Wordpress Spam From Google SERPS? Will It Hurt Rankings?

[DioBach]

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I've been checking some back links recently, and I've spotted thousands from very similar sites. They seem to be wordpress blogs that are getting their posts by scraping the first page of the Google SERPS. I'm basing this on the way the links feature going down the page, they seem to replicate the ranking in the SERPs. I'm wondering how much damage they could do to my rankings? It's not just my site getting hit, it's every one on the front page for some very nice bingo terms.

Here's a couple of examples:

http ://www.biryani.asia/2008/06/boneless-butter-chicken-chicken-makhani/trackback/?cash=861

http: //www.wetravelaround.com/pinaskiehouse/?item=835

http: //www.gate42.net/?info-id=934

Anyone else seeing anything similar, and care to expand on why this is being done? I can't see it being useful to rank the sites scraping the content as the domain names are too far out? I'm guessing it's to hurt the top rankings by piling lots of irrelevant links at them? I'm pretty clueless though so please enlighten me.

If you look at those pages you'll see other A4U bingo affiliates in there as well, Bingo Port, Loquax, Unlucky For Some and more. I've seen my content being scraped before now, but not like this.

[channel5]

I've seen similar before but for mobile phone sites.

All these are hacked websites with wordpress added and then machine written text with links inserted.

It's either from an SEO Agency that's doing something very very dark trying to actually rank the sites listed, or as you suggest it's someone trying to hurt the sites in question (though I personally question whether it's this easy to hurt your competitors).

I've only ever seen UK sites linked to in these types of hack, which is a bit odd.

[Paul_MN]

I have seen one site recently that suffered from this exact same thing and also got a big kick by Google. However, the jury is still out as to whether it was these spam inbound links that caused the penalty or another reason.

In theory inbound links should at worst be discounted otherwise it gives everyone an easy route to take down their competitors. But who knows how Google sees it.

However, I dont think it would be worth your time trying to do anything about them - the chances are you will get inbound spam links faster than you can remove them. It would just be a waste of time trying to do anything to remove or stop them.

The best stretagy I think would be to carry on with your SEO, making sure you get a good range of quality inbound links at an acceptable rate. This should help to balance out any potential negative effect from the spam links.