Disavow 60% of the external links?
-
Hi guys,
We just discovered that our website got a 16% Spam Score based on MOZ reports, while less than 1 year ago we had a good 1% if I'm not mistaken. Therefore we ran an audit of the external links to our website and discovered that about 60% of them are irrelevant such as:
- referral page not available anymore (or not found, or domain not accessible)
- irrelevant web directories for our business
Impossible to contact the owner of these pages or remove the links towards our website.
Is the Disavow tool an acceptable option in this case? Could this lower our Spam Score and make a better impression in "Google's eyes"? 60% seems quite a lot of backlinks, but they are also not relevant, and we want to focus on creating better quality referrals in the next months.I would really appreciate an opinion on this, and how would you proceed in this case.
-
Don't disavow any links before talking to an seo consultant about whether the links should be disavowed or not
Many businesses have tried to disavow links themselves, and sometimesthe links might not have needed disavowing. So do contact an expert seo consultant or an SEO Agency first for advice before you disavow any links.
-
Hi A
Well done, you are 100% on the right track. Go get em.
Regards
-
Thank you very much for all your insights! I'll look into each of them and it's good to know there's no need to disavow most of the referral links. The website is doing pretty well actually (ranking keeps improving in the last months), so I guess the next step would be to focus on building better quality links. Thanks again for all your opinions!
-
Check this post out. In reference to a similar question.
Basically the TLDR is that unless it looks like blatant PBN/SPAM/Manipulation google doesn't seem to concerned. I have plenty of backlink that are 75% spam score and higher. Obviously I don't recommend looking for links that are super high spam score but I would put your effort into link acquisition as opposed to link cleanup.
-
Hi there!
Thanks so much for the question! I do want to make sure to point out that Spam Score is not dependent on your backlinks. Spam Score is the percentage of sites with similar characteristics to yours which have been banned or penalized by Google. We calculate this based on 27 common factors we identified.
Disavowing links isn't the best way to improve your Spam Score in Link Explorer. If you're looking to improve that score, I would recommend understanding the 27 factors that make up this score and working on improving those: https://moz.com/help/link-explorer/link-building/spam-score
In addition, disavowing links will not remove the links from you backlink profile in Moz. Since disavowing a link doesn't take it away, it would still appear in our link index.
We also have a great blog post which may help: https://moz.com/blog/do-we-still-need-to-disavow-penguin
I hope all this info helps! If you have further questions or if you need anything else, please feel free to reach out to help@moz.com
-
Hi
Disavow should be a last resort.
The Spam score is a guide ONLY. It is a wake-up call to investigate. As you have done examine each link where possible individually. It appears no action is required based on your findings.
That said the first queries are - is your site ranking well? have there been any large dips or a noticeable decline? Can you clarify?
I add if so then need to undertake a full technical audit, so not a disavow yet..
Regards
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How is Moz DA affected by spam links? Disavow file?
So it does not appear that moz let's you upload your disavow file. So when moz calculates your DA how do spammy links factor in? After digging through our GA it appears our site was hit with the 2016 penguin update and never recovered. Our weekly visitors were 2k, then dropped to 500 and have stayed close to that level for a while. We've used the disavow tool, without success over the past 3 years. During that time we have done link out reach and built around 10 legit good quality DA links since. But we have not recovered. At this point i'm thinking I should just remove the disavow file. Moz says our spam score for our domain is 5%.
Link Explorer | | jessicapremier0 -
Moz's new Link Explorer, including our revamped index and DA/PA scores is now open to everyone!
