When to Disavow
-
I'm in the process of doing a link cleanup (nothing I have done just ended up with them).
I stumbled across one or two doc hosting sites, the domain parameters aren't bad but I don't think they drive any value and they do look a bit dodgy. They mainly only comprise of a little bit of text and Google custom search.
1. Is there any point disavowing?
2. Could it do any harm?
-
Thanks for your reply.
They are definitely low quality and have no relevance whatsoever. I definitely didn't post the myself, so not quite sure how they got there.
-
The question I have is what metrics did you use to determine these are low quality sites? I would be careful disavowing because if you're not careful you could unintentionally disavow sites that are actually helping you. Were the links artificially placed (by you or another SEO), do they violate any of the quality guidelines, or are there any other reasons why you think the links are poor quality?
-
- Yes, because still Google might think that the page is low quality.
- Yes, as the page is very low quality it might drive a signal.
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
-
Should you disavow backlinks even if your site spam score is 1%?
With a site spam score of 1% as indicated by Moz, is it worth the effort or necessary to disavow backlinks in Google? Even at just 1%, could those spammy links still hurt a site's Google search rankings, even in the slightest of ways? As it relates to disavowing backlinks, everything I read about is only related to sites with high spam scores. But what about sites with low spam scores? I'm interested in best practices for dealing with spammy links, regardless of one's site spam score. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndrewOrr100 -
Disavow links established in 2009??
Sorry for the length, but I believe this is an interesting situation, so hopefully you'll enjoy thinking this one over a little. Thanks for taking the time! Historical Information We’ve owned and operated printglobe.com since 2002. In late 2009, we acquired absorbentprinting.com and operated both sites until Mar, 2015, when absorbentprinting.com was redirected to printglobe.com. The reason we chose to redirect absorbentprinting.com to printglobe.com is that they were same industry, same pricing, and had a lot of product overlap, although they did have unique product and category descriptions. We saw a long and steady decline in organic traffic to absorbentprinting.com in the last couple of years leading up to the decision to redirect. By the way, while I understand the basics of SEO, neither I nor anyone else at our company could be considered an SEO practitioner. Recent Information An SEO firm we used to be engaged with us reached back out to us and noted: “I started looking through your backlink and it looks like there has been a sharp increase of referring domains.” They included a graph that does show a dramatic increase, starting around November, 2015. It’s quite dramatic and appears anything but natural. The contact from the SEO firm went on to say: “After doing a cursory review, it looks like a handful of these new links are the type we would recommend disavowing or removing.” We do little in the way of “link building” and we’re in a relatively boring industry, so we don’t naturally garner a lot of links. Our first thought was that we were the victim of a negative SEO attack. However, upon spot checking a lot of the recent domains linking to us, I discovered that a large % of the links that had first shown up in AHREFS since November are links that were left as comments on forums, mostly in 2009/2010. Since absorbentprinting.com was redirected to printglobe.com in Mar, 2015, I have no idea why they are just now beginning to show up as links to printglobe.com. By the numbers, according to a recent download from AHREFS: Total # of backlinks to printglobe.com through mid-Feb, 2016: 8,679 of backlinks “first seen” November, 2015 or later: 5,433 Note that there were hundreds of links “first seen” in the months from Mar, 2015 to Oct, 2015, but the # “first seen” from November, 2015 to now has been 1,500 or greater each full month. Total # of linking domains through mid-Feb, 2016: 1,182 of linking domains first seen November, 2015 or later: 850 Also note that the links contain good anchor text distribution Finally, there was a backlink analysis done on absorbentprinting.com in April, 2013 by the same firm who pointed out the sharp increase in links. At that time, it was determined that the backlink profile of absorbentprinting.com was normal, and did not require any actions to disavow links or otherwise clean up the backlinks. My Questions: If you’ve gotten through all that, how important does it seem to disavow links now? How urgent? I’ve heard that disavowing links should be a rare undertaking. If this is so, what would you think of the idea of us disavowing everything or almost everything “first seen” Nov, 2015 and later? Is there a way to disavow at the linking domain level, rather than link-by-link to reduce the number of entries, or does it have to be done for each individual link? If we disavow around 5.5k links since Nov, 2015, what is the potential for doing more harm than good? If we’re seeing declining organic traffic in the past year on printglobe.com pretty much for the first time in the site’s history, can we attribute that to the links? Anything else you’d advise a guy who’s never disavowed a link before on this situation? Thanks for any insights! Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PrintGlobeSEO0 -
Which links to disavow?
