Last week I noticed via Google Alerts that my web site was obtaining backlinks from multiple sites. Listed on the same pages are quite a few competitors as well. The web site seems to be generating page content based on keywords even though the root domains have absolutely nothing to do with the keyword or niche. I am concerned this may be a competitor having the site spammed all over the place. Our site is not participating in any link building services for some time now. This week the amount of backlinks being fed through Google Alerts has easily tripled. Can someone explain where or how these links are being generated? Notice the odd directory names before calling some sort of php page. Some examples below. http://gardencitydentistry.com/lcno/afxc.php?resellers-audio-ebooks-master-rights http://www.modextil.com.pl/ponrm/hm.php?master-ebook-rights http://explorationtyphon.com/ijkb/yujdt.php?master-rights-free-ebook http://lisasteamenlo.com/hbmo/yp.php?private-label-rights-defined http://risingdragonhotel.net/fjlv/ar.php?ebooks-with-reslae-rights http://autoinsurancechicagoil.com/cggx/ea.php?resell-rights-and-plr-information http://seartahsap.com/chdy/eceeb.php?audio-ebook-resell-rights
Does anyone have any insight into how/where those links are coming from? Any suggestions appreciated.
I agree that it looks like they've been hacked. However, I don't see any links on any of the pages. Looks like just straight text to me.
You are both confirming my suspicion. But yet the purpose is unclear to me. @selectsplat Even though the pages do not contain clickable links, Google is finding these pages and sending the findings to me in email. The last few days there has been anywhere from 3-7 of these references in each email alert from Google. All the root domains are different. Looking through a couple of the sites these pages are not linked anywhere. So does anyone know how Google is finding them? Is it possible the spammer/hacker is book marking the created pages in order to be found? If so how can this be tracked down? ALL the pages are using keywords specific to the niches my website targets. Is it possible to find out where these pages are originating from? Main concern is what effect this could potentially have on my site and the SERPs? Does it have any positive outcomes that could come of this? What are the negatives? I would hate to see myself and my competition pulled into some hacking or illegal activity as the URLs being posted appear to be consistent through the pages. I am afraid someone is attempting to remove the competition in our niche by having us classified as spammers. Is there any validity to assuming this?
It depends on how you alert is set up. I suspect that your alert is set up so that it will show you anytime there is a new resutls for ... www.yourdomain.com That doesn't mean it's a backlink. if you want ot see when you have a new backlink, you'll have to set it up so that it shows you anytime there is a new result for ... link:www.yourdomain.com And as you know, that's probably not going to show you *all* your new backlinks, simply becuase the link command is not all that comprehensive. No, it's not going to provide much benefit, becuase they're not links. The negatives, as you've guessed, are that you could be flagged for 'spam', although I don't know exactly how this would be done. I think I would personally contct each of those websites, and see if they know those pages are up there, and if so ask them to remove them.
Google is either finding those via somebody submitting the pages or finding links from existing pages to them. Does look like a hacked submission. Probably a new backdoor to some hosting software or company. During the creation of the pages it may auto-submit the page to Google for review. Assuming the pages stay the way they are I can't see any big downside for you. There aren't any active links so it wouldn't affect SEO for your sites directly. Now if they built a huge amount of links to these new "useless" pages it might cause them to outrank you, but that would seem like a waste of time compared to just building links to their own sites. You could keep an eye out for these pages to actually show up for your targeted keywords for SEO, not just the google notices. Contacting the website owners and/or hosting sites to let them know they may have a hacking/security issue is good idea too.