Hidden backlinks from our competitors, how to find out?

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Gazza78

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We have a competitor that is buying backlink from same strong network for each of his websites and makes rapid increases. Each time he opens up a new website he gets top positions after a few months.
The backlinks are shown on Ahrefs, but when you visit the websites, you can't see the links. Most of the links are from .org, .edu .gov.

Question is how? Have they purchased expired domains? How come Ahrefs are showing them, but when you visit website, you can't see the links, unless you go to "inspect" and find them??
 
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Gazza78 said:
Question is how? Have they purchased expired domains? How come Ahrefs are showing them, but when you visit website, you can't see the links, unless you go to "inspect" and find them??
Click to expand...
now that's some really black hat trickery :)

I'm not sure how they do it (probably they have their own networks of sites that they can inject with their own links?? I don't know)... also, I remember someone saying a few years back that SAPE links could do this too, but I'm not sure since I never used them. But that's probably another way of doing it...

Here's a link to SAPE if you're interested (not affiliated with them):
https://links.sape.ru/en

EDIT: not sure that this is the real SAPE, but that's the only one I found
 
tazarbm said:
now that's some really black hat trickery :)

I'm not sure how they do it (probably they have their own networks of sites that they can inject with their own links?? I don't know)... also, I remember someone saying a few years back that SAPE links could do this too, but I'm not sure since I never used them. But that's probably another way of doing it...

Here's a link to SAPE if you're interested (not affiliated with them):
https://links.sape.ru/en

EDIT: not sure that this is the real SAPE, but that's the only one I found
Click to expand...
Thank you, appreciate your response.
 
Gazza78 said:
Question is how? Have they purchased expired domains? How come Ahrefs are showing them, but when you visit website, you can't see the links, unless you go to "inspect" and find them??
Click to expand...
If they're visible when you inspect the html source, then they're probably just hidden via CSS.
 
If it was added with javascript, you need to view it via F12 console. It is not reflected in the source code because it is contained in js.
 
This sounds like a sort of reverse cloaking, LOL which is hidding links from regular users, instead of bots. But this implies that they have a certain control on domains from which they get the backlinks. This makes me think that some high PR sites might hide from their bosses that they are selling OBLs.
 
myplaysoft said:
This sounds like a sort of reverse cloaking, LOL which is hidding links from regular users, instead of bots. But this implies that they have a certain control on domains from which they get the backlinks. This makes me think that some high PR sites might hide from their bosses that they are selling OBLs.
Click to expand...
Here is an example of site where they have put many of their links: https://www.hellin.fr/

But you can't see them when you go to the site unless you press "inspect"
 
Gazza78 said:
We have a competitor that is buying backlink from same strong network for each of his websites and makes rapid increases. Each time he opens up a new website he gets top positions after a few months.
The backlinks are shown on Ahrefs, but when you visit the websites, you can't see the links. Most of the links are from .org, .edu .gov.

Question is how? Have they purchased expired domains? How come Ahrefs are showing them, but when you visit website, you can't see the links, unless you go to "inspect" and find them??
Click to expand...

Since ahrefs is picking up links they probably have them embedded in the code, which is why when you look at the page output on your browser you don't really see the links. Right click in your browser and click on inspect code, then do Ctrl + F and search for your competitor's website.

If that's not how they are doing it, then they probably have a script that is displaying the page with link only to Google/Ahrefs, and without to everyone else. This doesn't make sense because if they were to take this approach, the links should only be visible to Google. Unless this is a recent implementation and Ahrefs bot hasn't recrawled those pages.
 
This is likely due to the use of cloaking or hidden links within the HTML. Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl to see how these links are being rendered and indexed.
 
Im
NeedMyLink said:
This is likely due to the use of cloaking or hidden links within the HTML. Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl to see how these links are being rendered and indexed.
Click to expand...
Im more interested to know how I also can get my links on the same network. Or maybe its their own domains that they snapped?
 
Gazza78 said:
Here is an example of site where they have put many of their links: https://www.hellin.fr/

But you can't see them when you go to the site unless you press "inspect"
Click to expand...
Yep, hidden via CSS:
Code: 
<div style="width:1px;height:1px;overflow:hidden">
They're placed in a 1px x 1px div
Gazza78 said:
Im

Im more interested to know how I also can get my links on the same network. Or maybe its their own domains that they snapped?
Click to expand...
I couldn't see anything that would identify a certain network (other than they use html entities for anchor text) but you could always try emailing the admin of they site the links are on and enquiring on how to get listed there? If they don't know anything about it, they may well be hacked links.
 
Gazza78 said:
Im

Im more interested to know how I also can get my links on the same network. Or maybe its their own domains that they snapped?
Click to expand...
You could start by monitoring expired domains using ExpiredDomains.net. Creating a PBN, though risky, can also give you similar results if managed correctly.
 
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