At Pubcon Las Vegas on Tuesday (10/16), Google's Matt Cutts announced a new tool to disavow links. After absorbing the news for a day, I have some advice – put down the keyboard and the Red Bull and breathe. Breathe in, breathe out, and then repeat.
As Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker, "With great power comes great responsibility, and my rice turns out Perfect Every Time®" – or something like that. My SEO friends are already reporting that their customers are asking to have links removed, and this has the potential to get ugly fast. I think this is, on balance, a good tool (one particularly handsome SEO petitioned Google for a text-file-based disavow back in December of 2011), but it also has the potential for serious destruction.
I. Who Should Use It?
I’m going to write this post backwards, for two reasons. First, if you’ve read about the disavow tool, you’ve already seen how it works, so I’ll save that for last. Second, if you haven’t read about it, I don’t want you to just run off and use it before I get my sermon on. So, sit down in your pew and listen.
Especially now, with almost no data about the tool’s effectiveness, there are really only a few groups of people who should consider using the disavow tool, in my opinion. If you fall into one of these groups, then proceed – with caution…
1. You’ve Received Bad Link Warnings
While people have had mixed reactions to Google’s bad link warnings, and there has been at least one false alarm, bad link warnings in Google Webmaster Tools are currently the only direct signal from Google that they have a problem with your link profile. The warnings look something like this:
If you’ve received a direct warning, you’re pretty sure which links are suspect, and you haven’t been able to get them removed, then the disavow tool may be for you.
2. You’ve Been Manually Penalized
I hesitate to add this one, because determining if you’ve been penalized can be more art than science, but if your site has clearly been hit with a manual penalty, you’re reasonably certain that penalty is link-based, and you haven’t been able to get those links removed, then disavowal may be up your alley.
3. You Were Denied Reconsideration
If you’ve been trying to fix (1) bad-link warnings or (2) a link-based penalty for months, with no success, then disavowal is a logical next step. Google has not been forgiving about these situations, and even if you’ve filed for reconsideration, will often not take action unless the majority of your bad links have been removed. Sometimes, that’s just not feasible, so now you have one more option.
4. You’ve Been Hit By Penguin
Diagnosing Penguin can be a bit tricky, but your best clue is a clear traffic drop on or immediately after April 24, 2012 (the release date of Penguin 1.0). To the best of our knowledge, Penguin primarily targeted aggressive link-building strategies, especially excessive use of unnatural anchor text. If you can fix those links (diversify anchor text and/or remove bad links), that’s your best option, but if you’re still struggling with Penguin then the disavow tool may be useful to you.
Keep in mind that we’re still unclear on the Penguin update cycle, specifically whether you can recover outside of a Penguin data update (and there have only been two of those – May 25, 2012 and October 5, 2012 – as of this writing). Add to this Google’s statements that disavowal could take weeks, and the new tool is far from a magic wand for dispelling Penguins.
This has no real relevance to SEO, but Facebook added a Penguin emoticon this week <("), and it’s the greatest thing ever. Please use it with reckless abandon.
5. You’re a Victim of “Negative” SEO
If you think that you’ve been a victim of a link-based attack (someone has purposely created bad links to harm your site), and you haven’t been able to get those links removed – which is, unfortunately, common in these situations – then disavowal is a new weapon in your arsenal. I hesitate to mention this because negative SEO, while very real, is also very rare. The vast majority (90%+) of people who think they are victims of negative SEO are usually suffering from other SEO problems. So, make sure you’re solving the right problem before you start disavowing links.
II. Which Links Are Bad?
Even if you’re sure that bad links are your problem, discovering exactly which links are bad is an outright perilous journey. Here’s the problem – most links, even low-value links, still help your rankings. So, if you start removing absolutely every questionable link, you could be throwing out a lot of SEO babies out with that polluted bathwater.
Many posts have been written on how to dig into Google Webmaster Tools links, Open Site Explorer, Majestic, etc., and those techniques are incredibly useful, but please be very, very careful. You don’t just want to assign a number to your links based on Toolbar PageRank or Domain Authority and start disavowing everything under some arbitrary limit.
This is a very advanced and difficult topic, but I’m going to try to provide some general advice on pinning down which links might need removing…
1. Assess Your Risk Level
This is step one. If you’re worried about a potential future penalty and are proactively removing links, please do not start taking a hatchet to your link profile. You risk doing a lot of damage to fix a problem that you don’t even have yet. Not to sound conspiratorial, but what is Google going to think when your currently unpenalized site submits 500 links for disavowal?
On the flipside, if you’ve been decimated by a penalty (manual or algorithmic) and lost the majority of your traffic, the downside to cutting out a chunk of links is a lot less. If you’re considering any kind of drastic measure, like completely moving to a new domain, then I’d certainly give the disavow tool a shot.
2. Isolate the Diseased Links
The more you can isolate the diseased portion of your link profile, the more effectively you can target treatment without damaging your site in the process. To do that, you have to understand the nature of your particular disease. For example, if you were hit by Penguin, you might want to start by looking at links with certain exact-match anchor phrases. If you were hit by Negative SEO, then you probably want to target links with anchor text that’s clearly suspicious or out of place.
Let’s look at a real-world example. A while back, Rand decided to challenge the black-hat community to hit SEOmoz with negative SEO, thereby shaving roughly 20 years off of the marketing team’s collective lives. Long story short, SEOmoz survived, but what if we hadn’t? How could we isolate and target the suspicious links?
One of the clearly anomalous phrases this attack tried to rank us for was “dog snuggies”. So, I might start by loading up Open Site Explorer, and clicking on the “Anchor Text” tab. From there, I’d browse the anchor text until the suspect phrase appeared, and then click [+] to see the links using that phrase:
Not to out anyone, but since this was sort of an open challenge, I think I’m pretty safe here. The link in question is at - https://performinsider.com/2012/04/dog-snuggies-are-real/ - and it’s very clearly not kosher:
Let’s pretend that this link is damaging us, and that we’ve tried to get it removed unsuccessfully. In Section III, we’ll go about disavowing this link to show you how it’s done. Please note – this actual link is nofollow’ed, and because of SEOmoz’s overall authority, isn’t doing us any harm. Normally, we’d leave it alone, but I wanted to illustrate the process with a real example.
3. Weigh Inaction vs. Over-reaction
This comes back to your risk assessment in (1). If you’re trying to be proactive or solve a small problem, then use disavowal conservatively. Maybe you’d be best focusing on a handful of your absolute worst links, disavowing them, waiting, and seeing what happens. In other words, if time is on your side, then move slowly. If you’ve already taken damage, then the price of inaction is too high. You’re probably going to have to cut deep and risk over-reacting, because that risk is less than staying where you are.
