Should I disavow these links?
-
Hi all, I have a site that is a year old, we have been building backlinks organically - probably around 50 or so - then almost overnight we had100s of spammy links. Screenshot here: https://ibb.co/cijiub
My questions:
- Should I disavow these?
- What happens if I don't disavow these?
- Can I work out where they came from?
- If I disavow a few of them, is this a token offering to the Google Gods that will lower my risk of being penalised?
Thank you.
-
Hi there,
Gaston's reply below is very helpful so I don't have too much to add apart from a couple of points.
Personally, I think I'd disavow these links a bit at a time - perhaps submit a few of them to start off with and make sure there are no negative effects, then add more over time. Right now, no one really knows how Google handles disavow because on one hand, Google say they handle things automatically, but on the other hand they still provide the tool for us to use...
1. If you don't disavow now, just make sure you keep a note of all of these kinds of links (and watch for new ones in the future) and if you do experience any penalty problems, you have a list ready to go to submit.
2. If you do disavow now, take your time to get the list right and make sure you only disavow links which are purely manipulative and / or look spammy. If you haven't seen any traffic or penalty problems, you want to be extra careful when using disavow. At the same time, if links are clearly spammy, they're unlikely to help long-term anyway, so disavowing them may not hurt at all.
I hope that helps!
Paddy
-
Hi Bee,
1.- Yes, please disavow those! I do not recommend to wait.
The awful quality of them is by default harming. Also the amount, if you have 50 good inbound links, I mean that you worked hard for getting them, having 100 low quality, that is a great proporcion. Please do it carefully, include only the spam ones. You can use Moz´s Open Site Explorer for verify the spam score. Never use "disavow all".How: verify into the Google Search Console:
a) Search Traffic, b) Links to Your Site, c) Who links the most, d) All domains.
There you will get a list of all domains.
Download it, erase from the list all the good inbound domains. Then you will have a list of domains for disavow, save as .text and upload to Google Disavow Tool.
You have to verify in all the properties, just in case. If it is necessary repeat the process in the affected property. Remember that for Google, every possible version of your website is a different property, for this purpose and many others.
Remember to disavow into Bing Websmasters too.
2.- Google might notice those as spammy or might "think" that you bought those.
3. It is possible, by the police or a highly skilled hacker. Therefore not many options.
4.- On the contrary. You notice them you took action. Good luck!
Mª Verónica
-
Hello Bee159,
On one hand, Google (though their spokemen) said that the algorithm is pretty good finding and diminishing the strenght of spammy links. So, if you talk to someone from Google right now, they might said: leave them, probably the algorithm will consider those as spammy and there will be no harm.
On the other hand, If you are absolutely sure that those links are spammy and malicious... then go ahead and disavow them. Remember that it's possible to disavow an entire domain.
More info here: Disavow backlinks - Search Console HelpAnswering the list:
- Its up to you.
- Google might eventually recognize them as spammy and ignore them in your site's backlink profile
- I don't know any good way of reverse engineering how backlinks end up in spammy sites.
- I don't believe that Google might think more of your site just if disavow some links. Sure, if the penalty is caused by any of those links, then you will lower that risk.
Hope it helps.
Best Luck.
GR.
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
-
Internal linking
Hi, I currently have built my website with internal links to boost my category pages (the ones that are the most important with the most traffic). Is the way to go or nowadays or doesn't it matter what pages you boost. I beleive what I did is some sort of "page rank sculpting" but is it still useful ? or I should I link natural across my website even though some pages will get a boost and some won't ? The link that I have are at the bottom of my content (not in the footer) but at the bottom of the page next to each other ? does they count or is it really bad to have them that way ? I have a blog and I was wondering if when I link from my blog page for example about "Barolo" to my page about "Piedmont" if I should also link from my page about "Piedmont" to my Barolo page or if the link only has to go one way from my blog / Barolo page to my piedmont page to boost Piedmont. Thank you,
Link Building | | seoanalytics0 -
How many links per week/month should a link building campaign acquire?
I am running a linkbuilding campaign for my company. I am mostly focusing on guest blogging opportunities and responding to emails from HARO. How many links would I have to acquire each week or month to be considered doing a good job over a 6 month or a year time period? Thank you,
Link Building | | fersu0 -
Uk link building
Hello mozzers, I have a UK website that I have slowly been building high quality links to from highly trusted websites, traffic is slowly but steadily rising. So far all the links i've built are on UK websites. I've discovered there are many opportunities to get links from loosely related US websites. Would links from highly trusted US domains help my UK rankings? Would they help, but not as much as UK links? I'd be very grateful to hear anyones thoughts on this. Thank you so much!
Link Building | | lucyN0 -
When link building yourself where would you advise are the best places to add links?
Hi I am not having much success with SEO companies so am looking at link building and doing SEO myself. Where would you advise are the best places to add links? Also is it better to add links to specific pages or just to the home page? Thanks in advance
Link Building | | Briggzy0 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Linking to sites that link to porn or casinos, my site getting penalized?
I have some link exchanges with some sites to get web traffic but when i ran the bad neighborhood link checker, i found that one site links to some casinos and another site has one link to a porn site. Is this getting me penalized? should i remove the links to these sites? Thanks, Ron
Link Building | | Ron100 -
How do i remove bad links ?
Google have sent me an email regarding manipulativre link or paid link etc. Tey are asking me to fix the issue then resubmit my site for consideration. My site IS still in the search results but i suspect that they may remove it soon. I suspect that a competitor may have a contact in google andthey are submitting complaints against my business but we do have many link to my site . How am i going to know exactly what link are the problem.
Link Building | | SydneyMove0 -
Submit link wheel
I have created 5 spokes like wheel in last month I used the following sites to create my link wheel hubpages.com wordpress.com blogsopt.com blog.com squidoo.com I could find that all links are indexd by google search engine . I know that some SEO expert says they ypur link wheel shumitted to social bookmark and rss feed. Do i have submit this to social book mark and rss feed ? Because this is already indexed. If i submit to them what will be the effect
Link Building | | wise950