Disavow
-
When we disavow a file with certain domains, and then after a couple of weeks find new domains which have newly arrived in our back-links profile, and again disavow those new domains.
So, basically we are over writing the complete file, will Google take this as a complete new file?
Or will they have domains stored from previous file, and take these new domains as an addition from the new file submission? -
Hi All !
Just an update. I did ask John Mu about the question. Would updating disavow on a regular basis have a negative effect on site rankings. He Said No. The reason to share this video here is because, this subject is so hot and i was curious to know the answer. Hope this thread can answer queries of others ppl as well who were confused.You can see the answer to my question here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYys6QWYbvo&t=41m25sBut, as Robert and Pete said, and i do agree with both of them, that disavow should be used as a last resort, and its better to do a complete check of backlinks and then try to remove them first and use disavow as the last option, for the domains which can't be removed.
-
I think actual removal of the worst offenders is a better step all-around. Leave Google out of it (at least in a direct sense).
I think there is such a thing as "natural" sitewide links. For example, I once made a comment on a pretty well-trafficked blog, and that got promoted to a "top comment" which went into a sitewide sidebar. I got a lot of links from that site for a while, and it was fine. Google can see that it's just one site.
It's when you're obviously using this tactic repeatedly that the trouble starts. In most cases, I think it's just devaluation. There's not, in theory, anything wrong with a design company putting "Designed by Company X" in a footer to drive some business. Google doesn't value those links, because they're too easy to get in some industries. On the other hand, you aren't necessarily trying to cheat the system. In general, I'd be cautious these days, but sitewide links aren't an instant penalty.
-
Hi Peter, thanks very much for the response.
My gut feeling is that if the links were a serious problem, Google would already have notified me.
In line with your advice, I'll try to gradually approach the worst offenders with link removal requests but I'll stop short of using the Google Disavow tool.
Any of that sound sensible?
Related question: are there any circumstances in which sitewides from a site highly relevant to mine are a good or even acceptable thing?
Thanks -
That's a really tough call. Truthfully, even links that could potentially harm you down the road might actually be helping you short-term. So, you could proactively disavow the sitewide footer links and lose ground, even if it's a smart long-term move.
In most cases, these links are devalued, so odds are that they aren't helping you much and the risk is low. I'd just urge caution. You may want to ease into it with links from a few sites that you know for a fact are low quality.
-
I know this thread's answered but I'd like to pitch a related question.
.
Would you delete/disavow links without having received a warning in GWT?
I've an 8-year site; we've some spammy sitewide footer links (created six years ago by some "SEO" were were suckered in by; some on sites with 10,000+ pages) and some article directory links (again about 3+ years old). -
Thanks Robert and Pete to look into my query and sharing your expertised answers
-
To answer the technical aspect of the question, Google does not seem to store previous files or maintain a historical record of disavowed links. You should consider the current submission to be the only submission, and keep it as complete as possible.
I'm not overly concerned about disavow coming back to bite people (I haven't seen any reports of that floating around the industry), but down the road, I think Robert's concerns are valid. If you're constantly adding to new links to disavow, Google may start to wonder if there's anything fishy going on.
Maybe the bigger question is - why are people consistently building these links? Is this a negative SEO attack or is something about your business model, content, structure, etc. creating quality problems with your link profile. If there are deeper issues, better to address them than put a bandage over them.
-
I really think you could be creating a problem for yourself using the disavow file this way. My concern is that you are drawing attention to the site you may not want and if you truly needed it, I worry about having submitted it and changed it over and over having a negative effect.
Remember, the disavow tool was created as a mechanism of last resort. Also, some spammy links should not affect the site overall as everyone is going to have some "bad" links. If you think someone is purposefully doing this to you, you may want to approach it differently.
Is there a reason you originally started using the disavow tool? What are you wanting to accomplish with it now?
Best,
Robert
-
Robert,
Links are sometimes un-controllable, we can't control that. After looking at complete backlinks profile, we disavow domains, but after a couple of weeks, some shady affiliate pages throw links back at our pages, so at that time we need to re-evaluate the backlinks and submit the disavow file.
Sometimes even when some webmasters respond and remove the links, we remove the domains from the disavow file as well. So disavow files do gets updated. Technically when the webmasters have removed the links pointing to our pages, we then have to remove that domain from disavow as well, because its sitting there for nothing.
-
Usef4u,
I think the first thing to look at is you are very likely misusing the disavow tool. (It is a single file with all disavowed links/domains on it). There should be no reason to be resubmitting with new links/domains every couple of weeks. This was intended to be a tool of last resort.
First, you should contact the domain's webmaster and seek to have them take the link down, etc.Is there a reason you think you need to do this regularly?
Best,
Robert
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
-
Disavow links from legit sites but have spammy link profiles?
I'm currently doing a backlink audit for our site with a LOT of backlinks. Some of the linking sites are legitimate business websites in our industry who have linked to us for a totally legitimate reason (we have good content!). However, these businesses themselves have a spammy backlink profile—that is, the only sites linking to that site are obvious link farm sites. Here is an illustration: spammyseolinks.com; payforseo.xyz; blackhat.ru ==all link to==> legitbusiness.com ==links to==> mysite.com Should I disavow this backlink? I guess it's not really giving me much SEO worth since it surely been branded a spammy junk domain, but then again, it's a real website that we've earned a link from because we're doing stuff the right way. Is it hurting or helping me?
