Removing inbound links
-
How can I remove inbound links?
-
Thanks for the responses Guys!
The reason I wanted to know more about removing links was because a website that I look after had stopped receiving GA stats. I looked at the inbound links and found a few that where completely unrelated to the site (one from Japan and not translatable).
I did search for the Disavow tool from Google, but decided to try to contact the sites first to see if I can get the links removed that way.
On closer inspection, and much worry, I discovered that the GA tracking had stopped! How could that happen? As far as I know I am the only one with access to FTP... Worrying, but fixed now and I have had an education about the Disavow tool and link removal along the way
One more question: Are nofollow links harmful to a site if they are inbound?
-
Is this in response to a notice from Google or general house cleaning? And you need to asses if those links are actually causing you any harm in the first place, for example are they nofollow?
First step in removing links is always to try and contact the webmaster and ask them to remove the links. this is important as this will then impact on all Search engines, not just Google which would be the case if you automatically went for Disavow tool. It also provides you an audit trail if in future you find you need to demonstrate to search engines, say through a reconsideration request, that you have made an effort to clean up your site and comply with webmaster guidelines, To find contact details for a website you can try contact details on the site itself or look them up with tools such as the whois directory.
If contact fails, or if they demand money for removal then you should consider using Googles Disavow tool. Again please note this will only impact Google's algorithm. It should only really be a last resort however. You can access this through Webmaster tools, just search for disavow tool in the help section to the top right and follow the links,
-
Google Disavow, always good fun lol
I would suggest that you ensure that this is required before going down this path.... it is very time consuming, can negatively effect your current rankings, and is often not required!
-
Before using Disavow you will need to make a concerted effort to manually have the links removed. A good tool to coordinate this would be Rmoov. I would use Disavow as the last thing, if all else fails.
-
Use Google's disavow tool - detailed description here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en
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
-
Broken links in the pdf of the On Page Report
Hi, I run an individual On Page report for a particular URL, then I export as pdf. The URL appears in the pdf and looks fine but when you click on it it goes to a 'page not found'. I know the URL is correct. When I hover over the URL in the pdf i notice that the word 'Good' is at the end of my URL but I did not put this in there. if I give the report to a client it doesn't look so good. http://www.narellanpools.com.au/local-contact/narellan-pools-alburywodongaGood Is this a bug? Cheers Virginia
Moz Pro | | VirginiaC0 -
How Old is OSE link data?
I ran an anchor text report for my client today, which shows that their site has some incoming comment spam links using totally unrelated phrases (pharma products). However, when looking for the live link, the linking page no longer contains the link to them. Maybe the webmasters removed these, but I can't track down a single one... how old is this data? thanks
Moz Pro | | JMagary0 -
Why is the linking root domains count not increasing
For the last month I have been tracking my backlinks thru open site explorer. Over the same period I have gone on a minor link building exercise via social media, some directories as well as writing fresh new content for the site. However, my backlink count has increased in the Rank Tracker tool but my root linking domains have remain at the same level. Is there a lag or is this because some of these site are not in the open site index? To be specific - I have personally setup follow links from sites like tumblr, posterous, stumbleUpon, delicious and other like these. Would really like to understand the limitations so I can take the appropriate action. Thanks
Moz Pro | | versinge0 -
Why does Open Site Explorer show less inbound links than yahoo site Explorer?
Hello, We have a question regarding inbound link measurement. We used to measure our inbound links with yahoo site explorer. Now that it's been shut down we use opensiteexplorer.org. However, Open Site Explorer only shows a fraction of inbound links compared to yahoo site explorer. For our website www.theprintspace.co.uk yahoo site explorer measured approx. 14,000 inbound links, whereas open Site Explorer only counts approx. 3,000. This is more than 10,000 links less. For our other website www.theprintspace.de Open Site Explorer also shows 3000 links less than Yahoo. How can this be? Does Open Site Explorer count the links in a different way to Yahoo? Please explain. It would be great if you could help us with this. Thank you!
Moz Pro | | Waplington0 -
BOTW links not recognized by Open Site Explorer
Hi there, I was wondering if I buy a submission to the Best of the Web directory (waiting for the new directory list promised by the seomoz team 🙂 ) but when I get to the category on BOTW website that will fit for my website, I took some links already there and put them on open site explorer to see their value, I had the surprise they are not even recognized... So I am still wondering if it is worth or not... voilà , if anybody knows if this directory still has value...
Moz Pro | | thuraminho750 -
Competitive Link Analysis
How can I make the a new report for the Competitive Link Analysis? My report has a date from two weeks ago and I would like to see an update.
Moz Pro | | CalgaryRealtor390 -
Missing back links in Open Site Explorer?
I'm looking at the Open Site Explorer for my site, and it shows 9 links to my site, all from 2 domains (showing all links from all pages and for both www and not www version of my domain name). But I know for sure that there are other sites linking to my site. Are they not there because they are not important or because the links have not been crawled yet?
Moz Pro | | jsoldi0 -
Why am I not seeing an increase in external followed links?
Ive been getting some really good links pointing to my domain as of lately, and they appear to be followed links. yet the number of external followed links shown in my seomoz tool bar does not want to budge! nor do these links show up in site explorer! Is there a delay in the toolbars response-time? or could it be something else? Thanks
Moz Pro | | ambisuite0