Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track your brand’s footprint in AI search
      Moz Pro

      Track your brand’s footprint in AI search

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Get found
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. If I get spammy backlinks removed is it still necessary to disavow?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    If I get spammy backlinks removed is it still necessary to disavow?

    Technical SEO
    5
    6
    1488
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Colemckeon
      Colemckeon Subscriber last edited by

      Now there is some conflicting beliefs here and I want to know what you think.

      If I got a high spam website to remove my backlink, is a disavow through search console still necessary ?

      Keep in mind if it helps even in the slightest to improve rankings im for it!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • evolvingSEO
        evolvingSEO @Colemckeon last edited by

        You generally don't need to take any action on these types of links (you don't need to remove or disavow). Google can see they are just scraped duplicates or a real article and ignore them.

        But let's say they were harmful bad links (maybe paid links or irrelevant placed sneakily by you - ie: a link to iphones from a page about dogs), then when you remove links it's always a good stop-gap to also disavow. Because Google might not immediately crawl the URLs with bad links right away, but the disavow they will in theory pick up on more quickly.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • invechseo
          invechseo last edited by

          all spam links must be disvow specially the root domain of the spam link.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Colemckeon
            Colemckeon Subscriber last edited by

            The situation is this. I was featured on a high quality website. Immediately 8 other high quality sites copied the exact article which linked to me.. Now I have these backlinks

            evolvingSEO 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Rajesh.Prajapati
              Rajesh.Prajapati last edited by

              If that links have spam score above 70, then you don't need to disavow. Google is already considered as spam.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • jasongmcmahon
                jasongmcmahon last edited by

                Hello,

                Disavow is no longer necessary - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-disavow-tool/289871/

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • Serenawong

                  How do I get coupon information like retailmenot has on the SERPs?

                  Hello can anyone tell me how I can implement the same tactic that RetailMeNot is using to populate coupon information in the search results? They have below there meta description 4 fields labeled:Coupon Codes‎: ‎38, Free Shipping Deals‎: ‎6, Best Discount‎: ‎20% off, & Total Offers‎: ‎49  Is there some schema markup here? Or is this only allowed for RMN I have not seen it elsewhere but want my website coupons page to compete with them in the SERPs. Appreciate your help! dQNkHrb

                  Technical SEO | | Serenawong
                  1
                • vikasnwu

                  Using 410 To Remove URLs Starting With Same Word

                  We had a spam injection a few months ago.  We successfully cleaned up the site and resubmitted to google.  I recently received a notification showing a spike in 404 errors. All of the URLS have a common word at the beginning injected via the spam: sitename.com/mono
                  sitename.com/mono.php?buy-good-essays
                  sitename.com/mono.php?professional-paper-writer There's about 100 total URLS with the same syntax with the word "mono" in them.  Based on my research, it seems that it would be best to serve a 410.  I wanted to know what the line of HTACCESS code would be to do that in bulk for any URL that has the word "mono" after the sitename.com/

                  Technical SEO | | vikasnwu
                  0
                • 21centuryweb

                  Why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster

                  Hi, I would like to ask why our website images not indexing in Google. I have shared the following screenshot of the search console.  https://www.screencast.com/t/yKoCBT6Q8Upw Last week (Friday 14 Sept 2018) it was showing 23.5K out 31K were submitted and indexed by Google. But now, it is showing only 1K 😞 Can you please let me know why might this happen, why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster.

                  Technical SEO | | 21centuryweb
                  0
                • zasite

                  Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google?

                  Hi, we re-branded and launched a new website in February 2016. In June we saw a steep drop in the number of URLs indexed, and there have continued to be smaller dips since. We started an account with Moz and found several thousand high priority crawl errors for duplicate pages and have since fixed those with canonical tags. However, we are still seeing the number of URLs indexed drop. Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google? I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this. A good portion of our URLs have canonical tags because they are just events with different dates, but otherwise the content of the page is the same.

