Can spammers make my page disappear with their link text?

[proboscis]

Hello,

One of my sub pages used to show up #2 out of 264,000,000 results for black widget. Now, when I search for black widget my home page shows up instead and at #28.

Anyone else seen this happen?

I found 7 spammy sites that all link to my home page but they use black widget as the link text - could that cause the real black widget page to disappear and the home page to show up instead but further back?

Also, I only found 7 sites that link to me this way...there could be a lot more...

[Alex70]

It is always better to ask the spammy websites to remove the links ofcourse, but I rather thik that you have focalized the Bls anchor text on too few keysearches. If it is like that there is not much you can do apart from starting now on adding Bls with different anchor.

[Quadrille]

You do not say howe long your site / page has existed, which could be important.

It is most unlikely - almost impossible - for your site to suffer from the actions of other sites unless you are linking with them.

Your reciprocal / exchange links are 1000 times more likely to hurt you; check them all. Indeed, check ALL your links.

But, as your site has clearly not been penalized, it is more likely that other factors, like age, may be involved.

[proboscis]

My black widget page has been around for 6 years or so...

No, I am definately not linking with any sites like that. I found 4 more sites that are linking to my home page with the black widget link text so now 11 in all...

Probably just a coincidence?

Thanks for reading.

[Lorel]

I believe it is possible for scrapers to out rank you for any term they choose to target. I've seen several of them take the title, descripion and keywords off a site and repeat them each 3 or more times (and even repeated them in their own title and description and alt tags, etc) and thus outranking the target site. Of course it's also just as easy to get rid of them because Google will remove them from the results if you report them.

[proboscis]

"Of course it's also just as easy to get rid of them because Google will remove them from the results if you report them."

Sometimes they do - sometimes they don't.