III. How Does It Work?
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations – I’m going to show you how to go about disavowing some links. First off, this tool isn’t directly available from the Google Webmaster Tools navigation. You have to be logged in with "Owner" level access and then enter the URL to the disavow links page. You’ll see something like this:
Before you continue, you’re going to need the list of links you want to disavow. The new disavow feature is a bit of a hybrid, a blend of GWT and a flat file that you upload, not unlike a Robots.txt file (except that it doesn’t have to live on your server). This text file can be a combination of comments, links to block, and domains to block, and it looks something like this:
There are only really three options at this point:
- Use “#” for comments (very helpful later)
- Use full URLs on their own line to block a specific page
- Use "domain:" followed by a root or sub-domain to entirely block it
Proceed with extreme caution using option #3 – you’ll end up disavowing every link from that domain, even the potentially good ones. Google has also suggested that, while they’ll usually honor sub-domains, it’s a bit open to interpretation. So, if you have terrible links from one sub-domain and great links from the root domain, I’d be very careful.
Remember our "dog snuggies" example in Section II? Here’s what our disavow file for SEOmoz actually looks like:
Going back to Google Webmaster Tools, click on [DISAVOW LINKS] and you’ll get a warning. Click the button again, and you’ll get the same warning plus a file upload option:
Click on [Choose File] and browse to your file on your local computer (again, it doesn’t have to be on your web server). I’ve named mine “disavow.txt”, but Google doesn’t seem to care what name you use. Click [Submit] and the screen will change to reflect the uploaded file:
If you’ve done everything right, you should be having heart palpitations right about now. Just one step left – click on [Done]. Congratulations – you’ve just sent a disavow request off into the ether, from whence it may never return.
What Have I Done?!
I wish I could tell you. Dave Naylor’s blog has the only report I've seen of a possibly successful disavowal (his team apparently beta-tested the tool), but the evidence is indirect. This is one of the main reasons I’m urging caution – there’s still a lot we don’t know, and Google is refining the tool and process as they go. If people abuse the disavow tool (and they will, eventually), then the data you submit could potentially even be used against you – or against the sites that you’re flagging. I don’t believe this is Google’s current intent, but you have to keep your eyes open.
So, once again – breathe. Used wisely, we all have a new tool in our utility belt. Used poorly, you’ll hit Robin in the face with a Batarang when you meant to reach for a grappling hook.
About time :)
I've already taken advantage of the tool in a clean up we're doing for a website that made the mistake of outsourcing some hideous mass link building.
Was a timely arrival as well - literally two hours before I saw the announcement, I received an email from someone I had contacted about removing some links on one of their God awful networks saying they would only remove the links upon receipt of almost £2000!!
Funnily enough, think I'll keep the cash and disavow....
That is a massive amount of money. We were hired to remove links for company in Sarasota, FL. and we actually paid some of the admins to remove some of the links, but not as much and all the money received were through donations to a list of various charities. (nice move for guys that own porn networks)
Looks like G killed off a simple "business model". Set up site, collect do follow robot comments, purchase "high quality" (for this purpose anyway) links from 5'er, wait for the webmaster emails, profit. I say this in jest but the "model" is not much different than the shake down Stacey's client faced.
We were hired to remove several thousand (link farm) links for a client. We too received the "hostage" e-mail, however each demanded between $100-$500 to remove links for our clients. I think the disavow tool should have been available well before the Google update and the moving of the "goal posts". As a sidebar, what's with hiding (or different link) to access the tool anyway? Why is it not clearly in the Webmaster tools?
I wonder if bad links like this will ever be classified as libel and this behaviour classified as blackmail? Are we SEOs fighting actual crime, just like Batman? Maybe this Dr Pete's batman analogy and this meme from Tailwind creative had it right https://on.fb.me/RifxpU
I wonder how many people missed the disavow "lynx" picture. I laughed!
Thanks for the post Pete. I'll be keeping my hands off of this tool until there is some solid research.
Yeah, I was starting to be afraid that joke was too dumb, even by my standards :) Thanks for redeeming my late-night Photoshop efforts.
Oh, THAT's the joke. Haha. I was wondering to myself, "Disavow cougars? Huh? I don't get it." Points for Andrew.
I was wondering why he had a pic of a 'no' symbol around a cat. I get it now.
I laughed too - I'm with Andrew, I'm covering my ears every time someone says "disavow" and going "la,la,la,la,la...I can't hear you!" - Great post. My favorite takeaway was the FB penguin emoticon <(") <(") <(") <(") Love it!
That is a very cool tool, which many webmasters and SEO's will find of great use. I can see that it could be very dangerous and destroy many years of hard work, but finally there is a way to fight back against bad links.
But wil Google compile a list of top 100 or so, that have been disawowed by most sites? I mean, if a thousand sites disawow a certain domain, aren't they positioned as a spammy site?
That would mean, if I wanted to hurt my competitor I would simply disawow his entire domain from all of my sites (if my argument holds up). That is negative SEO.
Valid point but this is too early to judge anything. We are not sure how Google use this data. No offense but we have to wait until some data will come out to analyze this feature. I hope Dr pete (our Data Scientist) will come up soon to explain its working. Till then don’t create the room for another big debate.
Of course it is very early, I agree on that. But none the less, a point that could be misused. Hopefully, Google have thought of these kind of things. Lets wait and see, what the data says:)
I generally agree with Asif - there's been a lot of speculation, but it's too early to tell. I don't think it will be useful for negative SEO. It would be so easy to just list your competitors, etc., that Google can't pay much attention to that aspect.
On the other hand, could they compile all of these lists across thousands of sites as a signal for which sites might have link problems (especially big directories)? Absolutely, they could. I don't think that's their ultimate goal or that they're going to do that anytime soon, but it's certainly possible.
Then again, I'm not sure it would change my usage any. If I really want links removed from a site, I doubt it's a site I think all that highly of.
I suspect you'd have to organize a conspiracy for that to work. If one person disavows a domain, they won't notice.
The trick would be to get your competitor to link to all your domains from their site in the first place. If you could manage that then disavowing links would not be very high on your marketing list.
Yeah, practically speaking, it seems like one of those tactics that would probably take so much work that no one would actually do it. Plus, if you could get all of your competitors to link to you (presumably your competitors are ranking and keyword-relevant), why would you disavow them? You already won.
Yeah that's exactly why they developed this tool.
You guys did this with spamming links years ago to knock out your competitors and i'm sure you'll use this tool to do it again.
Hi rehan,Nice reply. you just snatch my words. Every tool has some good sides & some bad sides. I know this tool will help many sites but Negative SEO is knocking door through this tool. This tool is all in one for Google, they can record a site as spammy if that get multiple Disavow request. So its really easy for a site to take down its competitor sites.... and dangerous for the blog owners.
The problem I have with a link disavow tool is this: The tool is intended to allow you, the site owner, to identify “bad links” and submit them for removal. But, aren’t the algorithm updates supposed to do that? I mean, what constitutes a “bad link” anyways? The site it’s hosted on, correct? So, if the site is so terrible, shouldn’t Google penalize IT and once the site is removed from the index, the “bad links” will be removed automatically? Otherwise, if the link is still showing up in your backlink index – it’s probably still helping you rank. Dr. Pete said here “Here’s the problem – most links, even low-value links, still help your rankings. So, if you start removing absolutely every questionable link, you could be throwing out a lot of SEO babies out with that polluted bathwater.”
