Zoo71
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How to find out who created malicious backlinks to our site?
Hi,
We have been hit with 500,000 (and growing) backlinks that have appeared in two weeks. We will make removal requests and disavow but Google has issued a manual penalty even though this is not our or our SEO company's doing.
Just spoke to a competitor who had the same issue over the last two months, with the same backlink sources and they ranked on page 1 as well. They had to change domain. This seems to indicate a competitor has of ours has done this.
Is it possible to trace the source of these attacks, who carried them out?
We have been hit with 500,000 (and growing) backlinks that have appeared in two weeks. We will make removal requests and disavow but Google has issued a manual penalty even though this is not our or our SEO company's doing.
Just spoke to a competitor who had the same issue over the last two months, with the same backlink sources and they ranked on page 1 as well. They had to change domain. This seems to indicate a competitor has of ours has done this.
Is it possible to trace the source of these attacks, who carried them out?
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ASKER
Depressed, but thankful for both you opinions, much appreciated!
You have to weigh the benefits/disadvantages of starting a new domain vs fighting the 'blacklisting' that is occurring.
Google used to say no backlink is a bad backlink - if they are bad they will ignore them. But they don't seem to be following their philosophy.
The only other thing to do is try and build up more backlinks that are relevant, then when this kind of thing happens it will have less of an impact.
You could also try contacting Google - but good luck with that.
Google used to say no backlink is a bad backlink - if they are bad they will ignore them. But they don't seem to be following their philosophy.
The only other thing to do is try and build up more backlinks that are relevant, then when this kind of thing happens it will have less of an impact.
You could also try contacting Google - but good luck with that.
ASKER
We will use a removal tool and disavow but I have taken advice and it seems our rankings may never recover from this. Been advised to start a new domain.
There are some small domains listed but many are Korean blog monsters which seem to exist for nothing else.
I do not think we have been hacked, at least there are no outbound links we do not recognise.
What I want to know is is it possible to trace the culprits. Two companies have had their rankings and sales damaged and if this was a court case for damages we would be looking at £250k-£500k.
Surely a negative SEO software was used, no way of tracing who used it?