Can you disavow a spamy link that is not pointing to your website?
-
We have submitted several really spammy websites to the Google spam team. We noticed they take a very long time to react to submissions. Do you know if it is possible to disavow a link that is not pointing to your website but rather to a very spammy website?
Thanks
-
Hi Marie,
You are absolutely correct. I was confused. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
Carla
-
You may be confused about what the disavow tool does. Sure, you can put any site in your disavow file. You're basically telling Google that if they crawl that site and find a link on it that is pointing to yours to not pass any Pagerank through the link. Google has said several times that they do not use disavow info against the disavowed sites. It is not a spam report.
-
Hi Jessy,
Well I am glad to see that I am not the only person with the same issue. I really delayed the whole submitting my competitors to Google spam but they continue to use black hat techniques. I will let you know if it works.
Thanks
Carla
-
Yes Carla it does make sense and thank you for the explanation.
I too am working in an industry where all of my competitors who outrank me are using blackhat tactics and they haven't been penalized for it at all. It's quite frustrating and I'd be lying if I hadn't considered submitting them to the Webspam team. However I worry that this will somehow come back to bite us later on so I haven't done so and probably never will. Instead I continue building quality content and trying to organically build authority.
That all said, I'd love it if you kept us posted. I'd really like to know how this all works out for you. Even though you are in another country, it might be a great indicator of the potential problems/benefits to this tactic.
Thanks
-
Hi Jesse and Tuzzell,
We have several competitors that use constant black hat techniques. They have been doing this for over 2 years and for some reason the Google Algorithm updates are not taking effect. We have stuck to white hat techniques but are getting a bit impatient. For over 2 years our black hat competitors continue to outrank us. We waited 2 years before submitting them to Google Spam and the only reason we did it was because they have not stopped using black hat techniques. It's a bit frustrating. We are not going on a spam crusade...its more like helping Google do their job and testing the Argentina Google Spam team and learning more about SEO. BTW, we also submitted ourselves to the Google Spam Team about 2 years back to see if our links were in line with Google's policies.
Hope it makes sense...
Carla
-
I can't wrap my head around why you would want to do this and what you seek to gain from it..?
Tuzzell is right, the answer is no.. but I absolutely am dying to know why you are leading the Spam Crusade? (I'm not against it.. nor am I for it.. I'm totally neutral so far just curious why)
-
Short answer no.
To use the disavow tool you need to be logged into webmaster tools, and you need to use the disavow tool under the profile of the relavent site. As such Google will know that any links you are trying to disavow are associated with, and only authorised for, the site you have signed in under.
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
-
Linking Websites/ Plagiarized Content Ranking Above Original Content
Hey friends! Sooo this article was originally published in December 2016: https://www.realwealthnetwork.com/learn/best-places-to-buy-rental-property-2017/ It has been consistently ranking in positions 2-3 for long tail keyword "best places to buy rental property 2017" (and related keywords) since January-ish. It's been getting about 2000-2,500 unique views per week, until last week when it completely dropped off the internet (it's now ranking 51+). We just did a site redesign and changed some URL structures, but I created a redirect, so I don't understand why that would affect our ranking so much. Plus all of our other top pages have held their rankings -- in fact, our top organic article actually moved up from position 3 to 2 for much more competitive keywords (1031 exchange). What's even weirder is when I copy the sections of my article & paste into Google with quotes, our websites doesn't show up anywhere. Other websites that have plagiarized my article (some have included links back to the article, and some haven't) are ranking, but mine is nowhere to be found. Here are some examples: https://www.dawgsinc.com/rental-property-the-best-places-to-buy-in-the-year-2017/ http://b2blabs.com/2017/08/rental-property-the-best-places-to-buy-in-the-year-2017/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/best-places-buy-rental-property-year-2017-missy-lawwill/?trk=mp-reader-card http://news.sys-con.com/node/4136506 Is it possible that Google thinks my article is newer than the copycat articles, because of the new URL, and now I'm being flagged as spam? Does it think these are spam websites we've created to link back to our own content? Also, clearly my article is higher quality than the ranking articles. Why are they showing up? I double checked the redirect. It's good. The page is indexed... Ahhh what is going on?! Thanks for your help in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jessica7110 -
Website not moving?
