Why should I reach out to webmasters before disavowing links?
-
Almost all the blogs, and Google themselves, tell us to reach out to webmasters and request the offending links be removed before using Google's Disavow tool. None of the blogs, nor Google, suggest why you "must" do this, it's time consuming and many webmasters don't care and don't act. Why is this a "required" thing to do?
-
If it is unlikely that a webmaster will reply or looks as though the site is trying to hide contact details then you may not need to contact webmasters before disavowing as it is a waste of time. But in a lot of cases it is more beneficial to you to have a bad link removed than to just disavow it, so it can be worth contacting a webmaster to remove a link.
If you are under a penalty though, Google will want to see you are doing everything you can to remove unnatural links and may want to see evidence that you are trying to contact webmasters to remove links rather than just putting everything into a disavow file, because links that are disavowed can just be taken out of the disavow file and be 're-avowed'.
Kind Regards
-
It actually isn't required - Google have no way of telling if you have tried to contact webmasters and ask for a link to be removed. I have done many disavows without this (at the site owners requests) with fantastic results.
One of the Matt Cutts videos actually says that if you just notice a lot of links that are appearing and shouldn't be there, or you don't know where they came from, just go ahead and disavow them.
-Andy
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
-
My compatitors destroy my website with huge spammy links!
Hi
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | amirooo.sh123
My competitors destroy my website with huge spam links! Its more than 400 high spam (80-100% spam score) unique domain, link to us sitewide!!! I disavow on search console. But its not enough! All pages ranks down and we lost everything we had....
What should we do now? If you can, please help me
Darookhaneonline.com Capture.jpg0 -
Do I need to undo a 301 redirect to dissavow links from the source domain?
A client came to me after being hit by Penguin and had already performed a 301 redirect from site A to Site B. Site B was subsequently hit by the penalty a number of weeks later and we are planing on performing link removal for Site A. Only the webmaster tools account for Site B exists, none is still available for site A. I assume that I cannot dissavow links to site A from Site B's webmaster tool account (even though website A's links show up in the GWT account). So do I need to undo the 301 and then create a new GWT account for site A in order to disavow the links pointing to site A, or can I submit from Site B's GWT account since they are 301'd to site B? Thanks! Chris [edited for formatting]
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOdub0 -
Vetting Link Opportunties that are Penguin Safe
I am looking to go after sites that are, and will never be, affected by Penguin/Panda updates. Is there a tool or a general rule of thumb on how to avoid such sites? Is there a method anyone is currently using to get good natural links post Penguin 2.0?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dsinger0 -
How to Explain The Danger of Link Networks
A client of mine has been approached by a company that sets up one-off private link networks like this: Main site: http://www.klausparking.com/ Network sites: http://www.carparkingtechnology.com/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | waynekolenchuk
http://www.carparkingsystem.com/
http://www.victoriaparking.net/
http://www.reginaparking.com/
http://www.torontoparking.net/
http://www.multicarparkingsystem.com/
http://www.carparkingsolutions.com/ The company doing this actually promotes this as a patent-pending feature they call "silos". How do I explain the real danger to my client?1 -
Technorati links. good? or bad?
Hi all After an unnatural link warning I am about to do my third reconsideration request after having my previous two turned down. I have manually removed hundreds of spammy links (thousands if you include sitewide) and used the disavow tool on hundreds more where I could not get them manually removed. The backlinks I have remaining now all seem to be genuine. There are quite a few backlinks from technorati, I thought these were ligitimet links but am now thinking should I remove/disavow them. Does anybody have any opinions?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shauny350 -
Reciprocal Links NoFollow
I am working on the SEO for a company that sells commercial construction materials and I am noticing that the vast majority of the older, authoritative construction related sites and directories require a reciprocal link to be linked to from their site. 1. If I create a reciprocating link, but nofollow/noindex that page, is that seen as blackhat? Will I see any benefit from this over a link passing page rank? 2. Will these reciprocating links hurt me, or are they worth the risk within a young portfolio? I am seeing well ranked sites listed such as justblinds.com, this would imply they reciprocated a link as well?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GoogleMcDougald0 -
How Can I Check Competitors Linking Profile?
If I'm looking for weak points in my competitors linking structure, how can I use Open Site Explorer to do that? In other words, I'm not sure how to use Open Site Explorer? Zane
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Springboks0 -
Strange link backs
Hi all been looking at the keyword research tool , phrase is dog beds site at number 10 is **www.ideas-4-pets.com ** opened site explorer http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.ideas-4-pets.com%2F Took at a look at linking root domains ths guy has some huge linking domains , so thought I would take a look at how they managed to get links from sites like Samsung , the UN , Php.net, Linking Root Domain Domain Authority Linking Root Domains *.parallels.com/ 97 129,927 *.php.net/ 97 201,007 *.dmoz.org/ 94 80,621 *.swsoft.com/ 92 24,586 *.samsung.com/ 89 54,125 *.oreilly.com/ 88 48,350 *.undp.org/ 88 21,578 I cant understand how he has got links off psd files or on page assets like embedded swf files. Anyone know how they are dong this , is this pure Darth Vader black hat >>??? Thanks in advance May the Google be with You
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jbloggs0