Black linking exploitation

[mannydog]

Hi all

After watching our ranking for some primary keywords drop on Google from page 1 to 20 and then totally off the charts in relatively short period I've recently discovered through moz tools that our website along with other competitor sites are victims to black linking (may have the terminology wrong).

Two primary words are anchor linked to our domain (www.solargain.com.au) being sex & b$tch through over 4000 compromised sites - mostly Wordpress - many which are high profile sites.

Searching through the source code through half a dozen compromised sites I noticed that competitors are also linked using other derogatory terms, but the patterns indicate batch or clustered processing. The hacker has left some evidence as to whom they are representing as I can see some credible discussion forums which contain negative feedback on one particular supplier also among the links.

Although this is pretty good evidence to why our ranking has dropped there are some interesting questions:

A) is there any way to rectify the 4000 or so black links, mass removal or other. (Doesn't sound feasible)
B) some competitors who dominate organic ranking through better optimization don't seem to be affected or apparently affected as much as our site at least. Which questions how much we are affected as a direct result from this hack.
C) is there action or support for industrial espionage?
D) can you request from google to ignore the inbound links and would they not have a duty of care to do so?

I'm fairly new to this ugly side of the Internet and would like to know how to approach recovery and moving forward. Thoughts ideas very welcome.

Thanks in advance.

[zoicaremus]

Hello,

Yes, it looks like you might be the victim of some kind of attack.

I just have one question, are these links:

• linking to your website

• posted on your website.

If they are just links to your website, then there is an answer to all your following questions:

The Google Disavow Links Tool - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

You can read more about it here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

First contact them to remove the links, if it does not work, use this tool.

If the links are posted on your website just clean everything up, then remove backdors and stuff

[mannydog]

Thanks for your tips Remus - yes the links are inbound links.

There are no follows on the offending links according to open site explorer, which is possibly why Google doesnt list them in Webmaster tools.

I'm yet to work out if Google has been affected by the hack - even if it doesnt list them, I'd think at some point however before the no follows were applied there would have been some impact.

How and who applies these no follows? If it wasnt the webmasters of the compromised site you would expect that these links would have been removed from the web pages by them?

[zoicaremus]

Hi again Michael,

Yes, strange things with those nofollows. However. In the current setup, if they are nofollowed, they should not have a dirrect effect on your website's ranking, so this is a good thing. But it they were followed and nofollowed at a point in time, you should know that it takes a while until your website recovers the ranking (if only them were the problem).

To identify better what happend you can do the following:

1. Check Webmaster Tools for messages - if you got anything related to manual actions on your website, then you should read more about "reconsideration reqests".

2. If there are no messages in Webmaster Tools section, then it was probably an algorithmic update that affected your website. If it's related to inbound links than there is a big change it's a "Penguin" update. You can search more about Penguin update on Moz or Search Engine Journal. SEJ has a pretty good article about how to identify which update affected your site.

Then use Google Analytics and Mozcast and see exactly what algorithmic change happened when your website lost it's rankings.

3. It could be the case that this was some kind of attack against your website. Then removing those links should be enough to get your website's ranking back. If this happens keep an eye regularly on the link profile. If something bad pops up, write fast to those people and use disavow tool if they don't answer fast.

Hopes this helps, send more questions if you have!

[mannydog]

Thank you Remus for your repsonse.

There are no manual actions in webmaster tools.

Open Site Explorer picks up the bad links, and google only lists a small amount. There are approx 4000, so its not realistic to approach every webmaster - saying this we have approached some.

Ive seen that Penguin changes released at the end of May 2013 have targetted "unnatural linking" and this incident happened over a few weeks around April/May 2013. So it is likely we were affected.

Like you said if they were followed at some stage and as a result we were indeed affected, then surely we have a case for Google to fairly reposition us?

There is no doubting this attack was deliberate as I've found source code on some of the affected sites which lists not only our website but other compititors in the industry. In fact every major player except for one, which is highly suspicious in itself. Also among the affected links are links to forums and discussion boards to bad reviews of the company which does not have unnatural links.

Its a tough one I know, my first priority is to restore our SEO ranking with Google. Ive researched Googles recommended actions to request reconsideration, but there are no manual actions so Im not sure how to submit that request.

Its seems extremely unfair that someone elses deliberate actions to effectively sabotage your ranking gets great positioning where you get penalised.

[zoicaremus]

Hello again,

From what I know, If there is no manual action, then you don't have to worry about reconsideration request. You have to clean up the backlink profile by the next Penguin update.

Try to contact each webmaster first. If they don't answer in a decent time span then use the disavow tool. If there are too many links, then disavow the their whole domain. This should simplify your work. Don't worry about nofollow links, they hurt only in some very extreme cases -> watch this video from Matt Cutts about nofollowed links.

Good luck!