Would you consider these domains spammy or at risk for penguin penalty?

[Deacyde]

I'm doing a bit of competitor backlink auditing and am curious how you view these domains?

I also am doing this for others as a comparison and growing reference maybe of domains that they can crosscheck with their own backlink profile and make sure these aren't on there, in preparation for penguin algo release to core.

Either chime in with known domains to be spam, and I will create a live list based on answers here.

Domain                     Domain Rating

directoryworld.net     64
prlog.ru                     60
torchbrowser.com     60
jzip.com                    58
localbiznetwork.com 58
gimpsy.com               54
pageonepower.com  52
nashvillelife.com       49
2thetopdesign.com   49
seocounsel.com       48
healthywealthyaffiliate.com 48
hollinslegal.com        48

On a working Disavow list either in root domain or extended url form

seocourt.com
wldirectory.com
onpaco.com
lostdirectory.com
ligginit.comligginit.com
alivedir.net
tiptopdirectory.com
onemilliondirectory.com
submittolinkdirectory.com

I've read that sitewide footer links even from parent company sites will only count as one, regardless of how many links they have, I was wondering if that was true as well?

[HashtagHustler]

Matt Cutts on Sitewide Backlins That pretty much will tell you everything you want to know.

As far as the domains being spammy, really that's going to have to be a personal decision. Just because the word directory is in the name, it isn't a spam site. Just because there is a hyphen, doesn't make it spam. Google is progressively becoming more and more powerful, and more and more capable at telling what is real, and what isn't.

Visit those websites, do they look like spam to you? Do they look like a directory listing site do you? If you worked at google, and had to do a site audit, would you ding someone for linking those sites?

Really for all intensive purposes wikipedia was a directory, and then it started getting powerful, and gaining traction, and then it was being abused.

Anyway, I guess to answer your question, you will have to look at the websites to actually know the answer. Is the website functioning as merely a place to gather links? Then yes, it is probably spam.

EDIT: Also, at first I thought this was a competitor analysis, but considering that you are mentioning disavow, I will presume this is for you. The disavow tool is VERY powerful, and I would use it very sparingly. Do what you can to organically remove the links before disavowing them. Not only that but if you still have links from these sources, you are still getting some sort of juice, so build a bridge before burning a bridge. Replace those links with new ones, from legit sources. Write some press releases, post some solid social media, reach out to bloggers etc.