Exactly.
So, what is the real reason for the tool? I can’t help but think about the fact that Google is a business and they will always do what is best for their business, not for yours. How is this not clearly just a crowdsourcing tool designed to help Google ID web spam by tricking webmasters? This isn’t a webmaster tool, this is a Google tool.
I can just see it now, sites who purchased links from link firms going and submitting every single “paid link”. The site owner thinks this will magically make their rankings reappear, but what happens instead? Their rankings completely diminish as the links helping them are not counting… oh, and Google now has data and a list of site they can use to identify some link firms entire inventory…
And, don’t even get me started on negative SEO. I’m sure spammers are already compiling lists of competitors backlinks… How long do you think it will take before Google is inundated with inaccurate data?
Great response. This tool helps Google deal with the holes in their algorithm without publicly admitting that their algorithm doesn't handle link spam well.
How easy it will be for them in the future to run sites against a large crowdsourced list of "bad" link sites and overly abused link drop platforms (pligg,scuttle, wikis, etc) and then set filters by % of matching links to determine abuse?
While this sounds nice in hopes that the best content will receive the most natural attention and return the highest quality sites to the top of the SERPs, somehow I don't see this being the course that unveils.
As always though, the route forward is to get links where nobody else can, then they won't show up in anybody's "disavow" list.
Spot on: "This tool helps Google deal with the holes in their algorithm without publicly admitting that their algorithm doesn't handle link spam well"
They are basically saying, our updated algorithms still cannot ID spammy sites properly, so we are asking you to do it for us. Thanks pal.
Very insightful, Jenny. I think you are right on about Google using this tool to trick webmasters into revealing link networks. With so much fear about links flying all over the place, it's probably going to be very easy for the average webmaster to start using this tool without putting much thought into it. Hopefully they find posts like this by Dr. Pete, with comments like yours, which will at least cause them to second guess the idea of using this tool so eagerly for any 'questionable" link.
I think the most important point in this article is the breakdown of who should use the tool. Most site owners not using an SEO firm aren't educated enough to understand when and if to use the tool. I'm glad that Dr. Pete is pushing for people to think twice before submitting links. My concern is for those that know enough to use webmaster tools., but don't know enough to submit sites properly, further damaging their backlink index unnecessarily.
I think this tool is great for getting rid of those last few links that you've been fighting to get rid of for a long time but just can't make go away. But it is NOT a reset button for your link profile. You shouldn't use it to wipe the slate clean in one go because you don't want to do the work. Really pick and choose which links you're going after with the disavow tool and try not to take advantage of this.
As usual Moz did a good job to help out how to use Google's Disavow Tool! I just wanted to shere this post https://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-check-which-links-can-harm-your-sites-rankings that will help you to find which links should be Disavow.
Thumbs up for Dr Pete.
There's a s*** load of private link networks about to be lit up like a Christmas tree.
Wow its a wonderful tool. now we can easily unlink from low quality, bad neighbourhood & irrelevant websites. but could you please let me know after submission how long it will take to reflect (disavow links) on our back links.
As Google Help says it's about few weeks...
Hm... means not specified?.... i went through Google help just now & found. you are right they said multiple weeks. but better if they mentioned exactly or approximately.
I think you'll find that there will be a mass of people using this tool over the coming months which makes it difficult to put even an approximate time. I think when they say a few weeks, they mean a few weeks at the most. So probably about a week. Similar turnaround for a reconsideration request.
Yup Mr.Morles, Obviously we should send a reconsideration request if it is not effected over on 3 to 4 weeks.
To my mind this tools is another one supplementary Google tool for detecting and collecting spam sites, hacked sites also those that selling links...
+Additional hemorrhoids for webmasters to find and detect "bad" backlinks...
No offense but why we are thinking how Google use this DATA? Instead we should think how we can save our site using this feature. As I mention above we have to wait until some data come out.
Google only does things that will benefit Google in some way. If we don't think about what, exactly, that benefit is, we could be missing out on important information.
I don't think so..
When google told to remove all bad links and those who removed bad links after the updates, and being asked by Google.
Did any sites rise back up to the same spots?
No.
They are fooling you if you think this will repair damaged sites.
Why not just use this database of "bad links" submitted by people to make their anti spam algorithm smarter much like you'd train spam assassin with actual spam emails.
Why do you think gmail is so good at detecting spam? You have all these people clicking the "spam" button on actual spam emails training the filters.
Talking to many SEOs, I have seen sites with bad links rise back up after those links were removed. In many cases, it took a significant and deep cut, and it often involved reconsideration, but it is possible. It's not easy, and I'd only cut that deep in a worst-case scenario, but it's simply not true that no sites have recovered from link-based penalties. For people in this situation who have been desperately trying to get links removed, this may be a real help - I just think that percentage is pretty small right now.
Yeah May be... Lets hope for the best.
Hi Dr Pete,
Thanks for sounding the voice of reason.
Unfortunately a lot more people are dealing with manual penalties than many realize.
I've been keeping track while running Support for rmoov (which also auto-generates Disavow Reports at the close of every link removal campaign). At present 62% of clients who have contacted support are dealing with manual penalties. Of the remainder, 28% are working on Penguin issues, 2% are conducting proactive link removal and 8% don't really know what the problem is, but are following the leader :(
The worst part of this is that there are people who have never received an unnatural link warning or any other indication that a manual action is involved and unless they actually decide to lodge a reconsideration request anyway, they will never know. This is a huge failing on Google's part which is largely unrecognized.
The disavow tool is genuinely what Matt Cutts said it is ... a way to deal with those links that are left over when you have done everything possible to get links removed, but met with undelivered mail, unresponsive webmasters and those who want to make their fortune from the situation.
Use with caution.
Sha
Merciful God. I look at this tool as a much more effective method to "weeding the garden."
This is fantastic features add by Google for removing unwanted links. This will protect our site from the negative links and save our site from the penguin and panda penalty. This means end of negative SEO. Now I can debug my new client's website that already damaged by other bad SEO. So thanks Dr.Pete for this post and giving us deep knowledge about this feature
And in six months or so, Google will use the collective data generated by the users of this tool for another algorithm tweak.
It would also be interesting to see if using this tool actually does something for the respective sites (i.e. there is a strong correlatuion between using the tool and gainig/regaining rankings).
Of course we will. As I outlined in my comment above, this looks like a pretty unvarnished approach to crowd sourcing a list of link farms.
Yea! Now I can shady link-build with rude abandon and if I get penalized just disavow my way back into the big G's good graces.
Someone has probably already put this theory forward, so here is what I think...
1: "Everyone knows" that Google values links. Link building becomes king and we all spend lots of time trying to build good links. Professional link building begins.
