Links from a nonexistent domain, what do we do?

[spadedesign]

Our website is receiving 15 links that I believe are negatively impacting us. The problem is, this website linking to us no longer exists. The domain is not even hosted.

The website linking to us is: thepurpleelephantboutique . com/

How do we fix/resolve this issue?

[CandymanKen]

Hi-

I'm not sure if they are actually having a negative effect if they no longer exist. However, to be sure you can log into your Google Search Console an use the disavow links tool. Marie offers a good overview of the tool, with some great cautionary remarks on this post https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool

Good luck

Ken

[spadedesign]

Thank you for the input. Is there a way to confirm if the are negatively impacting us or not? Also, how can these links be pointing to our site if they do not exist?

[dohertyjf]

Hey Matthew, there is really no good way to know if they are negatively impacting you or not. And 15 links really isn't that many, so if you have even a halfway decent sized link profile I honestly wouldn't worry about them and instead would just keep on doing what you're doing to build good links.

It's not much work at all to disavow the entire domain, so I'd take the 20 minutes to do that if you're really worried and then keep on going.

They're likely showing for your site in the tools you're using because of outdated indexes, whether any of the main link tools or even Google's Search Console data. When doing link removal work in the past I've received full link reports from all the major link indices and then de-duplicated. Doesn't sound like you really need to do that in this case, but this would be why you're still "seeing" them.

Hope that helps!

John

[spadedesign]

Thank you for the feedback, I appreciate it.