4,000,000 links from 3 sites

[Bob_Dole]

We have about 4,000,000 links and about 90% of those links come from 3 news paper sites with site wides, which is not related to our topic.

My question is, is this hurting us more than helping. And if it is hurting us,as i suspect it is, should we remove all those links from those pages or what should we do?

And if we do remove all those links at once is it going to kill whatever rankings we currently have?

[aris1970]

Hi Bob_Dole,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!
I suggest that you answer to the following questions before friends here are able to share their opinions:

- What are the rankings you currently have?

- How long ago did your site started its real operation?

- Are you sure you do have 4,000,000 backlinks?
- Are you sure you do have 400,000 backlinks (10%) from various OTHER websites?

[Bob_Dole]

Results 1 - 20 of about 3,820,000 for link:http://www.myurl.com/

Thinking about it 10% of 4 million is alot so we probably only have about 100 or so links that do not come from those 3 news sites.

We used to rank #1 for our main keyword on msn and yesterday we are no where to be found, that is what prompted this post.

On google we stay around page 5 for our main and pages 2 - 3 on several other keywords.

On yahoo we used to rank #21 for main kw and now dropped to around #36. Although we do rank better on yahoo for one keyword around #6 in the serps. Which happens to be the anchor text on one of the news paper sites. Our main keyword is the anchor text on the other two news sites.

So we do alright, I just wonder if we could be doing better without the sitewides or if they are the reason we rank as high as we do.

And it started its real operation about 8 months ago.

[aris1970]

Can you also describe (in general) how competitive is your market?

IMO having 3,820,000 backlinks just from 3 OFF-TOPIC sites while only 100 from other sites is very dangerous for your site's future.

Guessing that these are paid text links, I would certainly consider keeping a small percentage of them on each site (i.e. 100 text backlinks from each news site) and purchasing some more from other sites ON TOPIC (with the money that you will reserve from the news sites).

I strongly believe that site-wide links are not doing well in terms of performance and you always have the possibility of a sudden penalty from any search engine.

[Bob_Dole]

The market is fairly competitive lawyer related kewywords.

How the sites are set up we cant just remove a portion of the links, its pretty much all or nothing.

I was checking us on MSN today and we bounced back so at this point I think it might be better to not do anything drastic like remove a million back links at once and just focus on getting more on topic relevant back links.

Thanks for your input.

[prom]

never in my life saw 4 million backlinks!

Not even Google has 4 million link:http://www.google.com = 3.6 million

[Murdoch]

I have a similar situation which, while not as numerically dramatic as Bob's, is making me curious as to the nature of our SERP rankings.
Our company runs a number of "widget" sites, all sorts of services, etc. When checking out our backlinks, a good portion of our links comes from one or two of our own affiliate sites, which admittedly look similar to our own. I'm sire this is not a good thing, but is it bad or neutral to our standings (i.e.- Is Google placing lesser importance or negative penalties on the site in question?)

[glengara]

B_D, those numbers are hilarious, and what's funnier is you're only page 5 ;-)

Sort of makes a mockery of all the "it's links, stupid" pushers.

[physics]

Bob_Dole, remember that as the algos shift certain linking methods go up and down in value. Based on what you've said it sounds like you do need to diversify your links if you want to rank higher. It's possible that those links aren't really hurting you but rather have less weight than they had in the past. Have a looksie at what the top 5 sites for your term(s) are doing linkwise (how many unique domains linking to them, how many 'run-of-site' links, how many recip links etc) and try to emulate them.

prom, try this Yahoo search for a better count of Google's backlinks ;)
linkdomain:www.google.com -site:www.google.com
I see 190,000,000 that way.