Will These unintentionally HIDDEN Backlinks Damage my site?

Hi everybody!

I want to buy a site which has 4 Gov backlinks and 1 edu backlink going to it.

The Edu Domain has several pages which have hidden backlinks to the site -> the link can't be seen, but if I check the source code, I see this:

<li class="item-299"><a href="http://www.mydomain.com" target="_blank">ANCHORTEXT</a></li> (FOOTER LINKS)

These are at least on 22 hidden backlinks from the same domain. It is also not a dropdown-menu or something...


Other pages don't even have an anchortext, 93 hidden backlinks (SIDEBAR) :


<a href="http://www.mydomain.com" target="_blank"></a>


The domain is indexed by google as #1, if looking up mydomain.com

I assume the webmaster just didn't remove all code when updating the website.
It's a PR4 and costs 195$ and is in my niche, backlinks ranging from PR5 to
PR0 and aged 1-2-3 years. Most are edu/gov.

What do you think? Too risky to buy?

Not worth it IMO.

It's fine, I'd be 99.9% it's a web dev cockup rather than anything shady. The fact some links don't even have anchor text proves this even more. Sounds like someone edited the CMS (Poorly) rather than actually going into the code to remove stuff. I see this type of crappy work ethic every day, web devs are a lazy, useless bunch - partly why they don't earn as much as they should!!!

If you're really worried about it you can always email the webmaster of said site to inform them of cock up, personally I wouldn't and just take the additional PR.

I'm assuming this domain is for a PBN right?

Thanks for the answers guys!

I want to repurpose the domain for the moneysite, so I have to choose between this one and another one, which is much more stable backlinks-wise, but has no gov/edu links and is not in my niche (but the name is good)..

This second option has lots and lots of PR3 contextual backlinks and is also PR4 and costs 160$. And it was redirected to another (good) site, owned by the same company, from the birth of the domain.

Not worth, it's risky to buy because you could wake up with no links at all. Better to create backlinks yourself.

Here are the Majestic metrics for the root

I am also tending to conclude that it is not worth it long term.

Yes, the site has AMAZING contextual PR5-4-3-2-1 links from gov/edu sites. But these are not aged articles, so the likelyhood that the backlinks will be removed when updating the pages is a bit higher. Intuitively I can imagine, that in the course of the next 18 months at least 70% will disappear.

parabellum2 said:

But these are not aged articles, so the likelyhood that the backlinks will be removed when updating the pages is a bit higher.

Click to expand...

Are these links created by GSA or the like or did an Academic / Student write them?

There's a big difference here, I own sites with genuine .ac.uk (British) backlinks placed by staff / academics about university business. Those links never die!

Personally if you have the budget I'd buy both sites and 301 them together.

It sounds like an error from the part of the webmaster, but important to fix as it could cause issues regardless of your intent.

sudorank said:

Are these links created by GSA or the like or did an Academic / Student write them?

There's a big difference here, I own sites with genuine .ac.uk (British) backlinks placed by staff / academics about university business. Those links never die!

Personally if you have the budget I'd buy both sites and 301 them together.

Click to expand...

Yes, no shady GSA links at all, all placed by staff, all legit. You know these are kind of pages, where all programs are listed, and the new ones, e.g. from 2014 are added at the top. OR pages like "here you can find infos about XYZ" and then the sites are listed.
Ideally I think aged articles from 2013 or older would be good and never updated. But these... Good to know that in your case the links stay!


The overall concern is now not so much the money for the site, but the time investement in the site. I am looking for a site that will serve me for long time. So maybe the primary concern is the likelyhood to loose those good backlinks...


Here are the best PR Links from different domains listed again, age 1-3 years:

1 PR5 french edu link: Sidebar
1 PR4 edu link on a romanian page accessable through the menu, Title: "Where you can learn french in France" and the websites listed + short descr...
1 PR3 edu link on a french page accasseable through the menu again
1 PR3 university link on a German page accasseable through the menu again
1 PR3 university link on a turkish page accasseable through the menu, but 2nd level deep
1 PR2 japanese page listing of educational sites to learn french
1 PR2 french gov site, listing of edu sites with descr., 2nd level deep (menu-> submenu)





Regards 301 - well I think I would rather use one of them as another good PBN site than 301, as I thought 301 can raise googles eye-brows, isn't it?

neutralfeeling said:

It sounds like an error from the part of the webmaster, but important to fix as it could cause issues regardless of your intent.

Click to expand...

Yes, that is my concern.. Did you ever experience it?

That's a good number of high PR links. If I were you I'd purchase the domain name regardless of the hidden links as long as the links don't appear to have been created for the purpose of manipulating the Google rankings of the site in question.

Thanks SEO!

I now literally counted them all, they are exactely 80 hidden links now, all on the sidebar or context of the same domain.

Yes, there was clearly no attempt to manipulate Goolgle ranking in any kind, seemes to nothing more but a mistake of the webmaster. The linking domain exists in different languages, the one version still has the link open, the other one not, but looks the same overall.