Hey Moz Community, Link Explorer is now open to the public! Everyone can access it via a subscription or a free Moz ‘Community’ account. As you may know by now, the brand-new Link Explorer tool is primed to replace Open Site Explorer as Moz’s link building and analysis tool. The Link Explorer project is the result of an incredible amount of perseverance and hard work by the team, and we’re proud to be able to finally share it with you — we know it’s going to revolutionize how you approach link building and make your job easier. You can read more about the tool here in Sarah Bird’s announcement post. Because Link Explorer improves on almost every aspect of Open Site Explorer, the metrics have improved, too. That means you’re likely going to see some Domain Authority and Page Authority discrepancies between OSE’s index and Link Explorer’s index. We definitely suggest you use the new DA/PA from Link Explorer, as they’re more accurate and refresh daily rather than monthly, as was the case with OSE’s index. However, we also realize that many of you use these metrics to report to your clients and colleagues, and a sudden change or fluctuation could potentially make your job harder. Which DA is the real DA? The new DA is based on a much larger index that has many improvements, several of which are designed to make the index more like Google’s than ever before. You should consider moving towards the new DA (and the old DA won’t be updated after April 26th 2018, so the sooner the better). While there will be fluctuations as we improve the model and add features to the index, we expect it to remain largely stable and to be a far more accurate picture of a site’s authority according to how it’s seen by Google. Why is Link Explorer’s DA/PA considered better than OSE’s, and which should I trust? The larger link index with improved crawl selection allows us to produce a stronger model that includes a much larger proportion of the web. That being said, DA and PA should always be considered in the context of your competitors. A drop in PA or DA relative to the old OSE is of little concern if your competitors saw similar movement. Is Domain Authority/Page Authority an absolute score or a relative one? Both DA and PA are relative to the Internet as a whole. If Facebook acquired a billion new links, everyone’s PA and DA would drop relative to Facebook. Because of this, it’s always best to look at PA and DA in comparison to your competitors. What does a drop/raise in DA mean in Link Explorer vs OSE? How can I explain this to my clients when I’m reporting it? DA and PA should always be considered in the context of your competitors. A drop or raise in PA or DA relative to the old OSE is of little concern if your competitors saw similar movement. Reporting that your site has moved from a DA of 45 to a DA of 42 doesn’t tell the whole story, but reporting that your site has a DA of 42 while your main competitor moved from a 43 to a 37 shows that, relative to the sites you’re competing against in the SERPs, your site has significantly more authority and ranking power. What’s happening to MozTrust and MozRank and why, and what should I replace those with? The improvements to our DA/PA and Spam Score metrics now now account for more important nuances in helping you determine one site’s ability to rank higher than another. Because they no longer correlate with Google’s ranking model as well as they used to, MozRank and MozTrust are being deprecated for better metrics. Users should rely on Page Authority, Domain Authority, and Spam Score to determine the importance and quality of pages, domains, and links. I have historical data I use to help my clients benchmark their progress. What do I do now that DA is calculated differently? You should annotate any KPI changes referencing the change in DA and PA. However, most importantly, you should compare those changes to your competitors, as this will best show how strong your site’s authority is relative to the sites you’re competing against in the SERPs. We take updating our metrics very seriously, and our last major update to the model was 7 years ago. Users of Domain Authority and Page Authority can expect us to continue to produce steady, reliable metrics for the long haul, and only make changes to these metrics when we believe the benefits dramatically outweigh the stability of the metric. Do you have any questions about the new metrics? Anticipating a tough time reporting changes to clients or bosses? Metrics, features or functionality missing that you would want to see? Let us know in the thread, and we’ll work to find a good answer for you. Hope you enjoy the new Link Explorer product and the amazing new link index powering it. We are very excited to provide this valuable data to our community and customers.
Link Explorer | | IanWatson9 -
The New Link Explorer (which will replace Open Site Explorer) is Now in Beta
Howdy Moz friends, Today, the Moz team is making a new tool -- Link Explorer -- available in private beta for Moz Pro subscribers (including those taking a free trial). The tool is still a little ways out from public launch, but we wanted to get your feedback to help make it the best product it can be. What's Link Explorer? In essence, it's a replacement for Open Site Explorer (Moz's tool for link discovery, competitive analysis, and link building) that addresses many of its most pernicious challenges, such as: Daily updates - no longer will you need to wait a month or two to see a new DA score or the links you built last week. Link Explorer updates every 24 hours with all the new links we've discovered that day, and gives a new DA score each night. A MUCH bigger index - OSE has always been known for having quality links, but quantity has been an issue. No longer. The new tool's link index is more than 20 times larger than Open Site Explorer's, covering trillions of links across hundreds of billions of pages, while maintaining a focus on high quality domains and pages. Additional functionality - new graphs (like link growth over time), new charts (like gained+lost links), new filters and sorts, and some new kinds of data coming soon. Improved metrics - Domain Authority and Page Authority have both been upgraded to have better correlations with Google's rankings (and they now update every 24 hours) Insanely fast - page load times on the new tool are almost as fast as Google's results 🙂 Less time waiting means more time to dig into results Link Tracking Lists - check a box next to any links of interest and you can build lists in the tool to track them over time, see whether/when they link, prioritize your outreach efforts, and (in the future) get aggregated data and alerts about those links There's much more to come, but we'd love for you to check out Link Explorer, find bugs, report things you love (and don't), and help us make it the best possible product for you and your teams. You can leave feedback here in this Q+A thread, email help@moz.com, or send feedback through the feedback form in Link Explorer.
