Website attacked by .ru backlinks

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

Sales have dropped and Google shopping sales are completely gone. My Web consultant says a recent attack of about 10 Russian backlinks per week is contributing. She is manually in the Google search console removing the damage all the time. But there are new ones every week. Surely there is a one-off pesticide to stop this?

 

[fisicx]

What do you mean by attacks?

Can’t you just block by IP on the server?

 

[Ozzy]

She is manually in the Google search console removing the damage all the time.

This has two parts to it.
There are "businesses" who do this on purpose and then they blackmail you with a crazy fee to do it. Then there are spider bots which do it as part of a wider SEO strategy of their own.

All you can do is what your SEO consultant is doing already, and that is disavowing the links. There are tools such as DMOZ and Semrush which can make it more efficient and easier to do. I'd recommend looking at these sorts of tools and then you just export a CSV file every week and update the disavow file on your Google search console.

 

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

What do you mean by attacks?

Can’t you just block by IP on the server?

irrelevant Russian domains are backlinking, my domain is getting a reputation for being a spam site. Block on what server?

 

[fisicx]

irrelevant Russian domains are backlinking, my domain is getting a reputation for being a spam site. Block on what server?

All Russian IP addresses

 

[UKSBD]

All Russian IP addresses

From my reading of the thread.
It's not the traffic coming from the links, it's the fact the links pointing to his site exist

 

[Ozzy]

All Russian IP addresses

You cannot block someone putting a link on their website to your website, that's the issue OP is having.

 

[fisicx]

True. But it will stop Google following the links.

I am however a little confused as to how a junk link from Russia marks your site as spam. I’ve got a site with hundreds of junk links from all sorts of iffy places and it hasn’t affected ranking or traffic.

 

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

True. But it will stop Google following the links.

I am however a little confused as to how a junk link from Russia marks your site as spam. I’ve got a site with hundreds of junk links from all sorts of iffy places and it hasn’t affected ranking or traffic.

SEMrush analytics telling me I'm over average and therefore....

 

[fisicx]

SEMrush analytics telling me I'm over average and therefore....

Therefore what?

Google ignores more links than it indexes. If you get a bunch of junk links from Russia they won’t even show up on the Google radar. So how is your site being flagged as a spam site?

 

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

Therefore what?

Google ignores more links than it indexes. If you get a bunch of junk links from Russia they won’t even show up on the Google radar. So how is your site being flagged as a spam site?

Well according to SEMrush it is saying only 30% of my backlinks are not toxic, 40% might be and 30% are.

 

[fisicx]

Just because a link is toxic doesn’t mean it has any affect. You haven’t answered the question: why do you think your site is regarded as spam?

You say no sales but you don’t say if you are still showing on Google shopping.

Has your ranking gone down the pan? If if has it won’t be because of Russian links.

 

[NickGrogan]

are bad links really a thing? Surely Google, etc can see through that.

Otherwise, all the big brands would be secretly setting up dodgy sites in Russia and adding millions of links to their competitor's sites.

 

[Ozzy]

Otherwise, all the big brands would be secretly setting up dodgy sites in Russia and adding millions of links to their competitor's sites.

This is a thing that some businesses do against each other, as well as some types who hold businesses to ransom to remove the links.
Google does recognise some of the toxic links and ignores, but not all and they provide a disavow tool for you to tell Google what to ignore.

 

[NickGrogan]

You'd think it would be quite easy to spot.

 

[fisicx]

This is a thing that some businesses do against each other, as well as some types who hold businesses to ransom to remove the links.
Google does recognise some of the toxic links and ignores, but not all and they provide a disavow tool for you to tell Google what to ignore.

That may be so. But it doesn’t answer the question as to why this flags a site as spam or why sales and Google shopping has dried up. Seems like @RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE) has other issues.

 

[Ozzy]

But it doesn’t answer the question as to why this flags a site as spam or why sales and Google shopping has dried up. Seems like @RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE) has other issues.

It does explain why Google may have flagged the site as spam, it happened here for UKBF and we had to disavow a lot of domains (about 16,000 of them) and now our traffic is 3x up over the past few months.
I do agree there may also be other issues and analysis of the user funnel and conversion rates of visitor to buyer may help trace that.

