Is there proof that disavowing backlinks in GSC help to boost rankings in Google?
-
Hi Guys
Let's say you have a website and you got some questionable back links or lower quality ones. Does anyone have proof that after disavowing back links helped in the rankings or had some positive effects? I am concerned that Google will place our website on their radar and instead possibly demote it or smth.
Lastly, if disavowing is the way to go what criteria do you use to disavow backlinks?
So if you get questionable back links over time, should you disavow ongoing as well? If so how often?
Cheers
John
-
Thanks Everett!!
-
John Whiteboardwiz,
Since your question was specifically if there is any proof, I wanted to share a case study by Edd Willson, which shows the value of submitting a disavow file pretty clearly:
Search for "disavow file case study" and set the time preferences to the last 12 months. There are lots of other examples.
Also marking John Sammon's response as a good answer.
-
Hey John,
I've done SEO for 10+ years in an agency environment an I would encourage you to use the disavow tool. You'll want to disavow in both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Here's how to proceed:
Do it in phases - the first round should focus on the worst stuff in your backlink profile - I'd also look at spammy anchor text too. You can view these links in Moz or GSC.
You'll typically see results in 2-4 weeks.
You can come back to it after the 2-4 week period and try another round.
If you have additional questions about what to disavow, please fire away. I'm happy to review some links you may be on the fence about disavowing.
-
Hello,
Ask ten SEOs about disavow files and you're likely to get ten different answers, five of which say do it and five of which say don't. I don't personally put a lot of stock in them, but here's something you can do:
Set a minimum spam score threshold and disavow those links. If rankings go down, increase the minimum spam score threshold, remove the links from the disavow file that are not above that threshold, and resubmit the file. I just saw a case study about this last week at TechSEO Boost in Boston.
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
-
Does google sandbox aged domains too?
Hello, i have a question. Recently i bought a domain from godaddy auction which is 23 years old and have DA 37 PA 34 Before bidding i check out the domain on google using this query to make sure if pages of this website are showing or not (site:mydomain.com) only home page was indexed on google. Further i check the domain on archive web the domain was last active in 2015. And then it parked for long about 4 years. So now my question does google consider these type of domain as new or will sandboxed them if i try to rebuild them and rank for other niche keywords ? Because its been 4 weeks i have been building links to my domain send several profile and social signals to my domain. My post is indexed on google but not showing in any google serp result.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Steven231 -
Hacked Websites (Doorways) Ranking First Page of Google
Hello Moz community! I could really use your help with some suggestions here with some recent changes I've noticed in the Google serps for terms I've been currently working on. Currently one of the projects I am working on is for an online pharmacy and noticed that the SERPs are being now taken up by hacked websites which look like doorways to 301 redirect to an online pharmacy the hacker wants the traffic to go to. Seems like they may be wordpress sites that are hacked and have unrelated content on their websites compared to online pharmacies. We've submitted these issues as spam to Google and within chrome as well but haven't heard back. When searching terms like "Canadian Pharmacy Viagra" and other similar terms we see this issue. Any other recommendations on how we can fix this issue? Thanks for your time and attached is a screenshot of the results we are seeing for one of our searches. 1Orus
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | monarkg0 -
Anyone backlinks from hacked FaceBook widgets?
I was going through my backlink profile the other day and started noticing a huge number of new back links, like 100k. Digging through them, I am seeing a lot of links that are inserted in Facebook feed widgets. You will see the link at the bottom of the widget. From what I can see, a lot of these links are all in this format, all on European domains, all running WordPress. Doesn't seem to have anything do to spamminess. Had domains that were on blacklists, some not. Anyone seen anything like this before? The only thing I can think of was maybe an automated hack bot that inserted the link when it was able to get in? E0OMJfi.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ShockoeCommerce0 -
Help with a Link Building Audit
A customer wants to have a better position with a keyword (he has already a great position, but he wants more...). So he need a bit of extra link building to have better position in serp(this niche is very competitive so on page is not sufficient).
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Maximilian21
He asked me to do a Link Building Analysis to find good link opportunities.
How can i structure a good report? I need something like a Seo Audit for link building. That's my idea:
Identify what are the business objectives
Identify the brand strenghts and weakness
Find the strongest competitors and understand their tactics
See what are the top links that they have
Copy their best strategies
Find new strategies not used by the competitors
What else i can do for my link building audit?0 -
Google Manual Penalty - Dilemma?
Hi Guys, A while back, my company had a 'partial match' manual penalty from google for 'unnatural links' pointing to our site. This glorious feat was accomplished by our previous SEO agency for quite heavily spamming links (directories, all kinds of low quality sites). That being said, when the penalty hit we really didnt see any drop in traffic. In fact, it was not long after the penalty that we launched a new website and since our traffic has grown quite significantly. we've doubled our total visits from prior penalty to now. This previous SEO also did submit a couple of reconsideration requests (both done loosely as to fool Google by only removing a small amount of links, then abit more the next time when it failed - this was obviously never going to work). Since then, I myself have submitted a reconsideration request which was very thorough, disavowing 85 Domains (every single one at domain level rather than the individual URLs as I didnt want to take any chances), as well as getting a fair few links removed from when the webmaster responded. I documented this all and made multiple contacts to the webmasters so i could show this to Google. This reconsideration request was not successful - Google made some new backlinks magically appear that i had not seen previously. But really, my main point is; am I going to do more damage removing more and more links in order to remove the penalty, because as it stands we haven't actually noticed any negative effects from the penalty! Perhaps the negative effects have not been noticed due to the fact that not long after the penalty, we did get a new site which was much improved and therefore would naturally get much more traffic than the old site, but overall it has not been majorly noticed. What do you guys think - is it worth risking drop in rankings to remove the penalty so we don't face any future issues, or should I not go too heavy with the link removal in order to preserve current rankings? (im really interested to see peoples views on this, so please leave a comment if you can help!)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sandicliffe0 -
Website is not stable on maps.google.com
My website is daily showing different position on maps.google.com and for the last few days like yesterday it was on 21st position on some keyword and today it is no where and same with other keywords. Is this a Google Dance ?? what can be its period ? and what is the solution to handle it ??
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mnkpso0 -
Lost ranking for single term
We are working on a site with a page that has been ranking on page one of serps for quiet some time. It all the sudden completely lost its ranking for a single term (no major changes to on page made), but still ranks on the 3rd page for a few similar terms. Those terms used to rank a bit higher. Is it possible that some old spammier link building techiniques could have caught up with this site? The page itself is still indexed, has a few terms it is ranking for - but just completely gone from index for primary term.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Hakkasan0 -
How much time do you think Google employees spend reverse engineering what we do?
Lets face it, it's the corner stone of SEO, reverse engineering sites to guess at what big G does. It would just make sense they did the same to learn all our tactics.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | naffhampton1