An Ahrefs export pulled on 18 September 2026 found 763 referring domains pointing at sunnypatel.co.uk. 633 of them, 83%, are flagged as spam by Ahrefs. 260 of those carry the same spun fake testimonial. No disavow has been filed yet; this page records what the data shows as of 18 September and will be updated as the situation develops.
What does the backlink export contain?
- Spam-flagged: 633 of 763 domains (83%), per Ahrefs' spam flag.
- Link type: 227 dofollow, 536 nofollow.
- Domain Rating spread: 0 to 84, median 29. 377 domains carry DR 30 or higher. A high DR is not evidence a link is clean.
- First seen by year: 1 domain in 2022, 1 in 2023, 20 in 2024, 78 in 2025, 663 in 2026. 87% of the profile appeared this year.
Near-zero for three years, then 663 new referring domains in one, is an automated blast: either a negative SEO attack or a link-farm network listing this domain as a sample.
What do the three spam patterns look like?
The anchor text splits the 633 into three types.
Fake-testimonial spinning. 260 links carry one identical spun paragraph promoting a different, competitor-sounding brand: "Before I found SEOExpress.org, it seemed impossible for sunnypatel.co.uk to gain traction online with its stagnant growth... organic visits doubling within six weeks, up by an incredible +250%!" The same paragraph appears across disposable domains including seoexpress.website, bold-outrank-hq-serp-workshop.store, and prime-white-hat-seoexpress-network.store. A template, planted to push SEOExpress's name with this site as the prop.
Exact-match brand anchors. 134 links use the anchor text "sunnypatel" and 65 use "sunnypatel.co.uk". 199 identical exact-match brand anchors across unrelated domains is the signature of automated directory or PBN self-registration.
Self-advertising anchors. Four more anchor groups (45, 37, 8 and 6 links) are sales pitches for link-building services, for example "high quality dofollow backlinks DA 50 PA 40 premium PBN network service... buy backlinks online cheap." Link-farm directories using this domain as a customer reference.
All of it is aimed at the homepage: 712 of the 763 domains link to https://sunnypatel.co.uk/.
Did the attack show up in Search Console?
Pulled via SEO Gets, property sc-domain:sunnypatel.co.uk, 1 September 2025 to 16 September 2026:
- Impressions: roughly 100 to 200 per day in September and October 2025, rising to roughly 1,000 to 1,800 per day through March to August 2026, then a jump to 2,700 to 5,100 per day between 13 and 16 September 2026.
- Average position: around 85 in September 2025, improving to the high 20s to low 40s through most of 2026, then 20 to 25 in September 2026.
- Clicks: stayed low across the entire period, 0 to 7 per day even during the September 2026 impression spike, with click-through rate under 0.5% on most days.
Rankings and impressions improved steadily across 2026, the same window the spam blast landed in. There is no visible ranking drop and no manual-action-style cliff anywhere in this 13-month window. That is the one clean claim this dataset supports. It cannot show whether the spam helped, hurt, or did nothing, because the same months saw new content and editorial links land, including citations from interiordesignershub.co.uk, babylovegrowth.ai, mytasker.com and thamesvalleychamber.co.uk.
What caused the 13-16 September spike?
A jump from roughly 2,700 to 5,100 daily impressions over those four days needed an explanation. By page: /blog/best-seo-companies-uk/ alone logged 9,315 impressions in that window, ranking in positions 15 to 45 across several hundred "best seo company" / "seo agency uk" query variants. It is unrelated to the homepage-targeted spam anchors. The country split (15,259 UK impressions against single or double digits everywhere else) rules out a click-farm.
Should you disavow a spam backlink attack immediately?
Not automatically. Google's disavow guidance says to file only when spam links have caused, or will likely cause, a manual action. There is none here, and thirteen months of Search Console data show nothing to disavow against yet. Filing against a profile that isn't causing measurable harm adds risk (a malformed disavow file can suppress links you want counted) without a corresponding benefit.
The plan for this site is to monitor and revisit. This page will be updated if a disavow is filed, a delta appears, or the volume keeps climbing.
How was this data collected, and what are its limits?
Evidence limits: this is one site's export and one site's Search Console history, not a controlled study. Rankings and impressions improving through the same window as the spam blast is a correlation, not proof that the spam was harmless everywhere it happens, or that it caused the improvement. A profile with weaker existing authority, thinner content, or an active manual-action history could see a different outcome from the same kind of blast.
Summary as of 18 September 2026: an 83% spam-flagged backlink profile, three spam patterns, thirteen months of Search Console data showing no visible damage.
Sources
- Ahrefs backlink export for sunnypatel.co.uk, pulled 18 September 2026 (763 referring domains, spam classification per Ahrefs' flag).
- Google Search Console performance data for sc-domain:sunnypatel.co.uk, 1 September 2025 to 16 September 2026, retrieved via SEO Gets.
- Google Search Central: Link spam: Google's definition of the anchor and directory patterns described above.
- Google Search Console Help: Disavow links: the tool referenced for the pending decision on this page.