Link Explorer | | randfish18 -
What happened to my links in Open Site Explorer.
Hello, A while ago I had a problem with open site explorer saying that I had a problems with redirects on my home page. There was 302 redirect and it was giving me information from my www domain rather then from non www domain. With your awesome help, this issue is sorted now and when I type in my non www domain, it doesn't give me that weird message anymore. I have a different issue now. For some reason when I enter non www domain it doesn't show links from www version. I presume that this is affecting my site authority for non www version. Does it mean that link juice was not passed on to non www version from www version? Authority dropped by two points, but I'm not sure why. I'm more interested to know why it doesn't show my links from www version on non www version. And is that affecting my sites rankings. Thank you, Regards, Armands
Link Explorer | | A_Fotografy0 -
No incoming links from DMOZ in my report
Hi, I am confused, after so much years of waiting, some months ago I got listed in the DMOZ http://www.dmoz.org/World/Español/Tiempo_libre/Turismo/Blogs/ (My blog is Charcotrip) The problem is that when I check the incoming list in the MOZ report, the DMOZ link is totally absent, I don't get it. Does anyone knows why can this happening? (is not that my blog get recently listed, now it has been there for a while). Thanks!
Link Explorer | | Gaolga0 -
No back links showing in site explorer but..
I am quite surprise with this, normally site explorer show more and valid database for back links but this time its opposite. the site url is www.motortrader.com.pk webmaster shows me about 2000 where as site explorer is null. is there any particular reason for that?
Link Explorer | | Mustansar0 -
Why do links from UCAS to London South Bank University not get reported as external links
Links on the following page at UCAS http://search.ucas.com/provider/1504/london-south-bank-university?Vac=1&AvailableIn=2015&ProviderQuery=london south bank university&ret=providers do not appear to be listed as external links in Open Site Explorer reports. For example there is a link on the UCAS page to http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/schools-departments . But when I check the Open Site Explorer report for http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/schools-departments no link from UCAS is recorded.
Link Explorer | | southbankuni0 -
Open Site Explorer not reporting all 301 redirected links
Our site had over 2,000 root domains linking to it as reported in MOZ Open Site Explorer (and Google Webmaster Tools). We then changed the domain and made sure that 301 redirects were set up for all pages across the site. That was about 1 month ago. Open Site Explorer is now reporting less than 300 linking root domains. For the links that it is reporting the majority of these are being 301 redirected to the new URLs (some of them we changed the links directly). However the majority of the links that are being 301 redirected are not being reported. It is reporting most of the links coming from the old to the new domain. Google Webmaster Tools is reporting over 1,000 linking root domains to the new domain (it has a max of 1,000). We did notice that MOZ took some time to update the domain authority of the new domain. It was 1 for along time and it has now jumped up to 46 ( it was previously at 74). Maybe this is a time delay thing and eventually Open Site Explorer will report all of the 301 redirected links? It is a bit frustrating at the moment as we can't fully analyse the links to the site to try to focus on the high domain linking sites to get them to change the link directly. Also, If all links are being 301 redirected to the new domain should the authority not be close to where it was previously after one month? Our search traffic has dropped considerably since the launch of the new site and hasn't returned yet, so just wondering if the 301 redirected links pass on as much value as thre original direct links. Thanks, Damien
Link Explorer | | james.harris0