I've never seen backlinks like these before !

Hi there,

So I'm looking at one of my keyword competitors backlink profile. I found some strong links but not niche related at all so I went to the page to have a look.

I open the site (PR5, DA55), and it's an inner page ( PR 3, PA32) and in the first glance I couldn't find the links . So, I did a search on the page code and then I've found the links. They are in the footer (along with another site) same colour as background and in a small size ...hidden basically.

I thought that the guy/girl may be the owner of the site and decided to kick this new recent site .. but then when I look to the rest of the backlink profile I found more and more sites like these ones. All different niches, authoritative sites and very popular (among their niche).

The hidden links were only in this inner page, not in any other page or the home page (which would be even more powerful, in case the guy/girl owned the domain would be a better option).

There's even a governmental site where this happens. In this case is in the header (just before the first text).

I see 2 options

- He/She is the webmaster of this sites and insert some hidden links to power up his/her business . Due to the different of languages and countries does not seem really the case.

- hacked sites, where you can insert html code.

Have you ever've seen this ?

If those sites are their own, why would it be impossible? Big earners have no hassle maintaining 5-10 authority sites in their PBN. Different languages and countries only hide the footprint better.

That pretty much sums up Sape.

funkybunker said:

If those sites are their own, why would it be impossible? Big earners have no hassle maintaining 5-10 authority sites in their PBN. Different languages and countries only hide the footprint better.

Click to expand...

That was my first thought. But what about a governmental site ? And if you have a PR5 site why you would add the link in a inner PR 3 page and not in the home page ?

clonr said:

That pretty much sums up Sape.

Click to expand...

I don't know much about SAPE but I thought that SAPE was network of only .ru sites .. So is network of hacked sites, where you pay for placing links ?

You've found SAPE. Congrats.

Welcome to 1999.

Welcome to Backlinking 101

Welcome to Russia.

Yeah alexa category niche sites, html5, div, it is juiced from old structure sitemaps, duh

Ahh ok. Thanks guys .