Thousands of links from Russian Sites

Question

I've recently checked into my Google Webmasters account and found that I have several thousand links from .ru domains. Almost half of all links from one domain.

I have never hired anyone for link building (or done any myself to be honest), so I'm not sure where these have come from.

All of my content is in English, and targeted to the United States.

I'm concerned that this is giving Google a negative signal on my "link profile".

First question: Do you think that these links are harming my site's search results?

Another question: could this be a negative link campaign from a competitor?

Thanks for your help!

Michael d · Answer

If you believe that you are receiving links that can hurt your site, you will want to disavow them.

You can disavow links here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

There have been issues of competitors trying to derank other websites by setting spammy link campaigns targeting that site. The simplest way to combat this is with the disavow tool.

Before disavowing, I advise that you analyze the links closely and determine for yourself if you think they are spammy or detrimental to your site. There are a lot of valid Russian websites on the internet that may be linking to you. And there are also many Russian bot campaigns on the web that will perform malicious activity and negative link campaigns as well.

Thousands of links from Russian Sites

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