[Method] How to stop competitors spying on your links

[jimdones]

Doing wildcard blocking is not smart, google doesn't always identify itself as 'googlebot'. You'll be blocking your site from legitimate search engines, there is no way you can cover all the user agent names google or bing use.

You can try specifically blocking ahrefs, majestic and so on in htaccess though like you mentioned, I guess that's a smart thing to do. Although they don't always identify themselves correctly either, so you may get crawled anyway.

 

[pokerjk]

One of the best posts in a while. Only downside you can't track metrics yourself in these backlink checkers.

 

[testoman]

i use it to hide my links from satellite sites. just remember, robots.txt is not enough as some bots dont respect it

So that means you put the things on your private network sites not your money sites, right?

Bit confused, wouldn't you want to block the money site as your competitors would see your backlinks? If they can't see the backlinks of your money site, then they'd never find the satellite sites, correct?

I just did this on all my money sites, but I'm not sure if it was the right thing to do because of the quoted post...

I also went ahead and made some changes to my robot.txt

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-content/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /xmlrpc.php
Disallow: /wp-

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /

 

[The SEO]

Its really great post, I'm very confused that how to stop the spy...

 

[notyourmatey]

boys, i will update it shortly to improve it. stay tuned and also check my other thread regarding website speed :

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/white-hat-seo/532840-website-optimization-tutorial-notyourmatey.html

 

[kentauros]

thank you for tips man

good luck
=)

 

[TheGreyMatter]

thank you for tips man

good luck
=)

 

[shurk]

Bit confused, wouldn't you want to block the money site as your competitors would see your backlinks? If they can't see the backlinks of your money site, then they'd never find the satellite sites, correct?

I just did this on all my money sites, but I'm not sure if it was the right thing to do because of the quoted post...

I also went ahead and made some changes to my robot.txt

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-content/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /xmlrpc.php
Disallow: /wp-

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /

Backlinks link TO your site, not FROM it.

Therefore putting these entries in your htaccess / robots on your moneysite will only block the spiders from crawling your moneysite which is of no use to you, as they do not find your backlinks on your site. They find them from the sites that link to you.

Use this to hide your private blog network / minisites. You can't use this technique to hide Web2.0s etc, only sites which you have full control over.

Also with this entry in your robots.txt. I'm pretty sure you are blocking all User-Agents from the root of your site. So your basically blocking everyone.

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /

 

[orko9696]

useful post, thanx for sharing the method

 

[superslikuzi]

this is also useful if you are using 301 redirects!

 

[fitnah]

thanks just implement it

 

[rongtuchien]

Sounds interesting. I'll try on my site. Hope it works. Thanks.

 

[fitnah]

did anyone having trouble using this?
because after i put it on my domain (not money site)
it still not indexed yet
after a week or so
or my site will be indexed later

 

[hokthai]

I have been afraid about spam link to Negative my SEO, but now!!!
Thz OP.

 

[W9go]

what about the other search engines ....... if they cant get your backlinks you are not ranking there ...bing ect ..?

 

[christianbed]

Nice share OP, this is exactly what I was looking for via the BHW search function! ;-)

 

[googlelovedr]

interesting post, i get why you would do this however would this in itself not ironically create a traceable footprint by being able to sewrch for sites with this code in and identify the very thing you are trying to hide?

 

[FBS12]

Great share!
Thanks

 

[SerpEvil]

interesting,thank you for sharing this

 

[randybishop]

Has anyone tested?
Does it work?