 

[fisicx]

16,000 is a little different to the 10/week @RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE) is getting. That wouldn’t be enough to trigger any warnings.

 

[Fagin2021]

As Corporal Jones said… “don’t panic !”

A few things to bear in mind…

• You can’t stop other sites linking to your site.
• You can disavow those links using Google’s disavow tool.
• After analysis, you can disavow individual links or entire domains.
• It can take weeks or months for a disavow to have any effect.

Disavow should be used with caution. If you disavow domains with gay abandon you might be disavowing valuable links by accident. This is particularly true with foreign language sites that may have perfectly legitimate, high-quality content linking to you.

• Bad backlinks won't affect your sales – unless they affect your rankings.
• Bad backlinks won’t affect a shopping campaign.

Unless you link out to spammy sites, your site visitors have no reason to regard your site as ‘spammy’. Visitors don’t see incoming links.

Just because your incoming links are spammy, doesn’t mean your site is too. Moz, Semrush etc are only evaluating your links – not your content.

Google is well aware that competitors or other parties might try to harm a site with spammy backlinks. As @fisicx says, they are more likely to ignore the links than penalise them. If however, they decide you’ve broken their guidelines, they will let you know via a notification followed by an automated or manual penalty.

Ignore third-party offers to ‘clean up’ your link profile. They’re probably from the perpetrators.

Although it can be frustrating, all you can do is keep identifying bad backlinks, keep disavowing them, concentrate on improving your site/shopping campaign as if the backlink problem didn’t exist and don’t believe in magic bullets.

 

[DontAsk]

I have 1000s of links from various linguee domains, which seem to be some kind of translation or dictionary resource. Not sure what is happening but I can only guess people have used them to translate my pages and the results are available for Google to discover the links

 

[Anastasia]

Sales have dropped and Google shopping sales are completely gone. My Web consultant says a recent attack of about 10 Russian backlinks per week is contributing. She is manually in the Google search console removing the damage all the time. But there are new ones every week. Surely there is a one-off pesticide to stop this?

How to understand that a link is toxic. There are links to our site on sites with domain ratings from 1 to 10. Can links on such sites be toxic?
We also have russian links. We are a site from Ukraine and this is very sensitive for us(

 

[NickZ]

My Web consultant says a recent attack of about 10 Russian backlinks per week is contributing.

You can disavow domains, that saves usually quite a lot. When in the GSC look for Pages and if the AI did not push out Pages of your shop. That happens from time to time.

 

[fisicx]

How to understand that a link is toxic.

It’s not easy. The disavow tool needs to be used with great care.

 

[NickZ]

It’s not easy. The disavow tool needs to be used with great care.

Yeap true, a good as any reason to see that SEO is not something which can be done with ease.

 

[fisicx]

Yeap true, a good as any reason to see that SEO is not something which can be done with ease.

Yes it can. There is nothing difficult about SEO. People just don’t want to put in the effort to do it properly.

 

[NickZ]

here is nothing difficult about SEO. People just don’t want to put in the effort to do it properly.

How many pages you have put on the formaerly known SERP1 in areas like real estate, Porn, Fashion? Highly competitive areas are not easy to get into.

 

[fisicx]

How many pages you have put on the formaerly known SERP1 in areas like real estate, Porn, Fashion? Highly competitive areas are not easy to get into.

None. But most SEO work is not in those categories. And even in those categories it’s still not difficult - it just needs care, attention and lots of hard work.

 

[NickZ]

None. But most SEO work is not in those categories. And even in those categories it’s still not difficult - it just needs care, attention and lots of hard work.

Well I have and its not easy as you say, most suggestions of Google are worth zilch. They are only written to confuse people. If 10 000 000 Sites read those and implement the mentioned data they are back to square one.

 

[fisicx]

Well I have and its not easy as you say, most suggestions of Google are worth zilch. They are only written to confuse people. If 10 000 000 Sites read those and implement the mentioned data they are back to square one.

