Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Disavow links leading to 404
-
Looking at the link profile anchor text of a site i'm working on new links keep popping up in the reports with let's say very distasteful anchor text. These links are obviously spam and link to old forum pages for the site that doesn't exist any more, so the majority seem to trigger the 404 page.
I understand that the 404 page (404 header response) does not flow any link power, or damage, but given the nature and volume of the sites linking to the "domain" would it be a good idea to completely disassociate and disavow these domains?
-
Unfortunately we usually appear to learn more from huge problems than from nice and successful experiences...
That’s the massive profit on sharing; we can profit from others experience!
Cheers
[URL]]([URL=http://imgur.com/yhmjs1P][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/yhmjs1P.jpg[/IMG][/URL])
-
thanks. You've confirmed my thoughts on doing a thorough spring clean.
-
Thanks for the info.
-
Hi Michael / Chris
In this case, unfortunately I have a harsh experience which makes me differ with Chris´s experience; I would definitely go forward with disavowing if you are really interested on making clear for Google that you do not value those links, even if they point to non-existing urls
A couple of years back we had a client (and still have it) with a huge hack that produced thousands of links pointing to pages of our client´s hacked domain. We even suspected of a “black hat” maneuver to make damage to our client´s SEO through this procedure.
We had a hell of a problem letting Google understand that those links where empty and pointed to a 404, even after we deleted all the content and the urls didn´t exist anymore... strange behavior still happened from time to time and until the appearance of disavow tool….unexpectedly Google re indexed those links, even that they pointed already for YEARS to nonexistent 404 urls
I would take the time and disavow if you are really interested on Google not indexing those links.
I hope you can profit from this experience.
Cheers to you both, form sunny southern Spain!
-
Thanks Chris. Yes I agree no harm. To be honest this is in the mix of getting Partial Matches: Unnatural links to your site—impacts links "...so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links..."
I don't totally subscribe to Google just removing link flow from the links they refer to and that's that nothing to worry about. So in the back of my mind i'm looking at a complete purge even if not technically applicable.
-
Michael,
Of course their's no harm in disavowing domains you're talking about (and not much time involved with doing it) but technically, those links are pointing to resources that doesn't exist and I've not heard of anyone who says they've been hurt by links pointing to non-existing resources on their domain. In fact, before we had the disavow tool, changing the url of a page with bad back links was a method used to try to avoid penalties.
![http://i.imgur.com/yhmjs1P.jpg[/IMG][/URL]](http://i.imgur.com/yhmjs1P.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL%5D){kind=link}
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
-
Spam Score & Redirecting Inbound Links
Hi, I recently downloaded a spreadsheet of inbound links to my client sites and am trying to 301 redirect the ones that are formatted incorrectly or just bad links in general (they all link to the site domain, but they used to have differently formatted urls on their old site, or the link URL in general has strange stuff on it). My question is, should I even bother redirecting these links if their spam score is a little high (i.e. 20-40%)? it already links to the existing domain, just with a differently formatted URL. I just want to make sure it goes to a valid URL on the site, but I don't want to redirect to a valid URL if it's going to harm the client's SEO. Also not sure what to do about the links with the --% spam score. I really appreciate any input as I don't have a lot of experience with how to deal with spammy links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AliMac260 -
Too many dofollow links = penalty?
Hi. I currently have 150 backlinks, 90% of them are dofollow, while only 10% are nofollow. I recently hit position #10 for my main keyword, but now it is dropped to #16 and a lot of related keywords are gone. So I have a few questions: 1. Was my website penalized for having an unnatural backlink profile (too many dofollow links), or maybe this drop in positions is just a temporary, natural thing? 2. Isn’t it too late for making the backlink profile look more natural by building more nofollow backlinks and making it 50%/50%? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NathalieBr0 -
Site Footer Links Used for Keyword Spam
I was on the phone with a proposed web relaunch firm for one of my clients listening to them talk about their deep SEO knowledge. I cannot believe that this wouldn’t be considered black-hat or at least very Spammy in which case a client could be in trouble. On this vendor’s site I notice that they stack the footer site map with about 50 links that are basically keywords they are trying to rank for. But here’s the kicker shown by way of example from one of the themes in the footer: 9 footer links:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RosemaryB
Top PR Firms
Best PR Firms
Leading PR Firms
CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms
Technology PR Firms
PR Firm
Government PR Firms
Public Sector PR Firms Each link goes to a unique URL that is basically a knock-off of the homepage with a few words or at the most one sentences swapped out to include this footer link keyword phrase, sometimes there is a different title attribute but generally they are a close match to each other. The canonical for each page links back to itself. I simply can’t believe Google doesn’t consider this Spammy. Interested in your view.
Rosemary0 -
Disavow wn.com?
I am cleaning up some spammy backlinks for a client and will be submitting a disavow at Google. This particular company website has 2,000+ backlinks from the domain wn.com which appears to be "World News". If you go to it, it appears to be nothing more than scraped content from other sites. Here is a recent example, where my client is linked to (I don't even see the backlink on the page, but it is in the source code!):
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gbkevin
http://article.wn.com/view/2013/11/22/Hungarian_Woman_Sentenced_to_One_Year_in_Prison_for_Her_Role/#/related_news But when I look at Moz metrics, WN.com has a domain authority of 90! So I don't want to disavow something that could POTENTIALLY be helping us. The client's website gets zero traffic from wn.com and I've never seen my client linked to in anything worthwhile... it kinda looks spammy to me. If you were me, after looking at WN.com and taking everything into account... would you disavow it? This client really needs to create a healthier backlink profile. Thanks!0 -
Are link directories still effective? is there a risk?
We've contracted a traditional SEO firm, mostly for link building. As part of their plan they want to submit our site to a large list of link directories, and we're not sure if that's a good option. As far as we know, those directories have been ineffective for a long time now, and we're wondering if there is the chance of getting penalized by google. When I asked the agency their opinion about that, they gave me the following answer - Updated and optimized by us - We are partnered with these sites and control quality of these sites. Unique Class C IP address - Links from unique Referring Class C IP plays a very important role in SEO. Powered by high PR backlinks Domain Authority (DA) Score of over 20 These directories are well categorized. So they actually control those directories themselves, which we think is even worse. I'm wondering what does the Moz community think about link directory submission - is there still something to be gained there, is there any risk involved, etc. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | binpress0 -
What means a back door link. Please explain and I will give you credit
Some one is asking me to do a back door link to each other, what dose it mean?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Cross linking websites of the same company, is it a good idea
As a user I think it is beneficial because those websites are segmented to answer to each customer needs, so I wonder if I should continue to do it or avoid it as much as possible if it damages rankings...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mcany0 -
Site being targeted by hardcore porn links
We noticed recently a huge amount of referral traffic coming to a client's site from various hard cord porn sites. One of the sites has become the 4th largest referrer and there are maybe 20 other sites sending traffic. I did a Whois look up on some of the sites and they're all registered to various people & companies, most of them are pretty shady looking. I don't know if the sites have been hacked or are deliberately sending traffic to my client's site, but it's obviously a concern. The client's site was compromised a few months ago and had a bunch of spam links inserted into the homepage code. Has anyone else seen this before? Any ideas why someone would do this, what the risks are and how we fix it? All help & suggestions greatly appreciated, many thanks in advance. MB.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MattBarker0