Links to my site I found in GWMT don't seem right.

[iteri]

There is a site that I found today with the top links to my site. There are 6,000+ links to my site coming from this one site. However, when I go to that site I can't find anything about my site on theirs. What does that mean?

[netmeg]

Did you view the source code?

[agent_x]

There's a lot of it about. I looked today and found one site with over 200 links coming from different domains that all seem to have the same fake forum on them, or maybe forums spammed with the same fake posts. When I look for my link on them it's not there. I hope Google is wise enough to discount this kind of thing.

[martinibuster]

Log file spam [webmasterworld.com]. Some log files are public. If they send out fake referrer information to your site, if your log files are public then that referrer information will show up as a link from your public logfile.

The process is indiscriminate. Often doesn't matter if your log files are public or not.

[iteri]

I just don't want to be penalized if someone is trying to spam us. How would you check the source code netmeg? Do you mean from the site itself? It's actually a pretty reputable, well known site and I guess that's why I'm perplexed.

[Planet13]

Before they got rid of it, i would look at gogogle cache and you could often see all sorts of keyword spam or link spam.

I guess if there were some way to use fetch as googlebot on pages that you DON'T own, that would be fine. I am sure there must be some web sites / apps out there that will spoof googlebot and will let you see what content those sites are serving up when google comes crawling.

[agent_x]

Log file spam [webmasterworld.com]. Some log files are public. If they send out fake referrer information to your site, if your log files are public then that referrer information will show up as a link from your public logfile.

The process is indiscriminate. Often doesn't matter if your log files are public or not.

This isn't referrer spam, this is different (or maybe it's a more sophisticated form of it). These are links that googlebot is finding in a page that point to your site and is listing them in GWT. I can't immediately see the reason for doing it, apart from some attempt to give the page some legitimacy by linking out to established sites perhaps?

[tedster]

some attempt to give the page some legitimacy by linking out to established sites perhaps?

A common spammer approach these days. I don't see evidence that it's effective, but that doesn't stop the practice.

[nadavs]

I have it too. Apparently, I have over 80K links from one .edu site (with only 20 comments from me) and a little over 2,000 links from a website that doesn't even exist (it has been down for months).

Even better, I have many links from my old domain to the new domain (and vice versa). The brilliant algorithm didn't understand the 301 redirects and change of address request.

nadavs

[MikeNoLastName]

--some attempt to give the page some legitimacy by linking out to established sites perhaps?
A common spammer approach these days. I don't see evidence that it's effective, but that doesn't stop the practice. --

Although it could be effective to get a competitor booted from SERPS if google demerits those buying links like that. How much is it worth to you to get into 1st vs. 2nd rank? Enough to buy links from them for your competitor?

[g1smd]

What happens when you change your browser UA to "Googlebot" and browse those sites?

[iteri]

I changed my UA to Googlebot and I still couldn't find any links to me. How can a website (reputable, big name) have thousands of links to my site but I can't find my links on their site?

[netmeg]

Maybe they were hacked (and then cleaned it up) ? I dunno, the links that GWT shows me have never seemed to have much basis in reality. I see links that I can't find when I look for them, and other links that I *know* exist don't show up there.

[iteri]

Well it seems to me like I can't hold much stock in GWT! :-)

[g1smd]

What does Google cache show?

How about The Wayback Machine?

[iteri]

I checked Google cache and The Wayback Machine - still no links to our site from that one.

[lucy24]

Some of them are internal searches. The parameters that happened to be in effect when g### visited the site are different from what's there when you go yourself to check up. Especially helpful if the site is, say, in Japanese and you have no idea where the Search is or what to enter to replicate the effect ;)

Also scroll-downs. The ones where you click for more links. Somehow they all show up in the SERPs even though the extra links aren't visible in the page code.

Those are just ones that I've personally seen.

There was a similar thread not long ago where someone said that g### doesn't even show you your really good links. Just the crap ones. So you're fundamentally wasting your time trying to investigate.

[iteri]

"So you're fundamentally wasting your time trying to investigate."

Thanks, I've come to that conclusion myself.