                  Technical SEO | | zasite
                  0
                • QuantumWeb62

                  Removing site subdomains from Google search

                  Hi everyone, I hope you are having a good week? My website has several subdomains that I had shut down some time back and pages on these subdomains are still appearing in the Google search result pages. I want all the URLs from these subdomains to stop appearing in the Google search result pages and I was hoping to see if anyone can help me with this. The subdomains are no longer under my control as I don't have web hosting for these sites (so these subdomain sites just show a default hosting server page). Because of this, I cannot verify these in search console and submit a url/site removal request to Google. In total, there are about 70 pages from these subdomains showing up in Google at the moment and I'm concerned in case these pages have any negative impacts on my SEO. Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

                  Technical SEO | | QuantumWeb62
                  0
                • ulefos

                  Remove html file extension and 301 redirects

                  Hi Recently I ask for some work done on my website from a company,  but I am not sure what they've done is right.
                  What I wanted was html file extensions to be removed like
                  /ash-logs.html to /ash-logs
                  also the index.html to www.timports.co.uk
                  I have done a crawl diagnostics and have duplicate page content and 32 page title duplicates. This is so doing my head in please help This is what is in the .htaccess file <ifmodule pagespeed_module="">ModPagespeed on
                  ModPagespeedEnableFilters extend_cache,combine_css, collapse_whitespace,move_css_to_head, remove_comments</ifmodule> <ifmodule mod_headers.c="">Header set Connection keep-alive</ifmodule> <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews</ifmodule> DirectoryIndex index.html RewriteEngine On 
                   # Rewrite valid requests on .html files  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.html?rw=1 [L,QSA] 
                   # Return 404 on direct requests against .html files RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .html$  
                  RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !rw=1 [NC]
                   RewriteRule ^ - [R=404] AddCharset UTF-8 .html # <filesmatch “.(js|css|html|htm|php|xml|swf|flv|ashx)$”="">#SetOutputFilter DEFLATE #</filesmatch> <ifmodule mod_expires.c="">ExpiresActive On
                  ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType application/javascript "access 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 years"</ifmodule> <files 403.shtml="">order allow,deny allow from all</files> redirect 301 /PRODUCTS http://www.timports.co.uk/kiln-dried-logs
                  redirect 301 /kindling_firewood.html http://www.timports.co.uk/kindling-firewood.html
                  redirect 301 /about_us.html http://www.timports.co.uk/about-us.html
                  redirect 301 /log_delivery.html http://www.timports.co.uk/log-delivery.html redirect 301 /oak_boards_delivery.html http://www.timports.co.uk/oak-boards-delivery.html
                  redirect 301 /un_edged_oak_boards.html http://www.timports.co.uk/un-edged-oak-boards.html
                  redirect 301 /wholesale_logs.html http://www.timports.co.uk/wholesale-logs.html redirect 301 /privacy_policy.html http://www.timports.co.uk/privacy-policy.html redirect 301 /payment_failed.html http://www.timports.co.uk/payment-failed.html redirect 301 /payment_info.html http://www.timports.co.uk/payment-info.html

                  Technical SEO | | ulefos
                  1
                • ozererim

                  How do I get out of google bomb?

                  Hi all, I have a website named bijouxroom.com; and I was in the 7th page for the search term takı in google; and 2nd page for online takı. Now, I see that in one day my results seem to be on the 13th and 10th page in google respectively. I made too much anchor text for takı and online takı. What shall I do to gain my positions back? Thanks in advance. Regards,

                  Technical SEO | | ozererim
                  0
                • Function5

                  Why are apostrophes and other characters still showing as code in my titles?

                  Hi, I have a WordPress-based site and overall everything is working well. However, I can't seem to figure out how to get apostrophes and other characters to display normally. Now, the problem isn't that they are displaying as code to normal visitors or up in the title bar, they are displaying as code to Google's bots as well as to SEOMOZ. Example: Normal visitor sees: About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts Google and SEOMOZ see: About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts I've played around with different ways of typing the title (not using character codes vs. using character codes) and nothing seems to work. Any help or explanation would be appreciated.

                  Technical SEO | | Function5
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2026 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.