2: Someone figures out that you don't need to do it like that, you can just sell links between sites. Link buying is born.
3: Link Buying becomes a commodity product, as some of it can be automated and what can be automated can be done en-mass by low skilled workers. Sweat shops link farms are born, and we all get the change to buy "100 PR9+ Links for $99".
4: Google start to see the importance of linkage slipping and need to try and stop these dirty tricksters. But, heck, those tricksters and sneaky and do lots of clever things to hide their link farms and pass their battery-farmed link eggs off as good, wholesome, organic eggs.
5: Google need a way to tell which links are good and which links are bad, but that's very difficult and people keep complaining about algorithm updates that don't do what we think they should. If only there was a way they could persuade us to 'fess-up our link building sins...
6: So... Google tell us all that link farms are bad and that if we don't stop using them then the SERP Boogie Man is going to come and kill us in our beds. And penalise our sites, which is worse.
7: Panic begins. "What is someone does it to me?" we cry. "Negative SEO? What's that? Can it be true?"
7: Google say "Don't Panic" and give us a tool to "disavow" those naughty links. The ones that they can't find that easily.
8: Everyone jumps on and shops any naughty links. Sweat is wiped from brows and everyone gets to tell their SEO clients that their nose is well and truly clean.
9: Google site back and collate a big, fat database of confessions from webmasters, then launch their algorithm nukes at the worst offending link farms.
Or, am I a cynic?
I've been in a few debates about this so I would like to hear some more opinions on what could be a potentially controversial point:
Why ask webmasters to remove links when you can skip straight to using the disavow tool? Google isn't going to know any better...
We're actually spending good time and effort on removing bad links from old SEO campaigns - we plan on following Google's advice and sticking to this process but what are the community's thoughts?
Hmmmm.........that could be an interesting link removal request: "Dear So-and-So, Please remove that spammy link pointing to our site or else we'll report you to Google with the Disavow tool."
I believe removing the offending link will be quicker and carry more weight than a disavow tool so I would trust your instinct and continue the removal.
The disavow tool would be a useful fall back should your removal efforts be hampered by lack of response or a removal fee and at least indicate to your client's campaigns that you have done all in your power.
Sounds pointless. It's a way for Google to collect data.
From their press release:
Q: If I upload a file, do I still need to file a reconsideration request?
A: Yes, if you’ve received notice that you have a manual action on your site.
If you still have to file a reconsideration request what's the point? If you've been too scared to file for one because your site wasn't good enough to begin with I doubt this will help you.
Who knows - maybe you could be hit by an algorithmic penalty and have this work for you. Highly doubt it though.
Talking to people who have gone through successful reconsideration, one of the big stumbling blocks is that Google definitely wants to see a large portion of your bad links removed. The problem is that, if you don't have access to those links, you end up at a standstill, and they can be very stubborn about the percentages. Disavow, in theory, adds a layer where you can show Google that you've washed your hands of those links and potentially move forward with reconsideration where you might've been stuck in the past. This doesn't impact a ton of people, but I suspect that some companies who are stuck in reconsideration purgatory may actually benefit a lot from disavowal. The two can work hand-in-hand (again, in theory).
I am pretty confident that google is devaluing links right now without SEO's approval. In a way it could validate their actions for them, but I really have a hard time believing that the the disavow links is going add much data for Google.
I can see the paranoia, or the subversive black hat thinking they can devalue links of others with this tool, but I don't think it's as evil as some might believe.
Albeit, a little curious as to how this doesn't encourage a little more spammy link building with the option to disavow what doesn't work latter. I am going to guess that the disavow tool will consider when the links went into play, pre or post disavow.
I wonder how adding a domain into the disavow (that isn't linking to you) will effect that domain?
I can't imagine it would have any effect on the domain.
Google will almost certainly be using the data to spot patterns in how humans perceive spam, not to actually take direct action on it.
I know I'm late to the party, but Is there a way to get google to re-index these pages/sites that you request to be disavowed? When I look at the spammy links which google shows in WMT, most of them don't exist and haven't for quite some time. Additionally, I don't think that many of the pages/domains that I submitted through the disavow tool have been re-indexed, which google says is required in order to tag the page with the disavow code.
Many of our spammy links took literally months to index in the first place so I would assume that after those sites have been red flagged as spam, then the frequency of them getting crawled is low, which would take even longer to actually apply the disavow to the page or domain.
I have submitted a reconsideration request for the unnatural link warning part of the problem we face. I included a google doc which clearly demonstrates that all links that have been built unnaturally, have been either removed or requested to be disavowed. I get denied every time and given the typical response they give when you get chumped.
Maybe google doesn't really care about what you have requested they disavow, or have removed. Until they get around to making those disavow requests live, if that ever actually happens, then you are still in the dog house. The dog house for me is an expensive one considering my whole team has basically been focused on this task for 9 months now, with no results. I'm sure other webmasters are running into the same problem, and perhaps there is a solution?
Excellent as always, Dr. Pete. Had a client that spent hundreds of hours going over their link portfolio and removed tons of links only to have Google reject their reconsideration. As has been noted, I think the tool should be a last resort and we'll need to proceed with caution until we know what kind of an influence it can have. I'm hoping to run a test on a site I have and see how it turns out. I'm very interested to see what kinds of results this produces, but I think your recommendations are spot on. I could see a lot of inexperienced webmasters abusing this and hurting their sites with it.
Just to set the record straight, your dog snuggie write up in #2 of Section II has some errors. You won't find the offending link that actually ranked SEOmoz for "dog snuggie" and other longtails and be able to disavow it because I removed that 301 months ago. Also, it wasn't done in response to Rand's challenge on Traffic Planet, I had 301'd the site over on March 16th, a few minutes after being declared the winner of a public SEO contest on Wickedfire.com, Rand publicly challenged the Traffic Planet members on the 19th of April to try to harm SEOmoz rankings. Pure coincidence, nothing more. I wanted to keep prying eyes out of my backlink profile after winning the contest and thought it might make an interesting case study. Clearly, it devolved into something much larger than that.
Other than point out some factual fallacies, I don't have much feedback on your write up of the disavow tool. I won't be using it as I'm of the firm belief that it is one giant fishing mission by Google to build up a crowdsourced blacklist of popular link drops compiled by the people most likely to abuse the algorithm, ie people who actively SEO their websites, whatever hat label is attributed to them.
As I mentioned in the post, that link was just an example, since there were very few active links left from either incident. I thought it would be helpful to give people some context and go the extra mile (actually disavow a link instead of stopping one step short), but that particular link is nofollow'ed and not something we would ever worry about at this point.
Gotcha, just thought I should clarify it didn't play out exactly like that, with regards to Rand's challenge for Neg SEO. In retrospect, I wish I would have left the 301 on so you could have used that as a case study to see how effective this new tool can be, had Google not already taken manual action on that SERP.