Link Building | | THandorf0 -
Is it possible to un-disavow a link if we later decide that it isnt spammy / undesirable ?
Is it possible to un-disavow a link if we later decide that it isnt spammy / undesirable ? (i know best practice is to get it right first time, but worst comes to worst is it undo able ?)
Link Building | | jpeg800 -
I have links coming from spammy sites that DO NOT exist anymore... Disavow or not?
Hi There !!! I´m cleaning the link profile of one of our sites and making the typical analysis I have found the following scenario: All SEO tools that helped me to gather the data (WMT, opensite, majestic) are showing me that I have links coming from spammy sites that actually are not online any more. In other words, the spammy site where the link is coming is not alive (when I try to check the page itself I´m having a 404 or domain expired). My main question is… Should I disavow these domains links? or should I simply ignore them? We got an unnatural penalty and we are doing the whole proccess (checking sites, contacting, etc….). Many Thanks for your help
Link Building | | AutoEurope0 -
Disavow data for non-manual penalty
I'm working on cleaning link profile for a client. He has lots of crappy links pointing to his site. I tried to contact site owners so that they remove those links. No go for the most part. Since it's not a manual penalty, there's no need to specify when exactly I tried to contact those site owners, add emails to my disavow file, etc. It's my understanding that it's OK to just add domains to Google's disavow tool to submit because there was no manual action and it won't be checked by a human being. Would that be the right way to go?
Link Building | | vitaliykolos0 -
When/ What Links to Disavow?
We have an older website started in 2000. We have thousands of backlinks which we believe are hurting us. Starting with Panda our site has been devastated, traffic wise, from a million + page views a month to 1/3 of that now. We've never solicited links, never paid for them, they just happened. It seems every "search engine" and spammy site on the web has links to us. Hundreds if not thousands from sites like , 29searchengines.com, 55 searchengines.net, and on and on.. 1. How does a site know when the links are harmful?
Link Building | | foodsleuth
2. How do you know which links should be disavowed? Thank you0 -
Which Backlinks to Disavow?
I am a site owner just getting to learn more about managing things myself after outsourcing SEO to a firm a year back (they stopped all activities about 8 months back). The question I have is about disavowing the low quality links. After collecting all the data from many sites on the basis of this helpful posting - (http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal), I am now left with around 2,800 back-links. I discovered most of the bad ones using ahrefs and majestic (and Google webmaster did not show many of the bad links). In fact, in the very first place, I realized that there was a spam problem when I saw the anchor cloud on ahrefs which showed many unrelated anchors for my site. I have three questions: **First, **Many URL's are actually from websites which have nothing to do with my line of business and I can sure spot them. What I get confused with is this - I can not say that these sites are downright spam. Some of them look to be good sites for example - a coffee machine vendor (with full business details and a fairly decent looking business), a Nike sports shoes mart etc. But they have nothing to do with my business. So my first question is - What is spam really? Would a back link from a high ranking website in the travel industry be considered spam from the point of view of someone who runs a website for medical equipment, specially if the back-link is from an unrelated anchor text like - "3 nights travel package" (which has nothing to do with medical business). I think I should disavow all the low quality back links with an erroneous anchor but Id like some views on this. Second, I see that in the disavow file, one could either upload a whole domain or a specific URL (could somebody please confirm this). I have some sites which have 8-12 (more in some cases) back links to my site. In most cases these sites are either really bad quality or have nothing to do with my business. I am tempted to disavow the entire domain for such sites instead of going by the URL's. Any views? Third, this is what I'd really like some help with. In case I delete the very pages (on my site) to which these back links point, should I still disavow the pointing domain? Finally: I have not created most of these backlinks. In fact, over the last 2-3 months we have started creating links from good sites in my industry. Most of the anchor cloud is good for me on ahrefs but there are these bad ones to which my question relates. I have not got any manual penalty from Google, though my traffic I think took a hit in the first week of October 2013.
Link Building | | sanar0 -
Disavow links
I am working on an account that has had several seo companies
Link Building | | JasperSEO
over the past year so around every corner I discover something new. One the
things I have found are that majority of links to the site is coming from an
outside blog but digging deeper I found that the blog is actually on the same
server as clients. Should I disavow links from that blog or should I leave it
alone?0 -
Google disavow DMOZ/ODP spam sites?
Hello Looking into links to my one of my sites (over 10 years old) I've found that along with some bad spammy links, around 80% of my inbound links are from directories that are exact copies of ODP. Should I be concerned about / asking for removal / disavowing these links? Normally I would be trying to get rid of low quality links like this, but since they are ODP clones I'm not sure it's worth the effort. The sites openly state that their data is from ODP (Open Directory Project), but does this mean Google ignores them? I could spend my whole life swatting these links. Thoughts? Edit: I'm hoping for suggestions that specifically reference the ODP clone site situation. I did not create these links, I guess I should have made that more clear.
Link Building | | droo0