• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Competitive Research
        4. Is it possible to create "hidden" backlinks?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Is it possible to create "hidden" backlinks?

        Competitive Research
        4
        8
        4527
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • co.mc
          co.mc last edited by

          Don't miss interpret this... I DON'T mean hidden backlinks that you would stick on a page using html/css.

          What I am trying to figure out is if it's possible to create backlinks from sites that aren't visible by crawlers or SEO tools like Moz?... Does that make sense?

          Another words, let's say I place a visible/genuine/follow backlink to any external website from my blog. Is there a way to keep crawlers like Moz or other SEO tools from "seeing it"?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Cyrus-Shepard
            Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

            My understanding is you want Google to see it but not Moz or other SEO crawlers, is that right?

            I can't speak for all other crawlers, but you could accomplish this via robots.txt, although I really wouldn't recommend it because SEO crawlers use so many different user agents, you would have to exclude so many of them you might exclude important crawlers such as Bing or Google Mobile (for example).

            The idea would be to allow Googlebot and other crawlers to your site, but exclude everything else. Again, I don't recommend this because it's an overly-complex solution with a high degree of error possible.

            You could also do some fancy magic by detecting user-agents, but that's even more dangerous, so I'm not even going to go there 🙂

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • eyepaq
              eyepaq last edited by

              You can have the link as a "do follow" but no bot will notice it anyway. 🙂

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • co.mc
                co.mc @eyepaq last edited by

                Thank you for your response, but the link would "have to be" a follow. I guess this isn't possible. Thank you! 🙂

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • eyepaq
                  eyepaq last edited by

                  Hi,

                  I don't see the reason but if there is one and you need that done - there is a way.

                  You just create a small box iframe. Within this iframe you have an html independent page that will be a noindex, no follow and you can place the link / links there.

                  Those will be visibile / accessibile by the user - it looks part of the page but on view source you won't be able to find those links and since the separate HTML is not indexable / crawlable those links are not visibile for any bot.

                  Hope it helps - that is if I understood the question right 🙂

                  Cheers.

                  co.mc 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Asjad
                    Asjad last edited by

                    OHHH!! I am  Sorry! I meant Not Possible.

                    How is it Possible that Google crawlers Crawl it and ahrefs one Don't ?

                    Thanks

                    Asjad Afzal
                    COO
                    Globital PTY LTD

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • co.mc
                      co.mc @Asjad last edited by

                      So wait, are you saying that it is possible? so you could allow Google to crawl the links but not other crawlers like Moz, and other SEO tools?...

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Asjad
                        Asjad last edited by

                        Hey, Whats the Point in hiding the backlinks from these crawlers ? May be you don't want to give your backlinks data to your Competitors! that's Smart Actually 🙂

                        Secondly, I think Its Not Possible because You Need/Want Google Crawlers to Follow them So other 3rd party crawlers will excess them.

                        May be Im wrong!

                        Thanks

                        Asjad Afzal
                        COO
                        Globital PTY LTD

                        co.mc 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • 1 / 1
                        • First post
                          Last post

                        Browse Questions

                        Explore more categories

                        • Moz Tools

                          Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                        • SEO Tactics

                          Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                        • Community

                          Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                        • Digital Marketing

                          Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                        • Research & Trends

                          Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                        • Support

                          Connect on product support and feature requests.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • Cricket93

                          Search Intent and Relevance

                          competitor search intent

                          Hello SEO gurus 🤓 I’m looking for the most efficient ways to analyze the search intent and relevance of competitors who are ranking for the keywords we’re targeting. While I know Google excels at assessing search intent and relevance, I’m interested in learning how we can evaluate these factors as metrics for our competitors. The goal is to understand their strategy better and find ways to outrank them. Do you have any tools or methodologies that you recommend for assessing competitor content to determine its alignment with search intent and user needs/relevance? I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on this!

                          Competitive Research | | Cricket93
                          1
                        • grayloon

                          What is the relationship between inbound links and linking domains?

                          inbound link linking root domains

                          In doing competitor research, there's a specific competitor that has fewer linking domains, but dramatically more inbound links. How do these two relate to each other? I do have a higher domain authority and more internal followed links with them having more internal nofollow and external (both follow and nofollow) links. I'm trying to understand how they can have 3.7k linking domains and 4.8 million inbound links while I have 4.1k linking domains and only 601k inbound links. What really defines an inbound link and what's there relationship between inbound links and linking domains?

                          Competitive Research | | grayloon
                          0
                        • thanhdung0906

                          Interal linking

                          tipbongda

                          Re: I'm stuck by internal linking. What structure should a football website follow? Silo or Topic Cluster?
                          I need advice on my website. My website: https://tipbongda247.net/
                          I hope there are answers!
                          Thanks

                          Competitive Research | | thanhdung0906
                          0
                        • igniterman75

                          How do you select which keywords to push in SEO?

                          Hi Guys Selecting the right keywords that a website can realistically rank for is a key to gain top rankings relatively quick.  I am just curious to hear how you guys do it  (the methodology) when selecting which keywords to push? I mean you need to check the competition for each keyword as well so how to check this quickly to see what we realistically can rank for? Cheers John

                          Competitive Research | | igniterman75
                          1
                        • bigvibes909

                          Is it possible to find out how many indexed pages a website had at particular dates in the past?

                          I've found all kinds of websites and tools that can tell me how many pages a site has indexed currently, but how about historically? Does such a tool exist?

                          Competitive Research | | bigvibes909
                          0
                        • DmitriiK

                          MOZ vs Ahrefs vs SEMRush vs Spyfu and so on

                          Hello, fellas. I've been trying to find some type of comparison analysis for online SEO related tools and I couldn't find any, which are fresh and overview more than three. I'm interested to see if anybody saw good comparison reviews of such tools, as well as your own thoughts (back your thoughts up with more than just "I like it", please 🙂 The tools I'm interested in comparing are: MOZ Ahrefs Majestic Spyfu SEMRush Raven Wordstream whatever else you use or have in mind

                          Competitive Research | | DmitriiK
                          2
                        • ThomasHgenhaven

                          Is it possible to bulk Check CMS

                          Hi Mozzers, Any of you know a way to bulk check which CMS a list of sites run on? Let's say I'd like to develop a plugin for a CMS (e.g. Wordpress or vBulletin). But that'd only make sense if some of the sites in the niche use this platform. And I'd like to avoid checking them manually with WASP. Thanks! Thomas

                          Competitive Research | | ThomasHgenhaven
                          0
                        • nicole.healthline

                          What is the difference between "external backlinks" & "referring domains" on Majestic SEO?

                          According to Majestic SEO's glossary, a "Referring domain, also known as "ref domain", is a domain from which a backlink is pointing to a page or link." Given this definition, I'm not sure what an external backlink is?

                          Competitive Research | | nicole.healthline
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        • Digital Marketers
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.