Strange Pingback/Blog Comment Links

[eyeflow]

On one of my sites I've noticed some strange links from Google Webmaster Tools recent links feature.

They are pingbacks/blog comments but they are using keyword anchor text and linking to my site. I know we are not doing this. Should I be concerned about this possibly being negative SEO? Here's a sample (be careful, shady site)

[itrogers]

I have had something similar done to my site. One of my competitors "targeted" our business for negative SEO. I noticed a bunch of spammy links pointing to our site with outright X-rated / vile anchor text. The good news is that we haven't seen a drop in traffic or rankings and it's been going on for a while now. Google is pretty good a catching things like this. If you are doing "white hat" SEO and marketing, you probably don't need to worry about it.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

"Google is pretty good a catching things like this. If you are doing "white hat" SEO and marketing, you probably don't need to worry about it."

You will be in for a rude awakening when the site triggers an algo penalty. I would be proactive and disavow the links. GWT lists links by date so routinely keep an eye on the recent links you get and disavow them. Also, pingback/comment links are generally nofollow - if that's the case, then it shouldn't trigger penalties.

[itrogers]

That is possible but the links could be helping them. I would wait to disavow until its actually a problem. you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot.

[eyeflow]

Yeah that's what I've been hearing from some people. I usually hear one of two things on this subject.

A. Wait till you know for sure that you have a penalty.

OR

B. Take them out now!

It's a shame that Google isn't more forward with which approach should really be taken.

[ThompsonPaul]

If that site is representative of the rest of the sites, then I'd say you might have a problem. This is going to involve a judgement call on your part, because as you say, Google has no hard and fast recommendations for these situations.

Looking at that site, the "Name" links are do-follow. Yours is one of 965 comments on the page. My guess is the site recently got itself added to someone's "do-follow comment sections to spam" list (yes there really are such lists) as all the crap links are from the last 4 months.

So to Google, this will absolutely look like the crap it is trying to hammer down with Penguin.

As for "not worrying about it until penalized" - just read through the miserable (and often futile) experiences all over the Q&A section here of site owners who have spent a year trying to dig out from under a Penguin penalty. And as for these links helping you at the moment - not bloody likely. Crappy internal pages with a PA of 1 and 965 links sure aren't passing you any ranking value.

So... how to decide what to do?

• How strong is the rest of your backlink profile and what percentage are these crappy backlinks?
• What's your link velocity for quality links compared these crap ones? (i.e. how frequently do you earn quality links compared to how often these new crap links are showing up?)
• how many of the crap links are actually do-follow?

If your own backlink profile is overwhelmingly strong, there may well be less to worry about, especially if the majority of the crap links are no-follow.The problem of course is that there are also plenty of reports of people running into issues after using the disavow tool too. So that's where the judgement call comes in.

If it were my site and I depended on it for income, the crap links were coming quickly and many were do-follow, I would collect the crap links as they come in, and once every 6 or 8 weeks, or when the links really start to mount up, I'd submit a disavow request. I'd also keep excellent records of the crap links and the quality links I'd been earning so I could respond quickly to a manual penalty should one come up.

Like I say - judgement call. Interested to know what others would do.

Paul