Strange affiliate links in web master tools

[SKE]

Hi All

I have been looking in the Google webmasters tools account for a client and from out of nowhere they suddenly have 42,000 links last time I checked it was just over 4,000.

It looks to me like some of our affiliates have links showing, they are formatted so it goes via a php script that looks like accomtracking.php?estid=1234&ref=123 this link appears 3 times in the source code of the page that is linking to my client but Google webmaster tools thinks it is linking 12,000 times.

I assume this is a problem with the database where the link points to, issuing a unique link for each visit or something similar but I am not sure how to explain it to my client and how to correct it / stop it happening again.

There are around 37,000 links like this to the site from just 6 referring sites and the client have had an unnatural link warning so I am anxious to get this fixed.

Any help gratefully received.

Sean

[activitysuper]

If the affiliate is pulling a datafeed with 100,000 products in it and dynamically building pages for each one, if they add your clients link as part of there template maybe a side bar or something, you now got 100,000 links pointing in.

Is might not be the problem but you can see how a large amount of links can come in from a dynamic site.

[SKE]

Thanks for the answer, the thing is that there is just 1 product they are linking to. So I do not know why there are so many links.

Following further investigation I have discovered they are not an affiliate, they have just scraped the content from my clients site and when I looked at the link I assumed it was an affiliate

[Everett]

Hello SKE,

I've dealt with this or similar situations several times and have found the following to be the best course of action:

1. Report the scraper site to Google using the DMCA complaint form:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?pli=1&

2. Take measures to protect yourself against future scrapers.
http://www.affiliatebeginnersguide.com/articles/block_bots.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/postpanda-your-original-content-is-being-outranked-by-scrapers-amp-partners

Good luck!