40,000 Extra Inbound Links?

...and no SEO done myself

[Ozzy]

Hi Everyone,
My website has been listed at the top of Google, MSN and Yahoo for around 3 years for my main keywords. I did a lot of work to achieve this, using some great advice from this forum and a few others.
Since that time, once I was listed in the first and sometimes second positions I have done nothing. Just left it there for fear of doing anything would cause my site to plumet.
The fact I did nothing seems to have worked, and I did not use any "black" tactics in my seo work. In fact for the past year or more I have done no link building either, inbound links have grown usually from forum users and customer and other sites linking to my site as a place to go for my services - none asking for or expecting any link exchanges.

Anyway, I've learnt today that my site is not listed in Yahoo at all. Even searching for my company name returns nothing at all (except sites linking to me).

Some more digging shows that in the past 2 weeks inbound links registered on Yahoo shows over 47,000 inbound links to my site which is an increase of over 44,000 which was reported by Yahoo 3 and more weeks ago. This has nothing to do with me, I've done nothing in regards to any link building or seo or anything of the sort on my site in nearly 2 years.

A friend has suggested this could be sabotage, surely this would not be possible would it? I have no links out from my site to anyone more than just a handful of recommended sites which has remainded constant for a couple of years.
Google and MSN does not report this massive increase in inbound links, which I want to remain. However, if something is happening any ideas how to combat it would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
Richard

[caveman]

Hey Ozzy. Any update on your situation? Have you tracked down the new links and had a look at them?

[Ozzy]

Hi Caveman,
I'm afraid I'm still at a bit of a loss. There are so many links to go through, some of them I know of (for example forums I participate on). Others are from sites I would expect to link to me, or that I already know of.

However lots of them are rubbish, completely unrelated sites which I would never agree to a link exchange with. Which leads me to one theory .. I do get about 30ish emails a day with the same old robotic text saying something along the lines "We think your site that we have never even looked at is great and perfect for our visitors, so have added a link to you - please link to us and if you dont in X weeks we'll remove our link to you". I ignore all those emails and never linked to any of them.

The floor in that theory is that I wouldn't expect that to explain 44,000 extra links, a hundred or so yes but not 44,000!

A company has told me they could research to find a common theme and possibly find the source, but they want mega money to do this which I cannot afford.

So, in short, not found a solution yet. My main concern is if this has happened on Yahoo, could it also happen on Google and MSN?

Krgds, Ozzy

[sem4u]

There could be a lot of scraper sites linking to your site.

[Ozzy]

If that is the case, is it right for search engines such as Yahoo to penalise you for it?

[sem4u]

No it is not. I would try and contact Yahoo! with a reinclusion request.

[roberthilley]

is this another form of google bowling?

[Ozzy]

I had to do a Google to find out what that is, and now I'm not at all pleased :-(
I've contacted Yahoo via their FAQ forms to ask for re-inclusion but have not heard anything at all from them yet. To be honest I'm not surprised as its not very often a search engine person would respond to a mere mortal - but heh ho.

Google is my main concern. I'll try contacting them through my adwords account and see if I get a response.

Thanks again,
Richard

[roberthilley]

You may find this article VERY helpful ... [mattcutts.com...]

Matt Cutts with Google gives for the first time a direct description of how to submit for reinclusion to Google.

[Ozzy]

Thanks for the link Robert. I'll keep it bookmarked incase Google does drop me.
I've had a response from the Adwords support saying they have no control over positioning on the natural search results. I've replied saying I dont want them to affect it, just can they not ban me :). I'll report back after their next response.

[Ozzy]

...also just submitted a reinclusion request to Yahoo.

I must say, if this is true and one of my competitors really are Google Bowling me its amazing what depths some people will stoop to!

[Ozzy]

Have had another response from Google saying that the Adwords team cannot help but have forwarded my concern onto their tecnical team.
No response from Yahoo at all yet.

Thankfully I'm still listed in Google though and they still are not reporting all the inbound links themselves.

[wmuser]

Yahoo will rarely reply to yoru email but Google can

Did you found out the reason you have been banned from Yahoo?