"403 Forbidden" Links Coming From Shady Site

finnegan

finnegan

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I just checked Ahrefs to see what backlinks my new blog has and the only one showing is some 403 link coming from what looks to be a shady site based in Germany. I'm not even sure how he found me since the blog is so new.

What is the best course of action here? Do I just disavow or should I risk attracting more by emailing them to stop?

Also...why does Google Search Console show that I have links coming in from legit sites but Ahrefs shows the only domain linking to me is the shady one?
 
This is a common tactics among spammers. It would be easy to just disavow them. You'll just waste your time in emailing them.
 
No reason for disavowing those links or any links for that matter, the disavow tool does nothing but feeding rankbrain and has at best no effect on your ranking and at worst can actually hurt rankings.

As to why there is a difference between what search console and ahrefs is showing, it's simply that they use different spiders, and probably no spider is 100% correct
 
Don't disavow. Just because a site looks shady, doesn't mean its algorithmically negative.
Ahrefs != Google, Google has the worlds most powerful crawler, its one of the ways they maintain competitive advantage. Ahrefs is a handy tool, but certainly not as comprehensive as G (or likely any major search engine for that matter).
 
I'm going to go against the grain here. If you care about the site, I would disavow anything that looks "shady." Alexa Scrapers, Wikipedia Rips, Autogenerated content, Valuation websites, etc.

You shouldn't be desperate enough to consider "keeping" those links around. The real reason though is to show a consistent and concerted effort to maintain a site that attempts to keep Google happy. That way, in the future if someone starts blasting your site with spam, you'll have leverage and good faith that you're not doing it yourself. Those records will go a long way when it matters the most.
 
ryandiscord said:
Should you still disavow if they are nofollow?
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You don't have to, according to Google. I do, because the entire point is to show that I care, I'm watching, and I'm making an effort... because inevitably some salty bish is going to spam my site.

And yeah, negative SEO works, which is why I don't buy the talk of not taking preemptive efforts against spam. Spam is how negative SEO works. If it trickles in slowly, then it's probably safe and will be ignored or help even, but not enough to matter. Again, the trade off isn't worth not building a moat around your castle. Nobody should be so desperate that they accept the trashiest of links on the internet. As your site grows in traffic, links, social footprint, etc... it only gets worse too. I wouldn't let it accumulate nor be sitting with my thumb up my ass when Google penalizes me for mass spam someone else is sending in.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Spam is how negative SEO works
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Oh there are far more effective negative seo techniques, than spam, using spam for neg. seo is kindergarden stuff
 
lion1978 said:
Oh there are far more effective negative seo techniques, than spam, using spam for neg. seo is kindergarden stuff
Click to expand...

For sure. I've discovered a couple myself years back that I vowed to never mention publicly. I did share it with a buddy who was being attacked and knew who was doing it... these Star Wars level weaponries should not be used lightly. It's truly scorched earth, irradiated, where nothing will grow for the next 50,000 years.
 
infotech said:
This is a common tactics among spammers. It would be easy to just disavow them. You'll just waste your time in emailing them.
Click to expand...

What is this tactic called, how is it done, and why would it benefit them if it doesn't point back to their site?

I assume this isn't referral spam as it's not in my referral traffic in GA. It's just links to pages in folders that don't exist which are showing in Search Console under Crawl Errors.
 
^^^ Check that. It's not showing under Crawl Errors. It's only showing in Ahrefs.
 
finnegan said:
What is this tactic called, how is it done, and why would it benefit them if it doesn't point back to their site?

I assume this isn't referral spam as it's not in my referral traffic in GA. It's just links to pages in folders that don't exist which are showing in Search Console under Crawl Errors.
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As others have pointed out, this just has negative SEO effect on your site. Would your site look good if you have a link from cheap viagra store?
Most of the times it's just links from link farms, this is done to make Google think that you are using a PBN or something similar by your competitors.
 
I would disavow if the backlink is irrelevant to your site ( either the anchor text or the site itself is irrelevant). Or send them back a 404 response if they are linking to an inner page which you can change the url of. Negative SEO does have a measurable effect - in my opinion if there is enough negative links, it can change the meaning/category of the site to Google,as google uses your backlinks to categorise your site.
 
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