Is there a tool to figure out bad backlinks

[MQMORAN2323]

With the new changes to the google algorithm.  I'm trying to figure out what links google may think are hurting my site.  Any thoughts?  Thanks

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Morgan,

Unfortunately, there isn't a quick way to do this.

What I have done is use Open Site Explorer and downloaded the .csv file of all the linking domains to my website.

Now that I have them in a spreadsheet, it is a bit easier to filter through them. I have been drilling down on links from blogs with a particularly low PA or DA. Then just doing the hard task of checking to see if they have individually been banned by Google. You can do this by searching for their domain to see if they appear.

This is a slow process, but better safe than sorry, eh?

Hope this helps.

Matt.

[MQMORAN2323]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the help.  If the site is still showing page results that is linking to you, that means it is not banned?  I see a few that I have on blog rolls, but that site still shows 1500 results with google.

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Morgan,

The website will show in Google if you do a site:www.domain.com search.

If you searched for 'domain' (replace this with their website name, i.e. seo moz) and they don't show up in the top few listings thn you can be pretty sure that they have been banned.

As soon as this is the case, I would either contact the webmaster or manually delete the link if you can.

Good luck!

Matt.

[MQMORAN2323]

Hi Matt,

The sites I believe might have a problem are still showing up in the results like that.  However, where they might have ranked the first page before, some of the blog sites that we link with are not in the top 100 results anymore.  Strange...

[MQMORAN2323]

Hi Matt,

The sites I believe might have a problem are still showing up in the results like that.  However, where they might have ranked the first page before, some of the blog sites that we link with are not in the top 100 results anymore.  Strange...

[MatthewBarby]

I see.

I would presume that these guys have been penalised then. It may be that they are now trying to reindex their site and are still appearing in the listings but much lower now.

There isnt really a definite way of knowing if they have been banned, but as good practise, I would try and get any URL removed from a website that I had any doubts about.

You could maybe try contacting the Google Webmaster team to confirm this, but I don't know how useful they will be. Then again, its worth a try at least.

Matt.