Edit: wat, how is it possible I have two SEOmoz accounts? I need to delete one apparently.
Fair enough - I admit I glossed over the backstory a little for the purposes of this piece. I don't want to give anyone negative SEO ammunition, but I'm honestly not sure if the disavow tool is going to block 301-redirected links. It's not really appropriate to block the source, because the code is going to see a mis-match (it doesn't actually link to you). I'd probably block the target of the link (and source of the redirect), but I'm not optimistic that would actually work.
Thanks for adding levity to this issue.
This disavow a link tool will definitely make my job much easier, but i'm nervous to take the plunge. As we all know, removing too many links will cause a huge drop in PA/DA/PR and can have catastrophic effects. The trick is to find the right balance and replacing the spam links with quality ones.
Thanks Dr.Pete sharing great info, I didn't used this tool but definitely i will read more deeply about this tool. Actually my site search-value.com get penalized by google. I removed all bad links but i am sending reconsideration request to google, google didn't reconsidering my site? please suggest me.
Cool Tool, Negative SEO is almost dead now
After getting penalized by google, i really don't think that i will take a chance with this tool. Even though it can be helpful for others.
Before I thought only to put web which is badly affected by spam, but now the post make it more broad which also need to add those webs where the bad links coming from... Thanks for the great help.
I was hit by an automatic penalty most likely due to Panda. Before realizing it was Panda I closely reviewed/cleaned up my links. I have several links from adult sites that an affiliate put up and refuses to remove. Would there be any harm in disavowing these? Even if for now they do not seem to be causing me harm...
Having seen the conversation no doubt that everyone is scepticle about this. However I'm a believer of Matt Cutts. So after listing to his speech on this I decided to give it a go. Marked a whole bunch of hacked links (which were coming in my direction). Waiting eagerly to see the result. Wonder how long will it take.
Hi Pete and others,
do you have a resource, where i can find information, how to discover "bad links"?
It is not easy to get sure, which links are impacting negative.
I have several tools avaible, like OSE, Majestic, GWT and Sistrix. Is there maybe a specialized tool in the market, where i get a diagnostic?
Thanks,
A few tools have popped up for analyzing bad links, but I honestly don't have direct experience with any of them. Cyrus had a good write-up here:
https://cyrusshepard.com/boom-1-email-60-bad-links-gone-4-tools-for-easy-link-cleanup/
Finally. how long can Google make us wait for such a tool? Bing was way ahead of them on this one. I would love to see Negative SEO vanishes away forever... let's hope there aren't gonna be any ways to manipulate it in the future :>
I'm still wondering why they don't just disregard links they think are spammy? Blackhatters would stop using those link because they are ineffective - problem solved for Google and website owners. No negative SEO either.
Google instead implementing a bad link penalty and now wasting their money and resources for going through gazillions of disavowed links - why? There must be a different reason.
Another great article Pete and very timely too. A quick question to Pete and others: shall I include de-indexed domains when submitting disavowing links? Thanks
Do you mean that the source of the link has been de-indexed? Without fully understanding the situation, my gut reaction is that you shouldn't have to disavow those links.
Hi Pete,
Thanks for your reply. Basically I downloaded our links from GWT and found a number of the domains linking to us which we would like to disavow are deindexed. Does this mean we don't need to submit these domains to be disavowed?
Hi,
why not, to get sure? I use recently detox from linkresearchtools.com
The tool suggest it, and mark deindexed backlinks as toxic.
I understand your question, because in theory deindexed links have no link juice effect, but nowadays after Penguin it seems, that they have a negative effect.
Great article precisely written.... It really helped me a lot.
Thanks for sharing !!
Sooo... has anyone seen a difference and an improved rank since using this tool? I am referring to those that got demoted from the serps because they got bad links and they received that warning in GWT?
Its been a month now since I submitted... I do see that google has cleared all the backlinks in GWT.. but I dont see any improvement in the serps so far.
We disavowed 561 domains 4 weeks ago and not improvement in traffic. Very disappointing. We sent all these link farms removal requests and multiple people said some would cooperate. This is not our experience. We did not expect to her from these illegitamet offshore site and sure enough...not one link removed and not one responce form any of the 561.
We are still hopeful that over time Google will actually use the disavow to redeem this site from penguin hell.
Still waiting but will start some additional positive link building in 4 weeks if no improvement. I was trying to not make other changes so I would know if the disavow made a difference.
I think Disavow tool gonna work for every webmaster, either they used it or drop it.I would like to try Google Disavow Tool. Whether i am getting a warning alarm or not.
Hi Dr Pete,
Great post. I have a question. One of my clients has over 100 spammy root domains with very, very bad links pointed by competition.
Links are having anchor text with keywords from casino, adult, pharmacy and other bad words. I want to use disavow tool for these links/domains. I didn't received any messages in WMT for unnatural linking and i am sure that Google discounts them in a way or other.
It is ok for me to use this tool?
Often times, those links are disregarded and are pretty obvious to Google. It's a tough call, but if your link profile is otherwise pretty clean, my gut reaction would be to disavow them. It may prevent future trouble.
The rest of links are ok, most of them are natural. Thank you for answering my question. I'll try the tool.
If i disavow all link from a domain, and after that i want to get another link from that domain, i should edit the txt file, right? But how it works? Those links will be valued the same?
i made my bad link in CSV file and upload. Is it okay? or have to txt file
They haven't really been clear on that. I assume if they accept the file, it's probably ok, but I'm not 100% sure. I hate to submit a bunch of bad file formats, just in case I really muck up a site :)
It has been months and still no link removal for one of my blog.
Hi,
SeoMoz team and comunity, is there any experience now to review with the disawow tool?
Dr. Pete
After penguin 2.0 launched my keywords suddenly goes down, but i never got any mail for unnatural links in google webmaster tool, so is it beneficial if i am going to remove some links which are not proper with use of disavow tool, my some links are redirect to other sites and also some has not found page error, so please let me can i go through use disavow tool for improving my keyword ranking position.
Thanks
Very interesting article. I am personally in the "wait and see" mood. On one side, the "disallow" tool could be useful, removing links from "bad neighborhoods" that might hurt your rankings. And yes, negative SEO does exist.
On the other hand, the tool could be also outright dangerous for unexperienced webmaster, if you start disallowing sites that actually provide your with useful links. And, as some have pointed out, could be used for negative SEO - if somebody has a few hundred sites (I do) and starts creating links on a competitor's blog to those sites, and then disallows those links on his sites, would Google then penalize the competitor? That does not sound good...
I support the statement that Jenny Stadling outlines, that it is something to be used by Google for the improvement of its own algorithms and not necessarily something to help webmasters. But like any tool, it can be used for good (defense) or bad (attack). Only time will tell whether this tool will or not improve SEO...
Nicely written article, explains the different options very clearly.
Our website is getting hit with lots of 'Ugg Boot' spam back-links at the moment. We have traced the URLs back to link farms and unmonitored blogs in their comments section - latest link being 1 week ago.
