GWT Reports IBL's That Don't Exist. Or Do They?

[austtr]

In a couple of recent threads there have been references to GWT reporting large number of links from sites that are totally unrelated to the target. The links are usually to just one or two pages of the target site.

However, when the linking pages are checked out, there is no sign of the link that is being reported and a text search of the source code finds nothing.

I've always had an uneasy feeling that this might be an indicator of something that I should be acting on... but I have no idea of the what, when, why and how part.

Can anyone shed some light of what what might be going on and if any action is required?

[phranque]

you might be seeing a different document than googlebot is being served.

[austtr]

OK.... so I guess that would mean the "perpetrator" is cloaking. Why would a Romanian clothing and apparrel ecommerce site want to cloak links to a Sydney travel page?

It seems to be a total nonsense but given the paranoia about unnatural link profiles I was wondering if there is any action I should be taking.... or can I safely assume that Google handles these with no ill-effects to the target site?

[diddlydazz]

it may be wise to disavow (webmaster tools) the offending sites by domain

domain:example.com

it seems (AFAIK) that the effect of such crappy links will depend on the strength of your real link profile. if your link profile is weak, they may have an adverse effect.

basically, the way i look at it is why not disavow?

[phranque]

i was only thinking of how, not why.
have you tried a "fetch as googlebot" in GWT for the pages on your site supposedly being linked to?
perhaps your site is being used to pass PR to another site.

[jpack]

I've been seeing this as well, dozens of cloaked links from a series of different spammy domains hosted in the same place.. All .info domains with clothing affiliate links on them. Can't ever see the actual links to my site, even faking a Googlebot user-agent.

The links never show up in any external backlinks monitoring tool but show up regularly in both GWT and to a lessor degree in Bing WMT.

I've been disavowing the domains, but I'm concerned about the gap between the time I see them and when the disavow is processed as well as the number of links that might be out there and registered by Google but just not show in GWT.

[Planet13]

"Why would a Romanian clothing and apparrel ecommerce site want to cloak links to a Sydney travel page?"

One Reason: The spammers BELIEVE that they have successfully put links on the Sydney travel page pointing to their target money-making site.

They then would build links from a romanian clothing site TO the sydney travel site to increase the page rank of the Sydney travel site. This increased Page Rank would then flow from the links they assumed they had pointing from the Sidney Travel to their target money-making site.

Scenario 2:

Does the Sidney travel site accept advertising?

Maybe they advertise on that sidney travel site and in an effort to get their advertising seen by more eyeballs, they are creating spam links to the travel site so that it will rank higher?

[lucy24]

Why would a Romanian clothing and apparrel ecommerce site want to cloak links to a Sydney travel page?

Alternative explanation: The owner of the real site has allowed his nephew to piggyback on the domain name to conduct business of his own. Probably half of my hotlinks fall into this pattern. At the front is an inarguably legitimate site that has nothing to do with the offending activity-- and no apparent way to get to the part of the site that's engaging in misbehavior.

[austtr]

@Planet13

The source code of the Sydney page shows no signs of any bogus links and all the html code looks OK. Fetch As Google shows nothing odd... status is 200 OK

The Sydney page carries Adwords and affiliate advertising that I control…. no third party advertising.

@Lucy

and no apparent way to get to the part of the site that's engaging in misbehavior.

I guess that calls for a disavow request…. which I did several weeks ago.