Should I Disavow?
-
I had a Wordpress plugin on blog rolls and had a large number of links from a couple of sites that aren't necessarily related to our own. I've removed the links, but they are still showing up in Google Analytics and Moz Open Site Explorer. Based on my research, I don't think that removing these links will hurt us, and that removing them may help boost our ranking. Should I go ahead and disavow the links? Are there any other things I need to take into consideration?
-
We removed the links in June, but they are still showing up. At that point, there were 17,000 links from one site. Now there are around 8,000. If they are removed, they should no longer show in the report after Google re-crawls, right? At what point do we determine a last ditch effort? Are there any disadvantages to using the disavow tool other than the loss of potentially useful links?
-
If you've removed the links in question then you should be fine and there is no reason to disavow. I am totally afraid of the disavow tool and use it as a last ditch effort only. If the data hasn't been updated it may be because your removal happened recently and these tools take awhile to update.
If those links aren't physically there then you will be fine no matter what the backlink tools report.
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
-
Weird Links Should I Disavow?
I have noticed some weird backlinks in Google Search console and Referals for Google Analytics. For example a reddit page I have never commented on or been on has referred over 900 visitors. The page has no relevance to my site whatsoever, when I check the source code I cannot see the link, so perhaps its been removed. Also seeing links in Google Search Console from sites that are just domain name for sale type pages, and sites/pages that don't seem to exist anymore, or which redirect to others. All of these links have disappeared as well, nothing in source code . And numerous pages that used to link to 404's on my site, many domain name for sale type pages, another which makes my bitdefender plugin go crazy. And seeing common referral patterns in Google Analytics, i.e. numerous /try.php pages on different domains that presumably used to link back but which now redirect to another site. I cannot say there are thousands of these, but I guess they are causing more harm than good. My instinct is to I go through all the links I can and disavow, the link types described above, but am I safe to do so? And is it a good idea or a waste of my time? NB: I haven't built any of them.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GrouchyKids1 -
No cache still a good link for disavow?
Hi Yall, 2 scenarios: 1. I'm on the border line of disavowing some websites that link to me. If the page is N/A (not available) for the cache, does that mean i should disavow them? 2. What if the particular page was really good content and the webmaster just has the worse seo skills in not interlinking his old blogs, hence why the page that's linking to me is N/A for cache, should i still disavow it? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Have just submitted Disavow file to Google: Shall I wait until after they have removed bad links to start new content lead SEO campaign?
Hi guys, I am currently conducting some SEO work for a client. Their previous SEO company had built a lot of low quality/spam links to their site and as a result their rankings and traffic have dropped dramatically. I have analysed their current link profile, and have submitted the spammiest domains to Google via the Disavow tool. The question I had was.. Do I wait until Google removes the spam links that I have submitted, and then start the new content based SEO campaign. Or would it be okay to start the content based SEO campaign now, even though the current spam links havent been removed yet.. Look forward to your replies on this...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sanj50500 -
Negative SEO to inner page: remove page or disavow links?
Someone decided to run a negative-SEO campaign, hitting one of the inner pages on my blog 😞 I noticed the links started to pile up yesterday but I assume there will be more to come over the next few days. The targeted page is of little value to my blog, so the question is: should I remove the affected page (hoping that the links won't affect the entire site) or to submit a disavow request? I'm not concerned about what happens to the affected page, but I want to make sure the entire site doesn't get affected as a result of the negative-SEO. Thanks in advance. Howard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | howardd0 -
Disavow tool for blocking 4 to 5 sites for Article Republishing
Am finding some very low authority sites (recently picked our articles from ezine and other article sites - written over a year back) and pasted on to there site. The number of articles copies are not 1 or 2, but more than 10-12 in all these domains This has also led to our anchor based url - backlink to us from them (a part of article). Have Wrote down to remove my author profile and articles - but there has been no response from webmaster of these sites. Is Disavow a right approach. The number of such sites are 4 or 5 in nature !!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
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
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
To Disavow or Not to Disavow - that is the Question!
I have had two SEO 'specialists' look at my site after the 2012 Penguin update as I was hit badly for one very important keyword. I took off any bad sites links but I never did anything with inbound links. One says my link profile is fine and do NOT use the disavow tool but I should improve my site (landing pages, content, photos, put blog on site, articles, social media etc etc). This I tried for several months but my site never improved. the second 'expert' said I HAVE to take certain ones off and he identified inbound links from spammy sites. He found links from 65 links from malware/untrusted sites and 267 from spam articles and 124 from link farms plus hundreds more from pages that no longer exist or never provide traffic What would you do? i should point out the anchor text for these inbound links is the one keyword that is the most important to the site and the one that got hit by the Penguin 2012
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Llanero0