If this activity continues, then we might have to submit a number of Disavow files to Google's WMT over time. Does anyone know if Google works off the 'most recent' submission, or will Google collate them?
Thx
That's a very good information. Our website has about 300 links (with Keyword Anchor Text pointing to only one page which is not so relevant) from different pages of a blogspot blog. We don't manage that blog and the real owner doesn't respond to our emails. I just used this tool to disavow those sort of links. Our website was hit by Penguin update and we are still trying to recover from it..Waiting to see the results... but we should be extremely careful while using this tool... we have to disavow any backlink if we are 100% sure of link is a negative.
I guess since I have been hit by Penguin I am wary of trying to fit into what Google wants anymore. Most likely the disavowal tool is not intended for Webmasters' benefit but for the benefit of Google to try and have people discover link networks for them so that they can discredit those links for other websites.
When Google released Panda and Penguin, I remember people pleading and demanding a way to recover. When Bing responded by developing their own disavow feature, people became furious as to why Google was taking too long coming up with a similar disavow process. Once Google made a disavow method available, I anticipated the masses rejoicing and being pleased. Instead, people have become skeptical, thinking Google must have an ulterior motive for providing a method to possibly recover from Panda or Penguin. Is this fear of Google justifiable? Was there another type of disavow process Google should have implemented that would not have caused so much concern and commotion within the SEO community?
Hassh!!
Finally something helpful rolled out by Google for SEO's. Tired of sending reconsideration requests to Google with no positive feedback.
Thanks!!!!!
We need a new MozBar number 1 - 100 as the percent probability that a backlink from this site will hurt your link profile so we can sort them out and disavow them. A yes/no would be even better but realize it is gray ....even though I want it to be black and white. Better yet some kind of an indicator on Site Explorer.
One of my clients had traffic drop in half by Penguin and it has not recovered despite heavy on page work so we are going to disavow. Seems easy till you dig into the details and some of these site are not obviously bad links. Have to figure a way to quantify the sites and make a first round of disavows.
Ah - Something for responsible webmasters to take action. How nice of Google to give us the tools to make things right :)
Still - I can see how this could turn ugly. As in webmasters would spend all their time combating bad links(possibly from negative SEO) rather than improving the websites they are working on from the users experience. I for one know that I would way rather be "link disavowing" than producing authoritative and resourceful content....
What about calling it the "link refusal" tool so we do not sound like webmasters trying to be lawyers haha?
You've left out 6) If you hired an SEO who promised white hat but then delivered Black hat.
Google also only show snapshot data - which means the bad/paid for/spammy links may not be revealed.
What is interesting - and contradicts the part above about low quality links (although I agree with the author) - the new Google Webmaster Guidelines are much stricter about links than before. This "technically" rules out low quality directory sites, even sig links could be under threat.
A basic interpretation: Any link, other than for the express purpose of linking to a page, could be considered a link scheme. Any thoughts?
More specifically it states:
(link schemes)
Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that violate our guidelines:
most people sleep at night. you can buy cheap blankets at shops. a blanket keeps you warm at night. you can also buy a wholesale heater. It produces more warmth and you can just turn it off in summer when you are going on france vacation.
Visitors to this page: 1,472
car insurance
Thanks, that’s great info!
- Paul
paul’s pizza san diego pizza best pizza san diego
A very nice tool presented by Google, now i can Disavow all of low quality links.
Thanks to Google for launching this but I am bit confused about Bing, why they launched that. Bing Webmasters never sends Link warnings...
But for Google SEO its a great help. now one can get rid off those directories link who ask for money to remove links.
Now I can easily Disavow links from penalized sites and improve my website rankings...
I think Google will definitely use this tool to compile list of top 10/100/ 1000 domains which feature across multiple disavow requests. The next job would be to do a manual review of these 10/100/ 1000 domains.
Remember how Google deprecated search results for websites which had maximum DMCA complaints against them ? This is just another way to gather spam intelligence.
Does that mean I will not use it? Nah. But I will use it cautiously ;)
I have used the tool on two different sites that I received a manual link penalty on and this was not the manual link penalty message that was sent out by accident but a real manual link penalty I received awhile back now. After using the tool I put in a reconsideration request and explained how I had tried to ask for removal of the links to the webmasters and even paid them money to remove the links. I went on to explain that the links that were left I could not get removed and so I used the disavow tool for the rest.
Dr. Pete,
Excellent write up as usual. I guess the rap album I listened to in high school is true you "better check yourself before you wreck yourself" because bad links to your site are bad for your health.
I particularly like are you stressed that Google is always watching you when you're using a tool like Google Webmaster tools that are watching much closer and you are essentially telling them by deleting any link I did something wrong I know I did this because I'm removing the link to my crime. I will keep my terrible pun jokes myself very important though that you brought that up you are essentially confessing by removing and like the legal system they most likely will go softer on new if you admit what you've done however if you never say a word and don't get caught they won't do a thing to you.Sticky situation for many I imagine the great tool for some a terrible one for others. by way great gamble by Rand asking for the attack shows no risk no reward.
All the best my friend,
Thomas Von Zickell
Agreed with seo takeaways.What I feel is this tool will trap those site owners who are running multiple sites because of disavowing few links they will further fall into this trap by exposing their entire website network and spammy link strategy(which luckily remained safe from the algo)to Google.Lets suppose you are a blog comment spammer and you run 10 sites , out of 10 sites 2-3 sites got hit and you start disavowing you links of those 2-3 sites and here you go..Google will catch your whole network ;)
I have a question I'm hoping to get some advice from the community. My site was hit by penguin 1.0 - 80% drop in organic traffic from G on 24.4. I've since 404ed the pages I had spam... err.. SEOed. Just doing that cut 75% of my links in G webmaster tools. But no recovery during any penguin refreshes.
I'm going through my remaining links now. And 85% of them are from scraped sites. Back in 2006 and 07 I did some ezinearticles and yahoo answers submissions, back in the day when it was white hat way (or so I at least thought). During all these past years thousands and thousands of sites have scraped EZA and YA and that has created >1000 links to my site.
I don't see any harm in disawowing these links. Or what do you think?
I don't think any of us can responsibly give you that kind of advice from just a few numbers, but my first reaction is that you've been down 80% for 6 months. The risk of trying something is probably far less the risk of losing another 6 months worth of business.
Honestly, you're describing a situation where it's entirely possible that the damage is too deep and it may be faster and cleaner to start refresh. Obviously, though, that's a huge decision, and one that takes a lot more information.
Thanks. That's what I'm thinking also. It's quite funny that I only submitted about 10 articles to EZA and answered maybe 50 questions in Yahoo Answers 5-6 years ago, and from those seeds I now have over 1000 really spammy links back to my site.
Generally speaking Google shouldn't pay much attention to duplicate content and links from there, especially if the same article is on 300+ websites. What's your gut feeling about this?