Why are you using suggestions from Google? There are numerous proven techniques you just need to use the ones appropriate to the task in hand.

 

[antropy]

There is nothing difficult about SEO.

...

It’s not easy.

You heard it here first, folks!

Paul.

 

[antropy]

Has your ranking gone down the pan? If if has it won’t be because of Russian links.

Surely you can get penalised for black-hat SEO techniques ... so if someone uses black-hat techniques on your behalf deliberately to get you a penalty ...

Paul.

 

[fisicx]

Surely you can get penalised for black-hat SEO techniques ... so if someone uses black-hat techniques on your behalf deliberately to get you a penalty

This was a big issue a while back but Google has got a lot better at ignoring links. If a link isn’t relevant or add value it just gets passed by.

Remember as well that links are far less important for ranking than they used to be.

 

[NickZ]

Remember as well that links are far less important for ranking than they used to be.

A link? A link from the BBC on their frontpage beats any comment on a blog 2.0 Infosite. Links are not all the same, email links, comments, directories, articles, company sites.

Imagine a Ipone seller getting a recommendation of apple. What would that be worth?

One reason I found is that if you engage in self made (DIY) or fiverr based "SEO techniques" you are bound to collect hacking attempts, Spam and much more.

 

[fisicx]

A link? A link from the BBC on their frontpage beats any comment on a blog 2.0 Infosite. Links are not all the same, email links, comments, directories, articles, company

This has always been the case.

But it’s more important that a link has to be relevant and add value. Which means that BBC link may not be very useful.

 

[NickGrogan]

A link? A link from the BBC on their frontpage beats any comment on a blog 2.0 Infosite. Links are not all the same, email links, comments, directories, articles, company sites.

Imagine a Ipone seller getting a recommendation of apple. What would that be worth?

One reason I found is that if you engage in self made (DIY) or fiverr based "SEO techniques" you are bound to collect hacking attempts, Spam and much more.

Not true at all.

I've had/got links from BBC, Times, FT, etc, they're great for going I'm on BBC, etc, but don't drive much traffic. People go to the Times to read the Times not check out links.

You can get much more value from a blog site that your clients actually visit and read, they're not fussed about leaving blog 2.0 to see something more interesting. Your site is not more interesting than the mainstream media site they're on.

 

[NickZ]

Not true at all.

I've had/got links from BBC, Times, FT, etc, they're great for going I'm on BBC, etc, but don't drive much traffic. People go to the Times to read the Times not check out links.

BBC front page or as a comment in the forums section?

From the way you react (Not true at all.) The world is not black and white. It wasn't the front page as you seem not to differ between quality front page links and some message boards or author opinions.

So for you, an Iphone seller gains only traffic to his shop? Really?

 

[NickGrogan]

BBC front page or as a comment in the forums section?

From the way you react (Not true at all.) The world is not black and white. It wasn't the front page as you seem not to differ between quality front page links and some message boards or author opinions.

So for you, an Iphone seller gains only traffic to his shop? Really?

Hmm, take a look at bbc.co.uk - The "front" page - there are no external links on that page at all, it only links to internal BBC content in various categories. It follows the standard MGP post format of a few years ago, auto-rotates content and shows you more of what you click on.

So as there are no links, can you explain how you get one?

I have links in articles - not comments, the actual articles.

Not sure what the last sentence means? can you clarify?

 

[NickZ]

Hmm, take a look at bbc.co.uk - The "front" page - there are no external links on that page at all, it only links to internal BBC content in various categories.

Yes, it was only an example.
to get one will be hard, you might need to pay the webmaster to bet on there.

 

[fisicx]

Yes, it was only an example.
to get one will be hard, you might need to pay the webmaster to bet on there.

Do you really think paying the BBC will get you a homepage link? In any case, the lack of relevance means it will be worthless.

 

[NickGrogan]

Huh?

You said

A link from the BBC on their frontpage beats any comment on a blog 2.0 Infosite.

Now you're suggesting paying the "webmaster" for a link - Do you think the BBC website has a webmaster that you can pay for links?

Why do so many SEO providers know so little about SEO?