Someone tanked my rankings with redirected penalty domain?

Seeking Advice
1

I’m hoping someone here can help me out with this situation… Our site had been ranking really well, top 1-4 for a while, but recently we dropped to pages 2 or 3. After some digging, we found that three domains with really spammy links were redirected to ours.

I’ve done a lot of research and I’m almost certain that this is the issue (I know there’s a competitor in our field who plays dirty to rank higher). I’ve checked through our server logs and found the offending domains, but now I’m stuck… what do we do?

Here’s what I’m thinking:

  • Should we block requests from the referring domains?
  • We’ve already disavowed the domain, but should we disavow all links pointing to the abusive domain?
  • Can we report this attack to Google?
2

Disavow the root domains that are causing the issue.

That should be enough unless you get a manual penalty. If you do, disavow the links and send a reconsideration request explaining everything.

3

Haven’t heard of this happening in a while, thought the SEO Wild West days were over.

Do you know when you got the spam links? Can you see the timing between the links showing up and your rankings dropping? It could help figure things out.

But yeah, disavowing is probably your best bet here.

4

@Scarlet
The drop in rankings happened the same day (or the next day) after we found the redirected domains, and according to Ahrefs, the referring domain count went up by 330%, from 1k to 3.3k. Our traffic hasn’t recovered and is now on a steady decline (58% down from pre-attack). It’s been happening for a few weeks now.

We’ve already disavowed the redirected domains.

SEO Wild West is still alive for us .

5

@Rowen
That’s crazy… sorry you’re going through this. When did you disavow them? From what I know, it can take a while for things to show up in Google’s eyes.

6

Scarlet said:
@Rowen
That’s crazy… sorry you’re going through this. When did you disavow them? From what I know, it can take a while for things to show up in Google’s eyes.

We disavowed a few weeks ago, so it’ll probably take some time. Thanks for the support .

7

I agree with the others – disavowing those domains is your best move.

8

It’s unfortunate you’re dealing with this, but here’s what you can do:

  1. Keep disavowing: You’ve already disavowed the domain, but make sure to disavow any spammy backlinks pointing to your site from these redirects.

  2. Track your backlinks: Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console to watch for link spikes and disavow them if necessary.

  3. Strengthen your backlink profile: Focus on getting high-quality backlinks to dilute the impact of these spammy links.

9

@J.cole2
This is basically our plan, so it’s reassuring to know we’re on the right track. We’re not 100% sure we’ve disavowed every spammy backlink going to the redirected domains, so we’ll double-check that.

10

@Rowen
Sounds good! Good luck with it .

11

Does anyone have any ideas on how we could get these redirects removed?

12

Rowen said:
Does anyone have any ideas on how we could get these redirects removed?

What exactly do you mean by ‘redirects’? Did they set up a 301 redirect to your page, or are there just links pointing to your site?

Also, how did you find the bad backlinks? Tools like SEMrush show a lot of toxic links, but when I check in Search Console, I don’t see many of those.

13

Maybe you could have a lawyer send a letter to their hosting provider to ask them to remove it, unless they’re hosted on a server that’s hard to contact, like a Russian one.

14

Jason said:
Maybe you could have a lawyer send a letter to their hosting provider to ask them to remove it, unless they’re hosted on a server that’s hard to contact, like a Russian one.

Not a bad idea. At least we could contact the registrar. Thanks for the suggestion .

15

Keep an eye on Google Search Console for any new suspicious links and update your disavow file accordingly. Google’s algorithm has improved at detecting negative SEO attacks, but it’s still a time-consuming process.