Disavow links returning?

[okuma]

Morning Mozzers,

Happy Presidents Day.

We submitted a disavow file about 4 weeks ago and in GWT saw that our links went from ~20k to about ~1300. Now this was good as majority were dubious at best.

What is strange is I logged into GWT today and see many of the links that appeared to be 'disavowed' are back in our profile.

I do not have any messages from Goog.

Has anyone else seen this?

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance for you help.

[okuma]

Thank you Tom.

We were unaware of the bug within G.

Guess that answers it.

So, a follow up question, if I may? We, and I have seen others, have submitted multiple versions of the disavow file. Unless we keep absolute track of these links and domains there is no way to know if the links are indexed and hurting us?

If we have a domain that has been disavowed, but still shows in GWT, how can we tell if it is in index for our site?

Thanks again.

[TomRayner]

Hi Julia, I hope my response will clear up any confusion for you.

When you disavow links, they are not actually removed from your webmaster tools report.  The link needs to physically disappear for this to happen and even then the WMT report will often give you old, deleted links.  I'll try and find a source for this, but I'm very confident this is the case.

The reason why you would have seen a drop in your WMT recently would be because of a bug in the system.  For the last 3 or so weeks, WMT has been giving irregular data, with many people reporting drops in links as you have done.  This issue has now been fixed.

So, your drop in links was most likely coincidental to your disavow action.  These links don't actually get removed in your report, but rest assured, provided that you have gone through all the recommended stages, your links will be discounted.