Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should i disavow yellowpages.com. Webmater tools shows 656 links coming from it.
-
We do not have any manual penalty warnings but I am still concerned that Google will see this as unnatural and be penalizing us to a lesser degree.
-
My client had 17,500 links pointing to his site from Yellowpages.com and it caused a algorithm penalty to there local search results. Here is a sample of the links. Now notice that each link contains a different city. My client city is Tacoma WA. We are positive this destroyed there NAP because they went from first place in the Google 3 Pac to not being the Google 3 pack at all, but for the same keyword they are number 3 in organics. When you go to Bing they still maintain there local search rankings.
-
Apparently Google admitted that the Yellow Pages link was given as an example link in error:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-natural-link-mistake-17326.html
Still, it's probably true that if you managed to get a keyword anchored link into Yellow pages, and it was a followed link it could be considered unnatural.
-
The disavow tool is meant to be used to ask Google not to count links that you made with the sole intention of manipulating Google's search results. A Yellow page link is almost always a nofollowed link, and as such does not need to be disavowed. But, even if it was a followed link, it would still be a good link.
Don't worry about the fact that there are a large number of links. The way that Webmaster Tools presents these links makes them look bad, but in reality, Google knows that this is just one site linking to you and not hundreds of individual links.
I've seen a lot of webmasters do damage to their site by disavowing too many good citations. Be careful!
-
You will have to keep an eye on it. The more searches are done on the YP sites, the more these links build and over time they do work against you. I agree with everyone else that they shouldn't but the reality is, we've seen them in penalty notices. Google thinks 4000 links coming from yp.com.au, yp.net.au, yellowpages.com.au and yellowpages.net.au are spammy, nofollow or not.
Jason Mun had the same issue: http://jasonmun.com/links-yellowpages-unnatural-according-google/
It's interesting to note that he's also referring to the AU version of Yellow Pages even though we've seen it with the .coms as well.
Anyhoo - I would leave it for now. Just keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't become a bigger problem.
Edit to add: it does depend on your ad itself - don't use any links within the page. And be careful with how many you let this build to.
-
Even the volume is not abnormal - suppose you have a Italian restaurant & take-away in Manhattan, then you would probably appear on pages on restaurants, italian restaurants, mediterranean restaurants, catering, take-aways in Manhatten, New York,... - all these lists are indexed in Google and all these pages would have links to your site. Depending on your business & region - you could appear in an awful lot of combinations of (sub)categories & geographic locations.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Hi Francisco
I agree with Dirk here - this isn't an unnatural link, but I would check and make sure that you are appearing in relevant and proper categories, as well as service areas.
If you find you are appearing in irrelevant categories or locations, I would contact them to make sure you can fix this, if anything from a user experience standpoint.
Hope this helps!
-
Normally i wouldn't be concerned but the shear volume of links is what makes it appear odd.
Thanks for your thoughts.
-
Normally the links from yellowpages are of type "nofollow" so they do not need to be disavowed.
Apart from this fact, given the fact that most businesses are listed in the yellow pages, these links don't seem to be very unnatural to me.
rgds,
Dirk
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I disavow these links?
Hi all, I have a ski website that I am currently performing a toxic backlink audit on. I have noted that a lot of the links being flagged as toxic/spammy by the tool I am using seem to be the same/similar sites with different URLs. The sites are vaguely related to skiing (relating to helicopter travel options for travelling to ski resorts) but it is concerning me that there are so many of them and they are being flagged as so toxic.
Link Building | | SolveWebMedia
Do you think it is worth disavowing these? Or contacting the owner to ask them to remove the link? I have included an example of some of the links below. https://www.cannes-helicopters.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://nice-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5 Slightly different site but same favicon icon:
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://www.whitetracks-holidays.com/Helicopter_Transfers_Villars_Switzerland.htm Thanks in advance for any advice / help!0 -
Nofollow links showing up in Google Search Console
If some nofollow links are showing up in Google Search Console, does that mean they are indeed passing link juice?
Link Building | | BrightonRecoveryCenter0 -
Internal Linking - Post links vs Side Bar Links behaving differently
Hi, I have a question regarding the internal linking behavior. My website is www.hindimeaning.com which is approx 3 years old. I have approx 450 posts. Now i have a widget on right sidebar "Popular posts". A widget below my posts "Related Posts". And a simple html CSS menu above the posts (I removed menu around 6 month before so currently it will not show.) I crawled my site with moz crawler (same are the result from google crawler as well) and it shows menus links as internal links. While sidebar widget "Popular posts" and "Related Posts" are not showing as internal links. If we talk theoretically what i learn till now is "every link on a page behaves as internal link". Then why the widget links are not showing as internal links. Thanks, Mahesh Kumar
Link Building | | chaudhary04890 -
Footer Links And Link Juice
I'm starting to learn about link juice and notice in GWMT > Traffic > Internal Links, that the list is in this order by the links counted on each page. Some are in the footer and some are in the header, with some being more important than others commercially i.e. /register /privacy /terms /search /sitemap /disclaimer /blog /register So I am wondering if I should add a 'no-follow' attribute to the footer links i.e. privacy, terms, disclaimer and leave the others as they are? Does this help retain link juice on each page where the links appear? Or am I missing the point all together? This is my website: http://goo.gl/CN0e5
Link Building | | Ubique0 -
Link Detox and Link Removal
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png
Link Building | | CobraJones950 -
Does the ratio of external nofollow links to external "do follow" links matter in terms of SERPs ranking?
My site has an external link nofollow:dofollow ratio of approximately 1:1 That is, there are about as many nofollow external links as "do follow" external links. I have an impression that the ratio of no-follow to "do follow" links is a factor in the way that our website shows up in SERPs. I have the impression from reading a variety of sources, and from looking at Seomoz, that calculate "trust" factors as if they mattered (in SERPs), that seem to value a relatively low nofollow:dofollow ratio. Am I correct about that? Thanks,
Link Building | | tcolling
Tim PS - I don't know whether or not this matters, but our website is at: www.trustworthycare.com - Tim0 -
Does linking to a subdomain give link juice to the main domain?
I have a few domains that I'm going to use for link building, will the link juice from the sub domains transfer to the main domain?
Link Building | | Vsky0 -
Why doesn't the Better Business Bureau show up in my link analysis
I've been working on SEO for one of the companies I've designed a website for and I'm confused by the company's lack of Better Business Bureau backlinks. The Company in question does have a BBB account and that account links back to the company's website. However, when I check in the link analysis for the site, the BBB link doesn't appear. My competitors, on the other hand, do have BBB links in their analyses. So, I'm wondering if I somehow don't have the right type of BBB account. The BBB seems to be a pretty good place to have a link from, and the company pays $300.00 per year for the membership, so I'd like to get the most out of it. Here's a link to the BBB page for the company http://www.bbb.org/utah/business-reviews/plumbers/platinum-plumbing-services-in-west-jordan-ut-22199778#bbblogo And here's the company's website www.slcplumbing.com Now, the company site I've just listed is 301 redirected to www.platinumplumbinginc.com, but even when www.slcplumbing.com was the main site, the BBB backlink didn't show up. Thank you Blake
Link Building | | BlakeMcGillis0