Disavow wn.com?
-
I am cleaning up some spammy backlinks for a client and will be submitting a disavow at Google.
This particular company website has 2,000+ backlinks from the domain wn.com which appears to be "World News". If you go to it, it appears to be nothing more than scraped content from other sites.
Here is a recent example, where my client is linked to (I don't even see the backlink on the page, but it is in the source code!):
http://article.wn.com/view/2013/11/22/Hungarian_Woman_Sentenced_to_One_Year_in_Prison_for_Her_Role/#/related_newsBut when I look at Moz metrics, WN.com has a domain authority of 90! So I don't want to disavow something that could POTENTIALLY be helping us.
The client's website gets zero traffic from wn.com and I've never seen my client linked to in anything worthwhile... it kinda looks spammy to me.
If you were me, after looking at WN.com and taking everything into account... would you disavow it?
This client really needs to create a healthier backlink profile.
Thanks!
-
Good point by Kevin, too, that it does depend on the rest of your link profile and how solid it is. If you have thousands of linking root domains, just one domain isn't going to make or break you. Your overall profile is the key.
-
First, to Kevin's question, a high DA doesn't mean a site isn't spammy. It means the site has a lot of seemingly high-authority links (or just a large link profile from generally large sites, or a healthy mix). Some of the modelling controls for quality, but not necessarily spam factor - which is something we're actively working on.
I suspect the "articles." sub-domain carries less authority than the overall root domain, but it's tough to say. With so many links, you're probably getting some credit from the root domain.
Unfortunately, the weight of any one link or even 2,000 links from one domain is almost impossible to measure. So, it comes down to a risk/reward scenario. Are you just proactively cleaning things up, or are you fighting a serious fire, like an outright penalty that's killing traffic? If you're being proactive, I'd probably leave this alone, especially if you have solicited these links, paid for them, etc. If you're fighting a serious penalty, then you need to risk cutting deep, especially if you're doing a Penguin recovery.
-
I'm interested in this as well. I'm pretty new to this, but here are my comments/questions.
-
Does a high DA from Moz automatically mean that the site is not perceived as spammy by Google's index? I'm not sure about this. I've seen some pretty spammy looking directories pull up a high Domain Authority in the MozBar, but this could be because of the site's size, number of outbound links, and other metrics.
-
Have you determined whether there is any way to have the links removed by contacting the directory? From what I can see, Google recommends that we exhaust all possibilities for link removal before using the disavow tool, although in my experience it's not easy to contact anyone who "controls" these spammy directories.
-
Do you have a stockpile of legitimate, authoritative links from reputable domains built up to offset the link removal? This should hopefully soften the blow if in fact you end up suffering any ranking penalty from having the link disavowed.
-
Would it make sense to concentrate on building other reputable links before calling attention to links that are potentially spammy? Is it rocking the boat by disavowing a link to what seems like an authoritative site (at least as far as Moz is concerned) before having a solid foundation of reputable links? If that is the case, I'd focus my attention the other way: build the foundation first, then weed out the suspect links. But that's my opinion, I may be wrong. Very interested to see what other community members have to say about this!
-
-
I've found WN before and thought it looked quite good due to the domain authority. However, like you say, it's just a scraper.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Whether to disavow fettish sites
Hello, In one niche, all competitors have fettish backlinks. Some of these sites have related products on them, some are just information, but some border on porn sites. I'm wondering which if not all of these I should disavow. There's quite a few. We're doing a non-manual penguin recovery based on link building like paid links, unnatural anchor text and doorway sites. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Industry.com
Is this a good place for back links? On elf my newest customers has about 59 or so and I'm afraid they are spam. Any help is appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Krankensigns.com0 -
Negative SEO to inner page: remove page or disavow links?
Someone decided to run a negative-SEO campaign, hitting one of the inner pages on my blog 😞 I noticed the links started to pile up yesterday but I assume there will be more to come over the next few days. The targeted page is of little value to my blog, so the question is: should I remove the affected page (hoping that the links won't affect the entire site) or to submit a disavow request? I'm not concerned about what happens to the affected page, but I want to make sure the entire site doesn't get affected as a result of the negative-SEO. Thanks in advance. Howard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | howardd0 -
Website is not stable on maps.google.com
My website is daily showing different position on maps.google.com and for the last few days like yesterday it was on 21st position on some keyword and today it is no where and same with other keywords. Is this a Google Dance ?? what can be its period ? and what is the solution to handle it ??
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mnkpso0 -
Potential Implications of using the Disavow tool to remove thousands of links
So here's the situation. My companies site has over 30 thousand backlinks from Rippling.info These links all point to 3 product pages, some of which are no longer in production. Apparently a former employee was experimenting with some link farm ideas. My questions are; 1. does anyone here have experience with rippling.info? Is it legit? It seems like a link farm but Google allows adsense ads??? I thought Google was against link farms... 2. if I use the Disavow tool in Webmaster Tools to tell Google these 30k+ incoming links are to be ignored, will there be any consequences? -Google Analytics shows zero referral traffic since jan 1st 2012.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mjmorse0 -
To disavow or not to disavow
Back story: During panda and penguin we noticed declining ranks on google. So we hit the Q&A and followed the given suggestions; removing links, optimizing a few tags, etc. We took the time and money to remove quite a few links (200+) using Remove'em. We then submitted our results to the Google web spam team (Google reconsideration request) to find out we have no manual penalty. This bring me to the thought our back links profile might still be hurting us. We had a pretty good results while removing our back links from other webmasters being very helpful and removing our links, most of which were created by old seo company's when "links were king". This brings me to my real question, would it be worth the time disavowing links we think are bad using the disavow tool? Obviously only the ones where webmasters didnt not respond or refused to remove out link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ibcdan0 -
Attracta.com / "weekly submissions to top 100 search engines"
I recently received an offer from Attracta.com because I have a hostgator account. They are offering different levels of service for submitting xml sitemaps on a weekly basis. Is this a good idea? Thanks for your feedback! Will PS see graphic: Screen%20Shot%202012-02-08%20at%2010.06.56%20PM.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WillWatrous0 -
Is warriorforum.com information reliable?
I see lots of ads like "Boost Your Trust Rank with pure .EDU Anchor Text Backlinks" Is this for real? And if it is what's the real value of such links? I assume they would be from some spam comments on some .edu blogs...right? Is it worth going this route? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pwpaneuro0