Spammy Links now 404'ing

[TravG]

So I had a huge number of websites and links pointing to my one website with all (or at least 90%) of them having the same anchor text. I was always pretty sure this the work of 1 individual or group working together doing this. Their attempts did work and I lost rankings with many closely related keywords associated with their spammy links.

To defend myself I started updating my disavow file and have disavowed a lot of domains and pages and rankings are slowly creeping back up. In doing a little research today on this I noticed most of the websites that I have checked which were linking are now returning 404 errors. Good news for me since the links will eventually fall off but I just wonder why this has happened all of the sudden.

Any ideas? You think they just gave up since they saw I must be combating it? Coincidence?

Believe me I am happy they are gone, but I am thinking they must have been hosting the websites they were linking with or why else would all of the sudden the websites which were sending the links either completely close down or turned off their comments.

[universal4]

Interesting.

How many different domains and do you happen to know if they were all hosted in the same place?

I wonder if they took a server down or maybe even lost hosting possibly since they may have been doing other bad things they got caught by their host doing.

Regardless of what happened, it's good to hear someone using negative seo has been taken down or possibly slowed down.

Rick
Universal4

[justbookies]

Their sites could have been taken down by the host company - certainly any website that copies content will get taken down by the host company if you complain to them about it and state it is a DMCA request. Always worth checking where sites that annoy you are hosted - I find most are on free hosting (tends to be the same free hosting, though several different company names for the one parent host company) and those free hosting companies remove them when you complain to them. Possibly some other webmaster(s) suffered similarly to you but contacted the host company to get those sites removed. You should maybe try it yourself in future.

[TravG]

This wasnt a case of content being copied but more of someone posting comments on crappy articles and linking back to my website. Just like if you made a comment linking back to your own website through your name, instead they are linking to my website.

To answer your question Rick: I plan to look into whether they were all hosted at the same place or at least do a sample of the websites and see if some are.

If someone is commenting on blog posts and linking back to my websites, I guess there isn't a way to reverse track that somehow is there? If there was a way to see who is leaving the comments and linking back to me at least I would know who for sure is doing it. I am actually about 99% sure I know the website behind all of this, so it would be the owners of that website making these comments but I have no way to prove it that I know of.

[justbookies]

Do you think it is being done manually? Surely it is done by some bot automatically (set up by the competitor you speak of)? My websites get blasted with comment spam with backlinks in them, but I moderate all comments so none gets through. I assumed the stuff I was getting was largely automatically generated by some bot that can get deal with the captcha request.

[TravG]

No, I think someone is manually going and doing this because the blogs I looked at where they are posting most have captcha which I am unaware of a bot being able to beat that. And just to clarify. Theses links are not coming from website I do not own. Someone is posting to websites which are NOT mine linking back to my websites.

[justbookies]

A quick google suggests spam bots can defeat captcha.

[universal4]

If someone is commenting on blog posts and linking back to my websites, I guess there isn't a way to reverse track that somehow is there?

If there is a link involved, the link has to come from a domain or ip. Cross reference the ip's and see if they are in the same block.

Being in the same block does NOT automatically mean it is the same individual, just that it is in the same block. Now if they are on the same ip, then it is the same server. (with the way routing is nowadays, I have seen even /26's (64 ip's) in the same class c be in different parts of the world.) Generally though, class c's are usually in the same NOC at least.

Rick
Universal4

[gamingmodern]

Remove all spammy links as soon as possible or disavow them. protect your websites fast..

[casinoaa]

Also my sites have the same problem.. hundreds of spammy links with same keyword. There may services that do it. Probably our competitor use this tecnique to go down our sites. Check all links and disallow that are pr0.. you can leave that are from pr1 and more..

[gamingmodern]

you can contact those sites admin to remove links or you can disavow links from Google webmaster tools.

[TravG]

If there is a link involved, the link has to come from a domain or ip. Cross reference the ip's and see if they are in the same block.

Being in the same block does NOT automatically mean it is the same individual, just that it is in the same block. Now if they are on the same ip, then it is the same server. (with the way routing is nowadays, I have seen even /26's (64 ip's) in the same class c be in different parts of the world.) Generally though, class c's are usually in the same NOC at least.

Rick
Universal4

I am not sure what you mean here? There is a link but the link points to my website. I can find the IP's of the websites they are commenting on and linking to my site but as far trying to find out who the person is that is actually making the comment on the blog, there isnt a way to do that is there?

[Kazino]

You can ask for IP address of the person who made comments from the owners of these blogs.
But there is a problem.
It may be not real IP address, but proxy.

Regarding captcha, bots now can recognise ANY captcha in connection with services of manual recognition captcha.

[John Anthony]

How much are these links? It is very likely that someone threw your website to the machine. This behavior is typical for "SEO deposition 'websites. Someone you simply do not like. You can throw these links to disavow the tools but with a large number of links is tilting at windmills.