I actually started building a new site already 5 months ago. Something I felt I should have done already 2 years ago, but penguin gave me a good kick in the pants to get it done. I'm just thinking if I can salvage something from the older site.
I've seen a lot of comments along the lines of "Why doesn't Google just devalue bad links" and, in most cases, that's exactly what they do. They just discount those links. The problem is that even discounted links, in enough quantity, can benefit someone, so they occasionally have to take harsher measures (at least, I think that's how they see it). So, it's a question of whether these links are just low value (and being discounted/ignored) or causing harm, and that's a tough thing to measure. A lot of it comes down to your overall link profile. A thousand duplicate, spammy backlinks on a strong site with solid authority would probably mean nothing. If you've got 3000 back-links, 1000 are these dupes, and you've got 2-3 other large-scale link profile issues in play, then that's a different story.
Here's the short version. If you carve out all the bad stuff, how much will be left? If you're going to be left with 10% of your link profile, all the carving may not be worth it (and might not even work). At that point, starting fresh is a viable option.
OK, thanks for your help!
Thank for the enligthening article on how to use the Google disavow tool.
How will this all impact us? I feel that "G" is taking us all down as much as they can with all the new updates etc concerning SEO on our sites. They are Poaching us for new ideas all the time.
It seems like a great tool, but will Google really disavow all of the links we send, or is it just a consideration request in which Google will end up picking and choosing what to remove? I guess we need more time to see if it really works.
That was indeed a great post. Thanks Dr.Pete.
As soon as I read bout this tool, I was going to try it out to remove any unnatural links from my site. As Dr.Pete said, This tool certainly needs to be handled with caution.
Thanks Dr Pete,
Does sound like a last resort.
Hello Dr.Pete,
Waiting for Seomoz post on Google disavow tool after its announcement at pubcon by Mattcutts, And here it comes, this post has served all news and its use I'm looking for. But i would like to ask one question our company Gowebbaby was hit by penguin and lost its ranking. Now when i digg into our inbound links section at GWT there are huge numbers of inbound links, but i find 2-3 spammy links which are from XXX websites. Is there any tool to find backlinks from this type of websites or i have to go through complete list one by one.
Really it's amazing tool detail you have posted here. We were unaware of this links but after reading your entire article we have understand that what is the Disavow-tool.
Thanks Pete
Thanks for forewarning us Dr. Pete. I think right now Google's using this to collect data and not directly to discount reported sites. In other words, Google's asking for our assistance in tracking down possibly spammy, illegitimate sites. The decision could be a manual process on their end.
Let's just hope some people won't be shooting their own feet.
This is surely a *use with caution tool* ... Google itself has spared no efforts in highlighting it. For now, I think any site that has not been touched by the Penguin should try and keep away from the urge of using this tool in the anticipation of gaining ranking / traffic soon.
Moreover, recognizing the "correct" bad links that are affecting any site require careful investigation and evaluation before even considering going after them with a saw in hand (the disavow tool.)
One of the best word of caution for site owners reading this blog to decide their course of action is:
"Many posts have been written on how to dig into Google Webmaster Tools links, Open Site Explorer, Majestic, etc., and those techniques are incredibly useful, but please be very, very careful. You don’t just want to assign a number to your links based on Toolbar PageRank or Domain Authority and start disavowing everything under some arbitrary limit."
I too seem to agree with most of the comments till now which specify to adopt a wait and watch attitude towards this tool.
quick n extensive details...thnx for the elaboration
nice post Peter. I would just reiterate what Matt said, disavow tool is a strong suggestion and not a directive. Which means Google can choose not to disavow certain links. So first priority should always be to get the links manually removed. I fear that many webmasters/marketers would use this tool to disavow certain links even when they are currently not penalized. And this is what Google wants. They want to identify spam which their various algorithms have not caught so far. So unpealized sites submitting links for disavowal could literary shoot themselves in the foot by telling Google that majority of there links are spam and incur future penalties. So one should use this tool with extreme caution.
Very Right Himanshu.... Sorry I am not taking your moz name "SEOTakeaways" you are just given great thought about Google disavow. its great tool for webmasters to get their rankings or ask to Google about unnatural links but at end of the day this tool Google has developed for their use only. with the help of this tools Matt Cutts get more unnatural links data which are missing from their data base and in next penguin updates they will use same data base for filtering the "Search Results"... let see what will happen :)
This was a great post. When I first heard about this tool yesterday my first inclination was to run out and disavow the few bad links we have, even though we've not been penalized. I think I'm going to reconsider that.
And although not related to the topic of the post, my favorite part was your advice to use the Facebook penguin emoticon with reckless abandon!
Dr. Pete Incredible Evaluation of Google Disavow Tool, but I want say that its really crucial to see the statement of Matt as he stated that Disavow Tool is only for those who really hit with penguin, so be careful who want to use Google Disavow Tool in order to remove bad links.
Apart from this, I want to tell you that ultimately use of this Google Disavow Tool that we gone serve bad links websites to Google where exactly spam executing.
Thanks for the post Dr. Pete from your end one more time.
Great article on the Disavow tool. It's by far the best one I have read so far. I do have two thoughts on this.
1) How can the Disavow Tool be abused? I hear this everywhere but I am trying to think of how that could happen. It's not like you can use it to do "negative SEO" on another site. By using it against Google's guidelines you are only hurting yourself. That's not "abusing", that called "stupidity". There is no way you can "cheat the system" with this tool as far as I can see.
2) This tool could/should replace reconsideration request. Think about it, what better way to prove that you regret having certain links than by basically slapping a "nofollow" on them? With the current system. One could drop $10k on paid links, and then "claim" they could only get 60% of them removed. They still have 40% of those dofollow links on the web! With this new system, there is no better way to measure the sorrow than to have them put that disavow stamp on all those links they just dropped $10k on.
Thoughts?
I think there are two arguments regarding (1). The first is direct abuse. You could build a bunch of bad links, get a short-term boost, and then, right as (or before) a penalty was imminent, disavow them. Companies have actually done something similar in the past - built low-quality links, got a 2-3 month boost, and then cut them. It's very hard to do well, though, and it can definitely backfire.
The other argument is more abuse by Google, not webmasters. Some are worried that Google will take all of this information, in aggregate, and use it to see which sites (especially directories and link farms) need to be penalized. I don't think that their end-game, but it's entirely likely they'll use this data down the road somehow. So, people are suggesting that you could disavow links from your competitors and that, if nothing people did it, the competitors would get into trouble. I imagine Google's going to take a hard look at the data before they do something like that. I also suspect you'd have to build those links - you can't just disavow sites you don't actually have links from (that's ridiculously easy for Google to check).
Is there a possibility to undo a disavow? I'm afraid of removing valid links, so an undo function would be nice.
Google has said that you can resubmit the list and remove links from it, but that the process of disavowing and "re-avowing" can each take weeks, so it's not ideal. At this point, we have all of zero case studies.
