Google Alerts showing strange "links" to my site

[dickbaker]

I use Google Alerts to see what my competitors are doing, but also use it to see what new links to my site are out there.

Today I received two Google Alerts for a page on my site. The site that's supposedly linking to mine doesn't have any links on the page. It's a page of keywords in fonts of varying sizes and colors. There are links to general categories at the bottom that take you to other pages on the site with other pages loaded with keywords.

I don't know where the link to my site is in all this, how Google found it, why Google thinks it's a link to my site, or what is going on.

Has anyone else experienced this?

[Robert Charlton]

I don't know where the link to my site is in all this...

Try using View Source and then search the text for your domain name.

[rustybrick]

Are the Alerts being triggered from Google Blog Search?

[dickbaker]

Now this is getting really weird. I saved the alert from Google, and clicked on the link again. I'm getting a page not found error. I went to my history in my browser for yesterday and tried all of the URL's for that site, and get 404 errors for all of them. The site disappeared.

[hutcheson]

A fly-by-night website? Doing something extremely dodgy with links? I am shocked, shocked....

[dstiles]

Except for one isolated alert I haven't had any this year. No idea why.

When I was getting them almost none of the pages referenced had an actual reference to my site at all, in any way. The best I could find (and I think this was what triggered the alert) was indivudual words that made up my site's URL - eg my-web-playground.tld made up from the words my, web and playground.

Basically, a google screw-up.

[Nvisian]

I have had the same thing happen. Usually I can see the page in google cache: and then see my website link in the page source along with a multitude of others that don't show on the page. They look like they got scraped off a search results page. Since my site is a top result it gets used like this alot. I don't know why this gets Googles attention-seems pretty lame to me.

Also, in the last few months I've been getting alerts for other legit sites that have a "b" in the name instead of a "d" like mine does. ie..wibget.com instead of widget.com. Does Google see my site as one of the wibget.com sites, or just not know the difference between a b and a d anymore? Very strange!

[arieng]

DB, I've seen this happen as well. I think its automated spam software spewing out pages than come and go in just a few hours.

My best guess is that its got something to do with pushing PR toward some spam domain and its camouflaging the links with scraped content and links to legit sites.