Competitor getting External Links from search.aol.com

[itvisionsinc]

Recently, I noticed that one of the competitors I track within my Moz campaign received about 12 new inbound  links. As a result, there DA jumped about 10 points. I reviewed these new external links and was surprised to see that they are all "search.aol.com/aol/search?query= ..." with Link Anchor Text that is good for the industry we compete in.

Can anyone tell me why these are being counted as "Inbound Links". It just doesn't seem right. Is this some sort of black hat seo tactic?

[Andrew-SEO]

Yes this does not seem right. Did you check out the url the link is coming from. Is it in text with an anchor text. Or is it in a profile page?

[jasonwolf]

I'm seeing something very similar, except the inbound links are all for my site (not a competitor.) This isn't intentional, and I can't figure out why/how it's happening. Did you make any progress on this? Every link is showing the exact same Shopper Approved review (identical text.) The only difference is that the query in the search box is unique.

"https://search.aol.com/reviews?q=..."

There are over 600 of these inbound links, all linking to (1) our homepage, and (2) our Shopper Approved page. Both are followed links.

Any ideas? I'm going to reach out to Shopper Approved and see if they have anything to say, but I have a feeling that'll be a dead end.