I've got a new client that just fired their former SEO company, which was building spammy links like crazy! Using GSC and Majestic, I've identified 341 linking domains. I'm only a quarter of the way through the list, but it is clear that the overwhelming majority are from directories, article directories and comment spam. So far less than 20% are definitely links I want to keep. At what point do I keep directory links? I see one with a DA of 61 and a Moz spam score of 0. I realize this is a judgement call that will vary, but I'd love to hear some folks give DA and spam numbers. FWIW, the client's DA is 37.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rich.owings0 -
2015 Disavow Links on Bing?
In years past I was told not to disavow links in Bing unless the site had an issue. This was driven home when a site we were working on disavowed the links in google and saw the site recover after a few months, then when they disavowed the same links in Bing and the rankings dropped 20% over the next few months. The reasoning was that Bing was looking more at the qty of links, and didn't analyze links the way Google does. So even though you might disavow links in Google you might not want to disavow those same links in Bing. Does this still hold true in 2015? I want to get the community's opinion on this topic, should the same links be disavowed in Bing that are disavowed in Google? Why or why not?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | K-WINTER1 -
Disavow links of my own in niche forums that i post to regularly?
Hi Yall, I'm disavowing a new set of links and have come across a wall: Let's say your niche is in web hosting and you post to forums such as a webhostingtalk.com (a forum very popular in the hosting business). If your sole purpose is mostly selling your business and you have links (not anchor text keywords) that you direct users to for specific products and such...do you do a disavow those links? I'm not leaving links like: Web hosting, or, Free Hosting... I'm posting deals and answering some questions on other posts that direct to my site with traditional links. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Art website is being spammed for NFL Jerseys - should I disavow?
I have no idea why or what their mistake/intent would be, but my mom's artist website (kathleenmrobison.com) has been link/anchor text spammed for NFL jerseys - so weird. As seen in SEMrush, her site is actually ranking for some of these keywords - but we don't want/need these at all. Do we proactively disavow all of these sites in with the disavow file, or just ignore until we get problems with warnings? **Edit: **I also see that some fake URLs have been created, so it is definitely a spam/hacked issue. 6495ws 6496zi
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joe.Robison0 -
Disavow Links & Paid Link Removal (discussion)
Hey everyone, We've been talking about this issue a bit over the last week in our office, I wanted to extend the idea out to the Moz community and see if anyone has some additional perspective on the issue. Let me break-down the scenario: We're in the process of cleaning-up the link profile for a new client, which contains many low quality SEO-directory links placed by a previous vendor. Recently, we made a connection to a webmaster who controls a huge directory network. This person found 100+ links to our client's site on their network and wants $5/link to have them removed. Client was not hit with a manual penalty, this clean-up could be considered proactive, but an algorithmic 'penalty' is suspected based on historical keyword rankings. **The Issue: **We can pay this ninja $800+ to have him/her remove the links from his directory network, and hope it does the trick. When talking about scaling this tactic, we run into some ridiculously high numbers when you talk about providing this service to multiple clients. **The Silver Lining: **Disavow Links file. I'm curious what the effectiveness of creating this around the 100+ directory links could be, especially since the client hasn't been slapped with a manual penalty. The Debate: Is putting a disavow file together a better alternative to paying for crappy links to be removed? Are we actually solving the bad link problem by disavowing or just patching it? Would choosing not to pay ridiculous fees and submitting a disavow file for these links be considered a "good faith effort" in Google's eyes (especially considering there has been no manual penalty assessed)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
Google disavow tool
I have an algorithmic penalty on one of my websites. I never received a notification of a manual penalty in GWMT and even sent in a reconsideration request 6 months ago ad they told me their were no manual penalties on the website. I have cleaned up my link profile and what I could not clean up I sent in using the Google disavow tool a few days ago. I've heard to just wait if it's algorithmic or should I send in another reconsideration request for disavow links tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkHIggins0