Open Site Explorer and the mysterious case of Pharmaceutical Back links

[NaomiC]

This post is deleted!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Andrew

First of all, these links are common spambot links and there is nothing to worry about. Whew!

Both your PRO campaign and Open Site Explorer get their link data from the same place - the Linkscape Index. In fact, I found the "viagra" link in OSE. You can see it in this report here: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=blogs.dalealcock.com.au&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=external&target=domain&group=0 - Scroll about 1/2 down.

(Please note - although both the PRO campaigns and OSE use the same Linkscape index, the two platforms update on slightly different schedules. So it is possible to see links in one and not the other.)

These links are spambot Trackback links. You can read about trackback spam here. It's an old tactic that still works once in awhile, but it looks like you didn't link back to him (either manually or through automation) so you should be just fine. There are literally millions of these links around the Internet, Google typically ignores them, and they are usually nothing worth messing with.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

[NaomiC]

Thank you for your informative response Cyrus. I'll rest easy with the trackbacks and I'll have a play to see where I was going wrong with OSE!