My competitor got 6k ******** backlinks from AOL..What the hell is this??!

Sup everybody?

Just wanna check this thing out as it seems a bit odd to me. One of my competitors got 6k ******** backlinks from AOL The link looks something like this search.aolCA. / search/ kw and some weird urls. This report is from Ahrefs. On semrush though those links don`t show up. All the links are like 61 - 81 Domain Rating and like 11 URL rating on ahrefs. Can someone more experienced explain me what the hell is this? Is it "healthy" for your domain?

Cheers!!

Looks like he is forcing bots into the AOL search by linking the certain queries. Google simply igones these links, so neither healhy, nor harmful.

Loads of sites have links from Aol. You could just search your sites then ping the searched url.

starki said:

Looks like he is forcing bots into the AOL search by linking the certain queries. Google simply igones these links, so neither healhy, nor harmful.

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Thanks!

mickyfu said:

Loads of sites have links from Aol. You could just search your sites then ping the searched url.

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It makes sense now. Cheers!

What is AOL?

thetoothfairy said:

What is AOL?

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Really ? You born after 2000 ?

Meddie said:

Really ? You born after 2000 ?

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No. Why? Is it so popular that everyone who was born before 2000 know it?

thetoothfairy said:

No. Why? Is it so popular that everyone who was born before 2000 know it?

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yes

thetoothfairy said:

No. Why? Is it so popular that everyone who was born before 2000 know it?

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Kind of. AOL stand for America Online and was the biggest Internet company in the 90s..

thetoothfairy said:

No. Why? Is it so popular that everyone who was born before 2000 know it?

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its bigger than myspace

I got dozens of links from AOL on one of moneysites as well but still nothing special about it nor harmful.

mickyfu said:

Loads of sites have links from Aol. You could just search your sites then ping the searched url.

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how to ping url ?
if i search my site with google and right click copy link.. the link is my website.. no google links or something this
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fcineblog01.ch%2Fready-player-one%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEpN_qYv56ViJT6UnC6gfOrRqRUOw

If it is not harmful. Then it must be doing a little good.

thetoothfairy said:

No. Why? Is it so popular that everyone who was born before 2000 know it?

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Here are some trivia points to explain why it seems funny to some of us that someone over the age of 20 wouldn't know about AOL, at least in the US - it is America On-Line afterall... Some of the trivia are actually fairly recent and span beyond the US, but AOL isn't nearly as prominent a name as it was in the 90s and even early 2000s. (Some of the trivia most people probably wouldn't be aware of, but still serve to point out somewhat of the size and influence AOL has even now behind the scenes)

According to Wikipedia:

"At one point, 50% of the CDs produced worldwide had an AOL logo."

"In 1997, about half of all U.S. homes with Internet access had it through AOL."

" In November 1998, AOL announced it would acquire Netscape"

"In January 2000, AOL and Time Warner announced plans to merge, forming AOL Time Warner, Inc. The terms of the deal called for AOL shareholders to own 55% of the new, combined company."

"it was revealed on December 20, 2005 that Google would purchase a 5% share of AOL for $1 billion."

"On September 28, 2010, at the San Francisco TechCrunch Disrupt Conference, AOL signed an agreement to acquire TechCrunch"

"On February 7 [2011], AOL bought The Huffington Post for $315 million"

"On April 9, 2012, AOL announced a deal to sell 800 patents to Microsoft for $1.056 billion."

"On May 12, 2015, Verizon announced plans to buy AOL for $50 per share in a deal valued at $4.4 billion."

"On June 29, 2015, AOL announced a deal with Microsoft to take over the majority of its digital advertising business. Under the pact, as many as 1,200 Microsoft employees involved with the business will be transferred to AOL"


"As of 2017, AOL has the following media brands in its family:
HuffPost
Moviefone
Engadget
Autoblog
TechCrunch
Cambio
Style Me Pretty
MapQuest
AOL BUILD
MAKERS"

thetoothfairy said:

What is AOL?

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It was one of main "entry points" to the Internet in the 90's before the search engines, the belief was that you would need an entry point to access the information to the Internet, so AOL was that entry point.

JB2302 said:

If it is not harmful. Then it must be doing a little good.

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Na, there are things that do absolutely nothing and that's the case with these links. Googlebot won't crawl or index them anyway, it's just third party tools.

starki said:

Na, there are things that do absolutely nothing and that's the case with these links. Googlebot won't crawl or index them anyway, it's just third party tools.

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true those links are not doing any good in google serch result.

JB2302 said:

true those links are not doing any good in google serch result.

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if not doing good , why those people create it ?

thetoothfairy said:

What is AOL?

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It's how people searched for porn before Google. Along with Lycos and Ask Jeeves.

ARe they do follow or no follow?