When looking at my site in open site explorer the top results are very dodgy spam and porn sites backlinking to us. Is this having a negative impact on our site?

[AudioBobby]

When using open site explorer to check out who is linking to us I was surprised that the top results are spam and porn sites.  These are completely irrelevant links.  Does this have a negative impact on our site?  What can we do to combat this?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Google is smart enough to know that not every link is something you have added, or indeed can do anything about, so don't worry too much.

Can you see your link on those sites or pages? Do you feel your traffic is suffering? You could try and ask them to take down your link, but I wouldn't hold up a lot of hope for getting an answer - but never say never

Regards,

Andy

[AudioBobby]

It looks like these sites back linking us were hacked, and the links have now been deleted on a majority of them.  Traffic is slowing down but nothing significant.  Could this be a competitor trying to get our site penalized? How long will these links stick around in my open site explorer data? Thanks!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I don't know about OSE, but if they are being removed then I would just wait it out.

However, a friendly mail to the webmaster of the site won't hurt either. And do you think a competitor would go to such extremes in order to try to damage your site reputation?

Regards,

Andy

[AudioBobby]

I will try and be patient, it just raised some red flags when I discovered them.  Thanks for the tips Andy.  It is a consumer electronics site,  so I do believe some competitors deploy black hat SEO tactics.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

You're very welcome

Well, it wont hurt to keep an eye on your site and do make contact with these other sites and try and get links removed.

Good luck,

Andy

[CPU]

If you haven't enagaged anyone to undertake link building for you and these links have been created then it does seem suspicious.

You suggest that some of the links are going but obviously it may be worth monitoring this. As suggested below contacting the relevant sites may be worthwhile but if they are spammy sites of porn sites they may not be worried about your concerns.

I would use open site explorer to see if this has happened to any of my competitors or to see if any of them are obviously using a link building agency as this may have originated from an attempted stitch up by an overzealous rival.

[AudioBobby]

Thanks for the tips Lewis it's much appreciated.  I will be keeping a close eye on this and hopefully it will clear up.  If you are interested here is a link to one of the hacked sites containing our link that is still active  http://johnwakefield.co.uk/ifapj/ebods.php?ti=130037

All the bad links I have found seem to be in this format domain.com/something/something.php?=number So i assume they were all made by the same person.  Again thanks for the tips.