deleting page spammers targeted?

[dethfire]

I have been very badly attacked by spammers. About a year ago they found an exploit in my blog system and planted "hidden" links in several thousand blog accounts on my site. Then they comment spam other sites that link to one of those blog accounts with some crap anchor tag. I was then penalized by penquin. I am now in the process of finding domains and disavowing them. What I am realizing is that I won't find them all. Every day ahrefs finds new ones. It was a big operation.

I obviously deleted all the blog accounts and noindexed the entire blog. My question is whether a spam link that links a 404 page or noindex page still gets penalized by penquin? I won't find them all so will that blanket action help me or do I need to track down every single domain?

thanks!

[3zero]

If you 404 the page you will no longer be penalized.

[dethfire]

but not noindex? my blog software doesn't seem to 404 non existing accounts. It makes a soft 404 in google's eyes.

[lucy24]

my blog software doesn't seem to 404 non existing accounts. It makes a soft 404 in google's eyes.

If so, bad links may be the least of your problems.

Someone hereabouts told me in a different context that "noindex" only affects the individual page. It doesn't prevent the search engine from seeing that site A links to site B in a general way.