Are links safe from friendsite.com?

[JohnPeters]

I have just checked my backlinks in Majestic and was shocked.

It appears I've gained 1500 back links in 1 day all from the domains friendsite.com.

I checked a few of the links and the links to my site have disappeared.

Looking at friendsite.com, it seems that peopel can bookmark a site, and when they do it appears on the "latest bookmerk" section which is site wide.

So my concern is that:

1. 1500 links have appeared in one day from one domain

2. 1500 links disappeared the next day

Wouldnt both of these cause Google to get suspicious?

What should I do? Should I ask friendsite.com to remove the links?

[Resultify]

Hi

Hard to tell if those links could be bad for you without seeing them.

I would suggest:

Sign up for webmaster tools, they now offer warnings for unnatural links.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-unnatural-links-warnings

IF you get warnings in webmastertools then you could consider using the new Disawow tool.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-disavow-tool-take-a-deep-breath

Hope this helps

Fredrik

[JohnPeters]

HI Fredrik,

Tanks for replying but I dont feel safe waiting to actually get a warning.

Is there any other way to know if these links will affect my site.

It just seems far too "spammy" to get so many links from one domain and for them to disappear!

[MarkScully]

Hi John,

I think you're worrying too much here. Google's algorithms are not harsh enough to penalize little blips like this in a persons back link profile.

If worried, you could do as Fredrik suggested and setup a WMT account for your site but I honestly feel like you've nothing to worry about.

I've been victim of an unnatural link warning from Google but it was justified due to 1000's of unnatural links built by a previous agency. In your case, you had 1500 links live for 24 hours. I'd be surprised if Google crawled and acknowledged them all as backlinks to your site. And even if they did, that many links means very little since they all come from one domain.

[JohnPeters]

Ah ok I see what you mean.

I will keep checking the links to see how many hang around from that friendsite.

Or I may even just request them to remove the links, so I can sleep better at night.

I've suffered a manual penalty in the past along with a Penguin penalty from an external person using BMR. Lost a lot of business, so I am very concerned about getting hit again even though my intention was always to do legit SEO etc.

Thanks guys for helping out. Its appreciated

[Francisco_Meza]

At MozCon 2011 Martin MacDonald asked the audience, "Who wants 3 million links pointed to their site?" Needless to say, I raised my hand. Live on stage, he pointed 3 million crappy links to my site, shipoverseas.com. I saw 100s of thousands new links in GWT. He kept them there for a couple days. I told Rand about this in a private email, bascially.... "All those links that were pointed to my homepage didn't have a positive impact on my rankings, but just as important it didn't have a negative impact."

Conclusion: Don't worry about it. Google knows that stuff happens. Do what's best for your prospects.