In late September 2026 the backlink tools lit up. Between 600 and 700 new referring domains showed up on site after site that we run, all inside the same two weeks. Authority scores fell. One tool stamped two of our own domains as spam.
So we pulled the pages those links were said to come from and asked for each one twice. Once the way a backlink tool crawler asks, and once the way a search engine crawler asks. The tool crawler got a page with 1,000 links on it. The search crawler got a 404.
The Short Version
- The farm lists every .com name it can find, 1,000 to a page, in alphabetical order. Our agency site was entry 41,183,388.
- Its pages answer five backlink tool crawlers and return a missing page to any request that says it is Googlebot or Bingbot.
- We traced one page template to 3,579 domains on four nameserver pairs. All 208 that we tested behaved the same way.
- The harm we can show lands on tool scores and spam labels. We have no sign that Google counted a single one of these links.
- We first called this an attack on us. It was not, and we told the tool companies so.
What Happened
We noticed on October 12, when authority scores dropped across many sites at once. Looking back through the data, the new links had started the week of September 27.
On October 17 we pulled new and lost referring domains for all 83 sites we track, counting from October 12. Forty of them had each gained between 600 and 700 new referring domains in five days. The names came from one family. They used backlink and website checker words on cheap endings such as .store, .space, .site, .shop, .website and .online.
That looked personal. It was not. We checked sites that had nothing to do with us but sat near ours in the alphabet. They had gained about 717 of the same domains over the same days.
How The Farm Is Built
Each farm domain is dressed as a free website checker. Under that front sits a directory of numbered pages. Every page holds 1,000 .com names in alphabetical order, and each name is a link.
The list we walked ran to 243,289 pages. That is about 243 million names, which is close to every .com there is. Our agency site was name number 41,183,388, on page 41,184. Nobody picked us. We were in the phone book.
Dead domains stay on the list. Nine .com names that we registered between April 30 and September 10, 2026 were not on it, and none of the nine received a farm link. A list built from an older copy of the .com zone would look exactly like that.
Who Sees The Links
This is the part that changed how we handled it. The farm pages do not give every visitor the same answer.
What One Farm Page Returned, By Who Asked
Our own requests, repeated on 208 farm domains. All 208 gave the same split.
Showing one thing to a crawler and another to everyone else is called cloaking, and Google lists it in its spam policies. This farm turns the usual trick around. It hides from the search engines and performs only for the tools that count links.
One limit on our test. We sent these requests from our own machines with each crawler's name on them. We cannot see what a request from Google's own addresses receives. That is why we say Google likely never sees these links, and not that it never does.
Why Would Anyone Build This?
Follow the buttons. The checker box on a farm page opens a paid backlink report on a link selling site. The same network points worried owners at a free link removal form that asks for an email and a phone number.
So the fake links do two jobs. They pad the numbers that link sellers show to buyers. And they scare site owners toward a form or a checkout. We hold the names of the sites on the paying end. We are not publishing them until that evidence has been reviewed.
How To Spot It On Your Own Site
- A wall of new referring domains in one week. Hundreds at once, with names that sound like SEO tools.
- Your domain sits among strangers. The linking page lists your name between other names that start with the same letters.
- Your neighbors got the same links. Look up two unrelated domains that sit next to yours in the alphabet. If they gained the same referring domains, nobody aimed at you.
- Search Console does not show them. Open the Links report in Search Console and look for the farm domains under top linking sites. That report is Google's own view.
- The page is not there when you visit. Open the linking page in a normal browser. A missing page where a tool swears there is a link is the tell.
What To Do About It
- Do not pay and do not fill in the removal form. It hands your contact details to the people who placed the links.
- Check what Google sees before you act. If the farm domains are missing from the Links report, there is nothing to clean up on Google's side.
- Treat the disavow file as optional. Google says most sites will never need the disavow tool. We used it anyway, and we cover that below.
- Send the tool company your evidence. Two responses from the same address, one per crawler name, is all it takes. We wrote to four backlink data companies on October 18. By November 5 one of them returned zero links to our agency site from the first eight farm domains we had reported.
- Look once a month. New waves keep coming. Chasing each one is the cost the farm wants you to pay.
- Stop grading a site by one outside score. A score that a 404 page can move is not a ranking signal.
What We Got Wrong
Our first letters to the tool companies called this an attack on our sites. The alphabet test showed it was not aimed at anyone. We corrected that in writing on November 5.
We also uploaded disavow files for 24 sites before we ran the crawler test. The files held between 410 and 1,203 domains each. If Google never saw the links, those files did nothing. They did no harm, but they cost most of two days.
Sources
- Our own crawl tests of the farm, run October 18 and November 5, 2026, and our referring domain pulls of October 17, 2026.
- Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search, the section on cloaking.
- Google Search Central, Verifying Googlebot and other Google crawlers.
- Search Console Help, Disavow links to your site and the Links report.
- The crawlers' own pages, AhrefsBot, SemrushBot and DataForSeoBot.