Bestessay.space SEO spam

[KieranThomas]

Hi all,

I was just wondering if anyone else had experience of seeing a massive amount of SEO referral spam within your GSC reports?
It's never been an issue I've seen in GSC (seen it loads in GA) but over the last week we've notice our GSC data has become littered with hundreds of URLs such as:

https://[legit-client-domin-removed-for-privacy]/feed/atom/?s=Cheap Essays Editing Website | Link - bestessays.space (The querystring changes each time)
https://[legit-client-domin-removed-for-privacy]/?s=Popular Critical Essay Writing Services For Mba | Link - bestessays.space

The text in bold is the spam (non existent params) showing in GSC reports.

We've just taken on the site as it's a new client, so I've set a canonical on the homepage and we plan to update the other pages shortly which may help, but I was just curious if this was a common issue which we had been fortunate enough to witness to date, or whether it's a new thing?

Also, the referring URLs are often sites which are unavailable, and varied in nature so appear to be unaware of the issue their end (e.g. it looks like it's where the site has been hacked, and the fake URL injected into their code without their knowledge). I'm hoping the instances for the sites which are unavailable will drop off.

 

[JS Girard]

Organic isn't a specialty of mine, but at a glance that sounds like the aftermath of an attempted backlink extortion scam

 

[KieranThomas]

Hi JS - Sorry for not replying sooner but just got back from a week's (much needed!) holiday

Could be I guess. I don't know if the client has ever been contacted by a spammer re this.
Will monitor and see if the issue fades away in the reports or becomes more widespread over the coming months

 

[KieranThomas]

Just an update to say I've just seen a huge spike in this occur for another site.

GSC is showing over 700+ URLs as "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" on an RSS feed.

Will ensure the canonical is added, but I'm curious what the spammer is getting in terms of benefit from this?

 

[KieranThomas]

Just so add, looks like a lot of them are also directly for params added to the homepage.

The homepage has a canonical (non trailing slash version). The trailing slash version redirects to the non-trailing slash version of the homepage, and yet in GSC, it's showing URLs such as:

/?s=Cheap Homework Ghostwriters Website Gb | Link - bestessays.space
/?s=Cheap Papers Writer Site Ca | Link - bestessays.space
/?s=Cheap Speech Ghostwriters Service Au | Link - bestessays.space

Any ideas how to eliminate them given we have a canonical & redirect setup?