Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks for everyone's advice. Unfortunately I only have access to Webmaster Tools and not the Analytics so can't see the previous history.

What I would be worried about is starting marketing the site and then even if it isn't under a penalty now (which I don't think it is), we could walk into one on the next Penguin update.

Should I disavow any link that I don't want to be associated with and explain to Google the situation?

Is it fair to say that if the domain ranks for it's brand name then it isn't under a penalty?

Thanks

James

Hello,
I have a client who unfortunately got breached (not sure how) and as a result 6 HTML files promoting gucci bags and Louis Vuitton bags were put in the root.
I found the files within a week of them being put there but what I didn't realise (and only found yesterday when looking at the backlink profile) was that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of spammy domains pointing at these files.

Some of the sites 404 but some are posts on other bloggers sites who auto accept comments and they total 10,000 links so impossible to remove.

Question is:

1. Will Google understand what has happened and ignore these links (especially because the pages don't exist on the server?)

2. Should I use the Disavow tool to block these 1000 odd domains (can it do any harm?) and more links are being found every day so do I just keep doing it?

3. Is there another way to explain to Google what has happened?

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
James