Should I use the Google disavow tool?
-
Hi
I'm a bit new to SEO and am looking for some guidance.
Although there is no indication in Webmaster tools that my site is being penalised for bad links, I have noticed that I have over 200 spam links for "Pay Day Loans" pointing to my site. (This was due to a hack on my site several years ago).
So my question is two fold. Firstly, is it normal to have spammy links pointing to your site and secondly, should I bother to do anything about it? I did some research into the Disavow tool in Webmaster tools wonder I should use it to block all these links.
Thanks
-
If all the links are from 200 different domains i would skip the step of contacting the webmasters and go straight to the disavow, its often very time consuming and i would suggest that time could be better spent elsewhere.
I swear by this guide for a disavow http://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool
Good luck
-
If your website is not related to Pay Day Loans, you should do something:
First, visit the origin of those links. Are they automated comments on blogs, with strange messages not related to the post or your website? By the anchor of your links, I would bet you have that profile of incoming links. If it is the case, you should definitely do something with those links. Otherwise, if you discover they are interesting content, in context links and something really worthy, you can let it be.
If you detect this way they are spam, you should first contact the webmaster of that site. Maybe he is not conscious about having those links, and they are probably caused by some kind of bug, or a form open to visitors. If he is a webmaster concerned about SEO, will remove the links soon.
If you don't obtain a reply from the webmaster, and only in that case, should you use the disavow tool: when you are not able to have those links removed by normal ways, and your last option is to inform Google you don't want them to have those links taken into consideration by their algorithm when ranking your site.
Good luck with doing that manual stuff on the 200 links
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
-
Site Audit Tools Not Picking Up Content Nor Does Google Cache
Hi Guys, Got a site I am working with on the Wix platform. However site audit tools such as Screaming Frog, Ryte and even Moz's onpage crawler show the pages having no content, despite them having 200 words+. Fetching the site as Google clearly shows the rendered page with content, however when I look at the Google cached pages, they also show just blank pages. I have had issues with nofollow, noindex on here, but it shows the meta tags correct, just 0 content. What would you look to diagnose? I am guessing some rogue JS but why wasn't this picked up on the "fetch as Google".
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
Getting Recrawled by Google
I have been updating my site a lot and some of the updates are showing up in Google and some are not. Is there a best practice in getting your site fully recrawled by Google?
Technical SEO | | ShootTokyo0 -
Am I using 301 correctly?
Hello, I have a 'Free download' type site for free graphics for designers. To prevent hot linking we authenticate the downloads and use a 301 redirect. So for example: The download URL looks like this if someone is clicking on the download button: http://www.website.com**/resources/243-name-of-the-file/download/dc37** and then we 301 that URL back to: http://www.website.com**/category-name/243-name-of-the-file** Is a 301 the correct way to do that?
Technical SEO | | shawn810 -
Pages not indexed by Google
We recently deleted all the nofollow values on our website. (2 weeks ago) The number of pages indexed by google is the same as before? Do you have explanations for this? website : www.probikeshop.fr
Technical SEO | | Probikeshop0 -
Google Indexing
Hi Everybody, I am having kind of an issue when it comes to the results Google is showing on my site. I have a multilingual site, which is main language is Catalan. But of course if I am looking results in Spanish (google.es) or in English (google.com) I want Google to show the results with the proper URL, title and descriptions. My brand is "Vallnord" so if you type this in Google you will be displayed the result in Catalan (Which is not optimized at all yet) but if you search "vallnord.com/es" only then you will be displayed the result in Spanish What do I have to do in order for Google to read this the way I want? Regards, Guido.
Technical SEO | | SilbertAd0 -
Google + button
Hi everyone, just noticed the default new red button go onto my website. Is there anyway to go back to the blue button or customise it? it doesn't really fit in with our colour sceheme 😞 Thanks, any info much appreciated as always.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Why is google ignoring my sitelinks demotions?
I'm referring to the sitelinks that appear in the SERPs when searching for my brand name. 6 subpages come up- some found in my main navigation, some not. 3 of the 6 sitelinks have been demoted in Webmaster Tools under "Site Configuration > Sitelinks." I realize that they say in their instructions: "Google doesn't guarantee that demoted URLs will never appear as a sitelink, but we do consider a demotion a strong hint that we'll try to honor when generating sitelinks." I am just surprised they would ignore 3 of the demotions and for so long. The pages that are demoted do not have very many internal links pointing to them (unlike other pages of my site that are targeted specifically). Also, the site has tens of thousands of pages to choose from. Why are they ignoring my request? What else can I do to fix this?
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan0 -
Does Google index XML files?
Does Google or other search engines include XML files in their index? More specifically, I am wondering how Google knows the difference between an xml filetype and an RSS feed.
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0