Spam links refer to links from malicious external sites to your own website, which violate Google’s search guidelines. While acquiring high-quality backlinks can enhance your site’s SEO ranking, spam links pose a risk of lowering your site’s ranking, necessitating proactive measures.

In this article, we delve into spam links, explaining their mechanisms and providing methods to handle them if your site is affected. By reading to the end, you’ll gain a comprehensive understanding of how to identify and disavow spam links.

What is Spam Links?

Spam links are links from sites that contravene Google’s search guidelines or from low-quality pages that offer no benefit to users. Receiving spam links can risk lowering your search ranking, so immediate action is needed.

High-quality backlinks are typically seen by search engines as objective evidence of the trustworthiness of your content, potentially boosting SEO (as per Google’s ’10 truths: 4 – Democracy on the web works’). However, sites receiving spam links could be deemed by search engines as attempting to manipulate rankings unjustly, leading to a decrease in SEO ranking.

Although search engines have become more sophisticated in detecting and nullifying ranking manipulation through spam links, the risk remains significant.

Google’s Definition of Spam Links 

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines clearly outline practices considered manipulative and qualifying as spam links. These practices are violations not only when conducted on your own site but also when aimed at external sites through spam link attacks. Specific tactics include

• Exchanging money or other benefits for placing links
• Excessive reciprocal linking
• Keyword stuffing in the descriptions of links embedded in the source code
• Placing links to your site on automatically generated pages
• Forcing external site owners to include specific link attributes in their source code

Reference: Link Program

These practices share the common goal of intentionally manipulating rankings rather than improving content quality. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines advocate for the creation and sharing of valuable content that users would want to recommend to others, rather than engaging in such spam activities.

Difference Between Natural and Spam Links

The distinction between natural and spam links lies in the intent of the external website operators who link to your site. Natural links are good-quality backlinks where the external site operators reference or cite your content out of appreciation or agreement with it. These are benevolent links placed ‘naturally’ because your content is valuable and excellent.

In contrast, spam links are maliciously placed by external site operators intending to degrade your page’s ranking. Thus, they are harmful actions aimed at attacking the SEO ranking of successful sites.

Identifying whether a link is natural or spam often depends on the relevance between the linked page and your own. Natural links are typically placed by related or competing sites that see your page as beneficial from a third-party perspective, enhancing content credibility and offering user benefits.

On the other hand, spam links lack relevance between the linked page and your own. Often, spam links utilize pages like cloaking sites or mere link directories known for their low quality.

Low-quality pages with irrelevant links to your site do not benefit users and hinder user convenience, prompting search engines to crack down on spam links.

Background of Google’s Crackdown on Spam Links

The misuse of spam links by other sites to negatively affect SEO rankings has led to stringent enforcement by Google.

The background to Google’s crackdown on spam links includes a period when malicious linking was rampant, manipulating rankings and not meeting user needs, thereby compromising the platform’s user convenience.

In the past, Google’s search results failed to display pages that met user needs, providing a platform that did not ensure user convenience.

Let’s trace the process until spam links became a target for crackdown. We can reaffirm Google’s philosophy of prioritizing user-first.

Until around 2010, ranking manipulation using spam links was prevalent

Until around 2010, ranking manipulation using spam links, such as excessive reciprocal linking with low-quality pages, was prevalent because search engines primarily considered the ‘quantity’ of backlinks for SEO evaluation.

Not limited to malicious linking methods, black-hat SEO tactics, like unnatural keyword stuffing and cloaking, were also widespread. These allowed even low-quality pages not meeting user needs to achieve high rankings through unscrupulous methods.

Ideally, search results should display high-quality, user-first pages. However, producing such pages requires effort and needs assessment, which was bypassed by the effectiveness of black-hat SEO strategies until around 2010, enabling easy top-ranking without significant page development effort, thus attracting user traffic.

Concerns Over User Abandonment Due to High Ranking of Low-Quality Pages

Google was worried about the potential for low-quality pages to rank highly in search results, leading to user departure from the search engine. If Google couldn’t guarantee the convenience of its search engine, users would not use it as a tool for information gathering.

If users drifted away from the search engine, website operators who rely on SEO to attract users would suffer. To ensure both user convenience and the search engine’s ability to attract users, Google needed to counteract the top-ranking of low-quality pages caused by black-hat SEO practices like spam links.

This led to the implementation of the SEO evaluation criteria revision known as the ‘Penguin Update.’

What is the ‘Penguin Update,’ a link spam update implemented by Google? 

The ‘Penguin Update’ refers to a set of revisions to Google’s SEO evaluation criteria, started in 2012, to demote sites violating the Webmaster Guidelines from high search rankings. 

The main change was shifting the evaluation focus from the quantity to the quality of links. The update, aimed at clarifying ‘page quality,’ was thus named ‘Penguin.’

With the Penguin Update, sites engaging in link spam and other black-hat SEO practices faced penalties, including lower search rankings and removal from the index, effectively eliminating low-quality pages from search results.

