Negative SEO Attack / Advice

So we're a fairly large e-commerce company and I believe we are caught up in a negative SEO attack since the end of November. I don't think it is directly targeted toward us, as there are dozens of outgoing links from the referring pages. Unless someone is trying to target a niche and their domain is filtered out of the content/links.

Here are 2 examples of referring pages/domains:
http://brantitude.com/igkxpj/seymour-paint-roof-paint-~https://pensionesencolombia.com/5i8ogos/alstyle-1301-alphabroder
Things I have noticed:
- All the referring sites/domains are WordPress sites (I'm thinking a plugin hack?)
- There is a random directory created, as in the examples above: /igkxpj/ and /5i8ogos/
- All the outgoing links are d0 foll0w and seem to be the meta title of the page pointed to.
- I don't think each website is getting scraped for content, I think the content is getting scraped from Google search results for a keyword to build these shit pages.
- Looking at competitors and other outgoing links, it seems to affect sites more if the d0 / n0 follow ratio is altered too much.

I pulled an Ahrefs report, filtered and disavowed about 1200 of these domains the week before Christmas - no results yet. They all have a similar pattern, with the meta title of our page being the most noticeable, and the funky directory in the referring page URL.

Has anyone seen this? What is the advantage to someone doing this besides trying to negatively attack a certain niche?

I assume all we can do is keep disavowing them? If our site was getting scraped, we could block the bot, but I don't think that is the case.

Thanks

People are creating directory sites, and I am also gaining many backlinks this way. I never thought much about them as I only received a few of those backlinks, but if the number is in the hundreds, as you say, disavowing them is the only option.

V said:

People are creating directory sites, and I am also gaining many backlinks this way. I never thought much about them as I only received a few of those backlinks, but if the number is in the hundreds, as you say, disavowing them is the only option.

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But I see no advantage here. They are obviously hacked directories on legit websites. No ads, all outgoing links are d0follow with horrible anchors.
If you go through these pages, it's just a random collection of trash. One page could be about a black Nike shirt, and the next is about white tile floors.

They are all built the same, I think it's an obvious WP theme or plugin hack. We had about 900-1100 last week, and another 200+ in Ahrefs this week.

draychi said:

But I see no advantage here. They are obviously hacked directories on legit websites. No ads, all outgoing links are d0follow with horrible anchors.
If you go through these pages, it's just a random collection of trash. One page could be about a black Nike shirt, and the next is about white tile floors.

They are all built the same, I think it's an obvious WP theme or plugin hack. We had about 900-1100 last week, and another 200+ in Ahrefs this week.

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I think many people are creating such directory sites. I don't know the reason behind this, but I have seen a fair share of such sites. I don't bother with them as they have so many OBL that I doubt they carry too much juice.

You're talking about this spam.
Just ignore it... any decent site gets this shit.
Look on the bright side... you get this shit, it means your site is decent.
Don't waste your time to disavow... those links will disappear soon. Don't waste your time.

praetserge said:

You're talking about this spam.
Just ignore it... any decent site gets this shit.
Look on the bright side... you get this shit, it means your site is decent.
Don't waste your time to disavow... those links will disappear soon. Don't waste your time.

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I would usually ignore these, but we're taking a pretty significant decrease in positioning and traffic from this.
We have a strong presence. Sell over 230k SKUs and rank for 60,000 keywords.

This is new and something we have never seen in our backlink profile in the last 10 years.

draychi said:

I would usually ignore these, but we're taking a pretty significant decrease in positioning and traffic from this.
We have a strong presence. Sell over 230k SKUs and rank for 60,000 keywords.

This is new and something we have never seen in our backlink profile in the last 10 years.

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I'm sorry but it's my 2 cents.
It has nothing to do with this spam. You need to re-evaluate the site.

PS: I get the same shit... and I don't care.

draychi said:

I would usually ignore these, but we're taking a pretty significant decrease in positioning and traffic from this.
We have a strong presence. Sell over 230k SKUs and rank for 60,000 keywords.

This is new and something we have never seen in our backlink profile in the last 10 years.

Click to expand...

Doubt this is the cause of your traffic dropping.