Suspicious Legacy Links - Is This a PBN?

I need some expert help.

[l1fejosh]

Before I started at my current employer, they hired "SEO Professionals" to outreach and use "white-hat methods" to secure backlinks.

Well, I did a deep dive on some and a few come from example(dot)com - when I run a check on this (SpyOnWeb), there are 2 other blogging websites that have the exact same theme and hosted on the same IP.

Now, on all 3 of the seperate contact pages on each domain, there's one email... when I run a Google search for this email, dozens and dozens of websites come up, ranging from gambling/casino, drugs and sex niches.

Have I stumbled upon a PBN? I need some expert guidance to help me check if we've been exposed to a PBN.

Thank you.

[edited by: not2easy at 7:01 pm (utc) on Oct 23, 2023]
[edit reason] ToS/Charter [/edit]

[not2easy]

It may well be what you describe is a PBN and not a big help to the client's site. I would not spend a lot of time documenting what was done in the past. By now Google would have evaluated and discounted any such backlinks.

[tangor]

No on can control who links to you, but you can control who YOU link to.

Given the end content discovered in your investigation these are not likely beneficial backlinks, but then again, g (and the other search engines) are always fighting this kind of mess.

Check your logs to see if you have any traffic coming FROM these less than desired links. If so you can make that 403. Side benefit, g will see you don't accept that link. :)