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Should i disavow yellowpages.com. Webmater tools shows 656 links coming from it.
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We do not have any manual penalty warnings but I am still concerned that Google will see this as unnatural and be penalizing us to a lesser degree.
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My client had 17,500 links pointing to his site from Yellowpages.com and it caused a algorithm penalty to there local search results. Here is a sample of the links. Now notice that each link contains a different city. My client city is Tacoma WA. We are positive this destroyed there NAP because they went from first place in the Google 3 Pac to not being the Google 3 pack at all, but for the same keyword they are number 3 in organics. When you go to Bing they still maintain there local search rankings.
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Apparently Google admitted that the Yellow Pages link was given as an example link in error:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-natural-link-mistake-17326.html
Still, it's probably true that if you managed to get a keyword anchored link into Yellow pages, and it was a followed link it could be considered unnatural.
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The disavow tool is meant to be used to ask Google not to count links that you made with the sole intention of manipulating Google's search results. A Yellow page link is almost always a nofollowed link, and as such does not need to be disavowed. But, even if it was a followed link, it would still be a good link.
Don't worry about the fact that there are a large number of links. The way that Webmaster Tools presents these links makes them look bad, but in reality, Google knows that this is just one site linking to you and not hundreds of individual links.
I've seen a lot of webmasters do damage to their site by disavowing too many good citations. Be careful!
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You will have to keep an eye on it. The more searches are done on the YP sites, the more these links build and over time they do work against you. I agree with everyone else that they shouldn't but the reality is, we've seen them in penalty notices. Google thinks 4000 links coming from yp.com.au, yp.net.au, yellowpages.com.au and yellowpages.net.au are spammy, nofollow or not.
Jason Mun had the same issue: http://jasonmun.com/links-yellowpages-unnatural-according-google/
It's interesting to note that he's also referring to the AU version of Yellow Pages even though we've seen it with the .coms as well.
Anyhoo - I would leave it for now. Just keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't become a bigger problem.
Edit to add: it does depend on your ad itself - don't use any links within the page. And be careful with how many you let this build to.
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Even the volume is not abnormal - suppose you have a Italian restaurant & take-away in Manhattan, then you would probably appear on pages on restaurants, italian restaurants, mediterranean restaurants, catering, take-aways in Manhatten, New York,... - all these lists are indexed in Google and all these pages would have links to your site. Depending on your business & region - you could appear in an awful lot of combinations of (sub)categories & geographic locations.
rgds,
Dirk
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Hi Francisco
I agree with Dirk here - this isn't an unnatural link, but I would check and make sure that you are appearing in relevant and proper categories, as well as service areas.
If you find you are appearing in irrelevant categories or locations, I would contact them to make sure you can fix this, if anything from a user experience standpoint.
Hope this helps!
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Normally i wouldn't be concerned but the shear volume of links is what makes it appear odd.
Thanks for your thoughts.
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Normally the links from yellowpages are of type "nofollow" so they do not need to be disavowed.
Apart from this fact, given the fact that most businesses are listed in the yellow pages, these links don't seem to be very unnatural to me.
rgds,
Dirk
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