Removing bad/poor quality links from the site
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Sometime back my site was penalized due to unnatural artificial and deceptive links. Then we got removed the penalty by uploading file in Disavow Tool. Bad links are decreasing gradually now . What i am concerned to ask is that:
1: For how long i should wait till Google removes all the requested bad links
2:Second, i believe there are still many bad links that I dont want to keep. How to remove them now onward? Should we send Google a reconsideration request for removing the remaining bad links (site has been recovered already and no more under penalty banner)
Tanveer
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Hi Chris you really brought some extra information, thanks for that going the extra mile.
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Hi William and LJ Digital thanks for clarifying!
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Just from my own experience having also been through an "algorithmic" Google penalty, it took 6-8 months after uploading a disavow file to see any recovery. But good news is it does work. I agree with the responses from William and LJD but wanted to mention Google does not remove the links you disavow. That will have to be done by submitting requests to the website webmasters. Actually Google wants you to do this first before disavow, but it doesn't seem to hurt not to or do them at the same time.
I used RMOOV as a tool to do this. Great tool and very helpful folks who will talk to you on the phone! Although disavow may get you there with Google, I think it is worth the effort to remove as many bad links as possible since it just looks bad and other search engines will not know about the Google disavow. It is a lengthy process but tools like RMOOV and Detox can help.
So no reconsideration request is required unless you have a manual action. Going forward I keep looking at my link profile using OSE, GWT and Majestic and when I see something I don't like, I update the disavow file. Important to "append" that file so as to keep all the original links and just add on the new ones.
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The amount of time can and will vary from site-to-site. Using Google's disavow tool will have an effect on the links being removed over a short, staggered period of time (they may then be recrawled by Google's spiders) but the amount of time taken for the effect of the removal of these links to have an impact on your site can take a different amount of time from site to site. Usually, things will start to pick up slightly after a few weeks but it may take a few months to see the results completely kick in.
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I'm sure that despite having your penalty removed, removing extra low quality links will have a positive impact on your site in the future. This may not be anything noticeable immediately, but it will certainly do no harm to remove or disavow extra low quality links.
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The amount of time you need to wait varies widely depending on a lot of things. Google's John Muller said in a recent hangout that the disavowed links aren't all removed from the site at once. It's staggered based on when the links are recrawled and reindexed by the bots. This means you may not see a big jump after a few weeks or months, but instead gradually see improvement over time. Here is the hangout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxqkqGyCaI4
As to the new bad links you've found, you can continue to update your disavow file with new bad links you find, there's no need to constantly submit reconsideration requests.
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