However, the introduction of the Penguin Update also led to a surge in reverse-engineered spam link attacks. These attacks aimed to lower the rankings of top pages by intentionally linking them from low-quality pages, thereby subjecting them to penalties.

In response to this, Google implemented ‘Penguin Update 4.0,’ the seventh update, which adjusted the search engine’s approach from imposing sanctions on sites affected by spam link attacks to ‘nullifying’ the effects of such links.

Nevertheless, considering the way search engines evaluate backlinks, it is unlikely that Google can recognize and nullify all low-quality links. 

Therefore, it’s crucial not to merely ‘leave’ but to ‘disavow’ any links that are identified as low-quality pointing to your site.

Difference Between Panda Update

The ‘Panda Update’ is another initiative to remove low-quality pages from search results, similar to the ‘Penguin Update,’ which evaluates the quality of links. In contrast, the ‘Panda Update’ assesses the quality of content.

Characteristics of Spam Links 

The increase in backlinks, as a result of improved content quality, can either enhance or diminish SEO evaluation. However, spam links have distinctive features, allowing for preemptive action before they affect your site’s ranking.

Sites affected by spam links often experience a sudden increase in backlinks. Regularly monitor your backlinks and be suspicious of any unnatural spikes, as these may indicate spam links.

Commonly, spam links are found in two types of low-quality content.

• Cloaking pages that show different content to users and crawlers
• Link collection pages on foreign domains

Both cloaking pages, which deceive users and crawlers, and link collection pages, which offer little value to users, violate Webmaster Guidelines and are considered low-quality.

Act promptly when your site receives such backlinks to prevent negative SEO impacts.

How to Check for Spam Links on Your Site 

You can check if your site has spam links through ‘Google Search Console’ under the ‘Links’ section. The Search Console offers various features, so it’s beneficial for those not already using it to start.

The steps to check your site’s backlinks in Google Search Console are as follows

1. Log in to Search Console and click on ‘Links’ on the left side.

2. View the details under ‘Top linking sites’ in the middle of the displayed page.

3. Check for suspicious sites, such as those from foreign domains or excessively linking out.

4. Repeat the process 2 and 3 for ‘Top linked pages.’

5. If there are many spam links, export the external links for a comprehensive review.

6. Verify the source of the link and address it.

The ‘Top linking sites’ tab should be a priority in your review since spam links may come from multiple pages on the same site.

After reviewing ‘Top linking sites,’ also check ‘Top linked pages.’ Pages on your site receiving many backlinks are often highly ranked, which could be due to quality content being cited or hidden behind numerous spam links. If any of the items contain links that can be conclusively identified as spam links, it is necessary to move to the process of disavowing the links.

How to Disavow Spam Links

Once spam links are identified using Search Console or an SEO tool capable of backlink checking, consider how to quickly disavow them.

As previously mentioned, search engines, through the Penguin Update, have algorithms to nullify spam links. Carefully consider disavowing backlinks to your site, as it might also risk lowering your overall SEO ranking.

However, if you cannot contact the source site’s operator and spam links continue to increase, you may need to use Google’s link disavowal tool. 

Ignoring obvious spam links can lead to severe penalties like significant drops in search ranking or even removal from the index, so it’s crucial to understand how to disavow when necessary.

Request Removal from the Link Source Site

The first step in disavowing spam links is to request their removal from the source site’s operator. Spam links typically refer to those that fall under Google’s link schemes, but there can also be undesirable backlinks from low-quality affiliate sites, personal blogs, or unrelated themed sites that might impact your site’s SEO.

These types of links may not be explicitly listed in link schemes but could affect your site’s SEO, making it important to disavow them to maintain your site’s SEO health.

Often, you can have these undesirable links removed by contacting the site operators. In most cases, these links are not intended to attack your site, so the chance of the removal request being honored is relatively high.

Use Google’s Link Disavowal Tool 

If the spam links to your site are determined to be malicious, use Google’s link disavowal tool.

The process of disavowing spam links can be done through a straightforward procedure in the Search Console. The specific method of using Google’s link disavowal tool is detailed in the following articles.

Related: Setting up internal links to the Link Disavow Tool

For websites with long operation periods or those frequently achieving high search rankings, there might be a vast number of spam links. Although disavowing all spam links might seem laborious, recognize it as a necessary process to protect your site.

Summary 

In this article, we explained the basics of spam links, how search engines respond to them, and introduced methods to check and manage spam links. The nuisance of external spam links has been mostly neutralized across most scenarios due to the seven rounds of Penguin updates. However, ignoring the presence of spam links still carries the risk of penalties. Any site can fall victim to spam links, making it crucial for site operators to manage their crisis proactively. Regularly check the quality of your backlinks and promptly address any spam links identified.

Author Profile

International Web Consultant Paveena Suphawet

A trilingual professional in English, Thai, and Japanese, she has numerous achievements in international SEO. She studied the latest IT technologies at Assumption International University, Thailand, and majored in International Business at the University of Greenwich, UK. Following her tenure at ExxonMobil’s Thai branch, she became a key member of Admano from its establishment.

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