking....

    Stop Hotlinking with htaccess. Test your Image Hotlink Protection with our Hotlink Checker from altlab.com.
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  • Profile picture of the author venkateshk
    I believe this is where the Google Panda/Penguin stuff comes into play. There are sites who have worked hard to gain reputation of the SEs and Google now realises that they should not be penalizing these sites simply because their competitors have are playing some unscrupulous tricks. I read in some forum that Google is now trying to modify their algorithm to see if they can verify this. So, for all you IMs, please do not stop your good work because someone is trying outsmart you and get you out of business.
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  • Profile picture of the author d0de
    Originally Posted by ausip View Post

    Is it possible to block bad backlinks using the .htaccess?

    I have read quite a few small articles relating to this. If I create a .htaccess rule for the offending IP address which returns a 403, will Google ignore backlinks from the blocked host and it's websites?
    Do you mean block backlinks to your site from spammy sources so that you don't get penalised by Google for a bad link profile?

    I am by no means an expert on this subject, but using common sense it seems clear this won't work.

    When you say "block the offending IP address", which IP address do you mean? Blocking the IP address of the server hosting the links won't accomplish anything because when the googlebot finds the link on that server and follows it, the IP address your server sees is that of googlebot, not the source server.

    You could block the IP of googlebot but that might create some problems too

    The only method I can think of is using the http referrer to block traffic from certain sources, but I don't think that would work because AFAIK googlebot doesn't pass the http referrer

    I really don't think there's any way to stop links from other sites being scraped by google
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    • Profile picture of the author Aarav
      It's not possible to block bad backlinks that create by people and also Google haven't ignore backlinks from the blocked host and it's websites.
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  • Profile picture of the author MatthewWoodward
    Originally Posted by ausip View Post

    Is it possible to block bad backlinks using the .htaccess?

    I have read quite a few small articles relating to this. If I create a .htaccess rule for the offending IP address which returns a 403, will Google ignore backlinks from the blocked host and it's websites?
    I like the theory! Some good out of the box thinking and while it would stop visitors from hitting your site I dont think it would interrupt Googles calculation for the link =/
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    • Profile picture of the author ausip
      Originally Posted by MatthewWoodward View Post

      I like the theory! Some good out of the box thinking and while it would stop visitors from hitting your site I dont think it would interrupt Googles calculation for the link =/
      Googles calc is the one I was hoping to stop. @MatthewWoodware, you are one of the only ones that saw this topic for what it really was.

      One of the sites we now manage has a heap of bad backlinks from some previous SEO techniques. The site has plummeted in Google and we suspect it is due to some of these bad backlinks. UAW and SEO Link Vine was used to distribute spun content to gain backlinks and we are assuming that this is more than likely the cause.

      We were hoping to block access from these blogs so that the Google crawlers could no longer index the links and hopefully remove these bad backlinks from the index.
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by ausip View Post

        Googles calc is the one I was hoping to stop. @MatthewWoodware, you are one of the only ones that saw this topic for what it really was.

        One of the sites we now manage has a heap of bad backlinks from some previous SEO techniques. The site has plummeted in Google and we suspect it is due to some of these bad backlinks. UAW and SEO Link Vine was used to distribute spun content to gain backlinks and we are assuming that this is more than likely the cause.

        We were hoping to block access from these blogs so that the Google crawlers could no longer index the links and hopefully remove these bad backlinks from the index.
        That wouldn't stop them from indexing the links though. The links are on those other sites, not yours. The crawlers can still access those sites fine.
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      • Profile picture of the author d0de
        Originally Posted by ausip View Post

        We were hoping to block access from these blogs so that the Google crawlers could no longer index the links and hopefully remove these bad backlinks from the index.
        There is categorically no way to do this without i) stopping googlebot from crawling all links to your site, period, or ii) removing the links from the original servers. In most cases, neither of these options will be viable for obvious reasons.
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  • Profile picture of the author millermarshall22
    I think it is possible now!! If u have a webmaster account you can get it here-- https://www.google.com/webmasters/to...vow-links-main
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    • Profile picture of the author netanel23
      Originally Posted by millermarshall22 View Post

      I think it is possible now!! If u have a webmaster account you can get it here-- https://www.google.com/webmasters/to...vow-links-main
      Disavow links doesn't block the links, it's why Google recommends trying to remove the links prior to ever disavowing them.

      In fact there's little evidence of anyone recovering a penalty by disavowing links. Regardless of how much misinformation is spread from disavow services.
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