Disavow links leading to 404

[MickEdwards]

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?

[ClaudioHeilborn]

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])

[MickEdwards]

thanks. You've confirmed my thoughts on doing a thorough spring clean.

[Chris.Menke]

Thanks for the info.

[ClaudioHeilborn]

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!

[MickEdwards]

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.

[Chris.Menke]

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.