We run a printing website www.fastprint.co.uk and have built a few decent tools such as http://www.fastprint.co.uk/adobe-shortcut-mapper/ and decent infographics such as http://www.fastprint.co.uk/blog/the-art-of-mixing-typefaces.html and had a fair few decent links from website over the course of the last 1 1/2 but we do not seem to be moving very far? If you take our site on sem rush (a decent percentage of our site traffic is through the above tools or decent blog posts so the number would be lower for E-commerce) http://www.semrush.com/uk/info/fastprint.co.uk+(by+organic)?sort=volume_desc in comparison to a few others http://www.semrush.com/uk/info/banana-print.co.uk+(by+organic)] http://www.semrush.com/uk/info/brunelone.com+(by+organic) Especially this site http://www.semrush.com/uk/info/instantprint.co.uk+(by+organic) I just don't get what we are doing wrong?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Outranked by link farm
Hello Mozzers, I got a questions about some rankings. Some of my sites always had no. 1 rankings for most of the competitive terms per niche. I recently made the change to a full responsive design for more mobile friendliness. No all of the sudden I see different competitors that are not mobile friendly outranking me for some of my most important keywords but also I see some link farm sites (like: camping.startpagina.nl) outranking me for some terms. I was under the impression that Google doesn't like link farm sites? Also I provide a lot of good unique content on my pages and my competitor does no such thing. Still for some terms he outranks me. I understand that it can't be just 1 thing and that there are a lot of factors playing a rol in the big picture but still, you must understand that this is pretty frustrating. I obey the rules of the search engines and see competitors do no such thing and still being outranked by them. Further details of this matter can be send to you in PM if you need it. Looking forward for your thoughts on this. regards Jarno
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JarnoNijzing0 -
How Can I Safely Establish Homepage Relevancy With Internal Keyword Links?
My website has roughly 1000-2000 pages. However, our homepage is lacking relevancy as to what it is about. One way that I'd like to tackle this problem, is by updating many of our pages with internal linking. I often hear, use exact keyword links with caution, but have assumed this mainly referred to external backlinks. Would it be a disaster to set up our single most relevant keyword on about 300 pages and point it to our homepage? There are breadcrumbs on our site, but the home link uses an image (It's a picture of a house, if you're curious.) Am I better off just to change that to our most relevant keyword? I could use any advice on internal links for establishing better homepage relevancy. Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | osaka730 -
Still Battling On With Link Profile Audit
I'm getting there, I can see the light! 🙂 I have covered one complete audit of the link profile and I am now going back over it looking at the links I had 'question marked' - I should have this completed by the end of this week and I will then focus on using DISAVOW for the links that I am really struggling with, the foreign sites that are in Chinese or Russian, the sites that have absolutely no 'contact us' information and have been privately registered (in WhoIs) I have come across this domain which links to our site about 8 times and although I cannot find any contact info I can't quite make my mind up, to be honest I would rather get rid of it BUT I'm trying to avoid taking the easy option of disavowing where I can; http://www.askives.com/ Fo anyone who has gone through what I am currently going through, please help me just this once and tell me 'should it stay or should it go'?! 🙂 Many thanks! Andy
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TomKing0 -
Can one business operate under more than one website?
Is it possible for a business to rank organically for the same keyword multiple times with different web addresses? Say if I sell car keys and I wanted to rank for "buy new car keys" and I set up two different website say ibuycarkeys.com and carkeycity.com and then operate under both of these, would Google frown upon this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | steve2150 -
Copied Content/ Copied Website/
Hello guys, I was checking my product descriptions and I found out that there is a website that is using my descriptions word by word, also they use company name, product images, they have a link that sends you to my site, contact form.. I tried to purchase something and the order came through our email, but i made an inquire and it didn't come through. Also they have a sub-folder with my company name. Also they have url's with my company name, and this isn't right is it? I am confused and honestly I don't know what to do, we don't take part to any affiliation program or anything like that and we don't ship out of Europe. This is a Chinese website. Just for curiosity, I noticed that one of our competitors is there as well, and it does seem weird. Here is the links: www.everychina . com/company/repsole_limited-hz1405d06.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Where can i see ejemple of disavow files to adapt mine in order to send to google
Can i send a disavow file to google as CSV file. Where can i see ejemple of disavow files to adapt mine in order to send to google
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0