Is there proof that disavowing backlinks in GSC help to boost rankings in Google?
-
Hi Guys
Let's say you have a website and you got some questionable back links or lower quality ones. Does anyone have proof that after disavowing back links helped in the rankings or had some positive effects? I am concerned that Google will place our website on their radar and instead possibly demote it or smth.
Lastly, if disavowing is the way to go what criteria do you use to disavow backlinks?
So if you get questionable back links over time, should you disavow ongoing as well? If so how often?
Cheers
John
-
Thanks Everett!!
-
John Whiteboardwiz,
Since your question was specifically if there is any proof, I wanted to share a case study by Edd Willson, which shows the value of submitting a disavow file pretty clearly:
Search for "disavow file case study" and set the time preferences to the last 12 months. There are lots of other examples.
Also marking John Sammon's response as a good answer.
-
Hey John,
I've done SEO for 10+ years in an agency environment an I would encourage you to use the disavow tool. You'll want to disavow in both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Here's how to proceed:
Do it in phases - the first round should focus on the worst stuff in your backlink profile - I'd also look at spammy anchor text too. You can view these links in Moz or GSC.
You'll typically see results in 2-4 weeks.
You can come back to it after the 2-4 week period and try another round.
If you have additional questions about what to disavow, please fire away. I'm happy to review some links you may be on the fence about disavowing.
-
Hello,
Ask ten SEOs about disavow files and you're likely to get ten different answers, five of which say do it and five of which say don't. I don't personally put a lot of stock in them, but here's something you can do:
Set a minimum spam score threshold and disavow those links. If rankings go down, increase the minimum spam score threshold, remove the links from the disavow file that are not above that threshold, and resubmit the file. I just saw a case study about this last week at TechSEO Boost in Boston.
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
-
Why is this site ranked #1 in Google with such a low DA (is DA not important anymore?)
Hi Guys, Would you mind helping me with the below please? I would like to get your view on it and why Google ranks a really new domain name #1 with super low domain authority? Or is Domain Authority useless now in Google? It seems like from the last update that John Mueller said that they do not use Domain Authority so is Moz Domain Authority tool not to take seriously or am I missing something? There is a new rehab in Thailand called https://thebeachrehab.com/ (Domain authority 13)It's ranked #1 in Google.co.th for these phrases: drug rehab thailand but also for addiction rehab thailand. So when checking the backlink profile it got merely 21 backlinks from really low DA sites (and some of those are really spammy or not related). Now there are lots of sites in this industry here which have a lot higher domain authority and have been around for years. The beach rehab is maybe only like 6 months old. Here are three domains which have been around for many years and have much higher DA and also more relevant content. These are just 3 samples of many others... <cite class="iUh30">https://www.thecabinchiangmai.com (Domain Authority 52)</cite>https://www.hope-rehab-center-thailand.com/ (Domain Authority 40)https://www.dararehab.com (Domain Authority 32) These three sites got lots of high DA backlinks (DA 90++) from strong media links like time.com, theguardian.com, telegraph.co.uk etc. (especially thecabinchiangmai.com) but the other 2 got lots of solid backlinks from really high DA sites. So when looking at the content, thebeachrehab.com has less content as well. Can anyone have a look and let me know your thoughts why Google picks a brand new site, with DA 13 and little content in the top compared to competition? I do not see the logic in this? Cheers
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | igniterman75
John0 -
Url suddenlly diappeared from Google search results
Hi, I am facing a big problem wheel Google stop showing a basic url of my site, It was ranked good for more than 35 keywords from 1st to 8st positions, and suddenly I can find it indexed in Google , this is the URL : http://tv1.alarab.com/view-8/مسلسلات-عربية Thnaks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | alarab.net0 -
Thumbtack Blatantly Violating Google TOS?
Hi, We have a business registered on Thumbtack so we receive their newsletters. I'm aware that review sites offering a "badge" or verification logo which links back to your profile is nothing new. But the email I received from Thumbtack is a fairly blatant attempt to game Google for popular keywords. I was just curious on your thoughts about this. I believe it was Overstock who did something like this and got slapped by Google pretty hard for a while. Could Thumbtack be heading down the same path? Image: http://i.imgur.com/FWPnmEP.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kirmeliux0 -
Can you disavow a spamy link that is not pointing to your website?
We have submitted several really spammy websites to the Google spam team. We noticed they take a very long time to react to submissions. Do you know if it is possible to disavow a link that is not pointing to your website but rather to a very spammy website? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Removing Poison Links w/o Disavow
Okay so I've been working at resolving former black-hat SEO tactics for this domain for many many months. Finally our main keyword is falling down the rankings like crazy no matter how many relevant, quality links I bring to the domain. So I'm ready to take action today. There is one inner-page which is titled exactly as the keyword we are trying to match. Let's call it "inner-page.html" This page has nothing but poison links with exact match anchor phrases pointing at it. The good links I've built are all pointed at the domain itself. So what I want to do is change the url of this page and let all of the current poison links 404. I don't trust the disavow tool and feel like this will be a better option. So I'm going to change the page's url to "inner_page.html" or in otherwords, simply changed to an underscore instead of a hyphen. How effective do you think this will be as far as 404ing the bad links and does anybody out there have experience using this method? And of course, as always, I'll keep you all posted on what happens with this. Should be an interesting experiment at least. One thing I'm worried about is the traffic sources. We seem to have a ton of direct traffic coming to that page. I don't really understand where or why this is taking place... Anybody have any insight into direct traffic sources to inner-pages? There's no reason for current clients to visit and potentials shouldn't be returning so often... I don't know what the deal is there but "direct" is like our number 2 or 3 traffic source. Am I shooting myself in the foot here? Here we go!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jesse-landry0 -
Penalised by Google - Should I Redirect to a new domain?
Last month my rankings dropped a couple of pages on Google and am no longer receiving as many visits from Google as I used to. It's coming up to summer which is the time my business naturally picks up yet I can't fix this problem. I have a crazy idea of redirecting my established site onto a new domain in hopes that the penalty would be removed. I have tried removing any manipulative links yet my ranking are not coming back. Anyone had success in redirecting to a new domain?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | penn730 -
Sudden Ranking Drop from 1st Page
My client's Website http://countryfeelingholidays.com is experiencing a huge drop of its rankings since Aug 1st. It was at 2nd on 1st page on google.lk for the keyword Holidays Sri Lanka . But When I checked it last it has gone to 20th page. I really cannot find a reason for this drop . Only thing that comes to mind is that we put a comment on a blog but finally it appeared on all pages because of top commentator plugin . huge rise in backlinks in oneday . from next day we lost its ranking on google.lk but on google.com it is still at the same position where it used to be . What would be the reason for this ? Could it be a penelty ? What should we do now to get its ranking back ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Osanda0