I guess it works much like a sitemap.xml. You just download your list, remove or add links and re-upload the text file. Seems easy enough. But as you say, more case studies are needed.
Hi Dr. Pete, I predicted the post. Everybody was needed a detail about Google disavow, how to implement it. It is going to be a great help for websites hit by Penguin Update. Thanks to Google and you for elaborately describing it. But I can't understand why Google introduce such toll! Because Google has clear guidelines for Link Building and who don't follow is liable to penalize. No wonder. This tool will encourage seo's to build links without thinking much. If in later times, it is found bad as link, DISAVOW will be the remedy.
I think this is a real game changer in the world of negative SEO - darker and more dangerous. Essentially, if any business's webmaster tools account was hacked, then a malicious person would be able to disavow entire link profiles. The bar, however, has been raised. It would require obtaining a password maliciously, whereas previous negative SEO tactics have been carried out fairly anonymously.
Even though, as Dr. Pete has mentioned, Google does have a re-submission process for links which were accidentally disavowed, it could still take weeks for search traffic to return to normal, costing thousands in lost revenue.
Really great article! Thanks!
One of my sites started to get backlinks every 2-3 days from porn and swinger sites domains like "bytechase.cx" and "metadns.cx" and many others .info domains very similar, including different subdomains from them. This happened just 1 month before the first Penguin update. Of course, the site got tanked. I'm not 100% sure if these links were the cause, but they haven't stopped and the site haven't recovered yet. I hope the disavow tool helps in some way.
In case of somebody knows, my question now is:
For example, I have inbound links from this 4 different subdomains:
gainesvillegold.metadns.cx
nostrings.hamptongold.metadns.cx
nostrings.elizabethdiscreet.metadns.cx
lovers.thorntongold.metadns.cx
Should it be enough to use:
domain:metadns.cx
and it automatically is going to disavow any sub-domain behind or would you recommend me to put all of them in the disavow.txt file? like this:
domain:gainesvillegold.metadns.cx
domain:nostrings.hamptongold.metadns.cx
domain:nostrings.elizabethdiscreet.metadns.cx
domain:lovers.thorntongold.metadns.cx
Thanks for any advice :-J
My understanding is that you can block the root domain that way, yes, but Google seemed to qualify that sub-domains were at their discretion. Unfortunately, we don't have much data yet. If you know that every link from the domain is bad, then I'd use the "domain:example.com" format.
Very cool tool but a little bit late announced compare to Bing, but finally we got it. Now it really very helpful to remove those directories or unnatural links who were showing a huge back link pointing to a single URL.
Awesome to have this, but I think some kind of feedback mechanism would make the tool more useful, otherwise you're most likely unaware of how effective the exercise was - such as Dave Naylor's team experienced.
First off, thanks for the quick post!
I was waiting for this tool for quite a while now. I always hated that I had little control over my backlinks. But I guess with all the anti-spam algorithm changes, a tool like this is inevitable.
The next step is of course to see this tool applied for some websites and see if it works in practice or that there are some hidden pitfalls.
So, google really admit that there's negative SEO happening, huh?
Bing's disavow tool is so much better and easier to use.
Those staff at Google must be on a combination of prescription and recreational drugs.
They really do need to bring in drug testing for ALL Google staff 3 times a day.
They're so confused and delusional.
Hey Dr. Pete, great article and sound advice. I think we can all look forward to numerous posts and stories about this tool and its results in the future. Your best advice is to, "Take a Deep Breath." Thanks!
Also, the image you chose to run with makes me feel better about a domain I purchased earlier this year: inboundlynx.com lol.
LOL. Ah, domain purchases - the drug of choice of the marketer :)
So true :)
Excellent article!
I think Google is definitely going to use the data to ban sites that are creating a lot of questionable links. This tool will make Google's work a lot easier. Its allowing website owners to point out all the bad links, which Google can then flag. Google has always had one goal, collect as much data as possible.
I just hope people don't go over board and above the tool!
Thanks for the great article Dr. Pete! I had read enough already to know how the tool works, so it was great to see your article go much more in depth about who should use this tool. The potential for this tool to be used improperly can't be overstated, so I appreciated the emphasis on caution. I'm excited to see how webmasters will finally be able to deal with problem links that wont go away, but at the same time it becomes possible to accidentally be using a sledghammer when you thought you were using a scalpel.
Last time i submit a website for reconsideration that website got hit harder and the damage was worst. Why i should trust Google with this again and how do I know that is not another way to trigger their attention and got hit again?
Great job Peter!! I saw this tool a few days ago on the Google Blog and really haven't had a chance to play with it yet. I can see people abusing the tool but building spammy links for a quick boost and disavowing them when penalties are dished out.
Hi Pete,
well, one of our sites is affected by the penguin updates. I've uploaded 300 domains (I've no time to specify every link, i take the whole domain). Hopefully our site will be back in some weeks. In our case, it can't go worse...
I fear Google isn't displaying all links in the webmastertools, especially they maybe not listing the toxic ones?!
Well, I hope the best.
Best wishes,
Georg.
GREAT post, thanks.
Thank you for sharing this article with us.Iam very pleased to know about this new tool.Its quite good.By reading your article i think that this tool will be helpful to all SEO's.Thanks for introducing it.
Well, another typically solid entry from Dr. Pete that makes me feel bad about my piece on the disavow tool. Great piece, balanced and ultimately readable which makes all the difference when we are soaking up this information daily.
Ultimately, this is a useful tool but only for the right folks and if someone has already jumped through all the hoops to manually remove links and can't make any progress then this at least provides folks with a way to undo the problems.
This is important as people are still learning and lots of smaller businesses have been hurt badly by these penalties. Not to say I agree with the dodgy techniques that were used in their name as I don't and for every site that lost ranking there was another trying to do things the right way and getting nowhere but now folks have been punished, they at least deserve a chance at getting back to square 1.
I for one will not be touching this until there are some studies and further insights into it's use but certainly, it provides a balance to the aggressive penalties and I suspect, allows for further (needed) aggression on the penalties to clear up the still rampant link spam in most niches.
Great post. :) My thoughts are here for anyone interested:
https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/dissavow-links/
This tool really help the webmasters to build their websites with healthy backlinks.
i think the disavow tool proves that negative SEO exists and is a serious issue.
How does it prove that? It proves that it's possible, which everyone already knew, but it doesn't prove that it's actually happened.
There is a great tool from Christoph @cemper called Link Detox. You might have heard about his Link Research Tools and this is one of them.
The tool will check your backlink portfolio and you can download a list with all bad backlinks in the right format for the Disavow Tool. But be sure to check them again with your brain! ;-)
https://www.linkresearchtools.com/news/google-disavow-links/
I came across this tool today and was going to check it out (though, have to get on a PC to use it). Just curious about the folks who have thumbs downed this comment. Is it too simple of a tool? Should be doing more manual work than relying on a software like this when considering the permanency of disavowing?