Does Disavowing Links Negate Anchor Text, or Just Negates Link Juice

[MiguelSalcido]

I'm not so sure that disavowing links also discounts the anchor texts from those links. Because nofollow links absolutely still pass anchor text values. And disavowing links is supposed to be akin to nofollowing the links.

I wonder because there's a potential client I'm working on an RFP for and they have tons of spammy directory links all using keyword rich anchor texts and they lost 98% of their traffic in Pengiun 1.0 and haven't recovered. I want to know what I'm getting into.

And if I just disavow those links, I'm thinking that it won't help the anchor text ratio issues.

Can anyone confirm?

[RyanPurkey]

Great! Glad I could help. If you end up running an experiment similar to the one done by Social SEO I'm sure the community would love to here about it.

[MiguelSalcido]

Ryan, love the response! And the fact that you didn't back down from my challenges. Great reply!

So the fact that nofollow links still do pass anchor text is a big one. Disavowing links isn't JUST for penalized sites. And its not just for combating spam or negative SEO. Yes, its the main tool to fight those things but those things do not define it.

Having your domain disavowed by hundreds of people does not kill its rankings and make it a "spam" site. People disavow for lots of reasons.

But my thought and suspicion is that Google still counts the anchor text of disavowed links as part of your portfolio.

[RyanPurkey]

Because the disavow tool is mainly used for restoring sites that have been penalized for having spammy inbound links while unpenalized sites freely use nofollow. Also sites that have been linked to via nofollow aren't penalized because of it, and often see positive effects from it. A study on that: http://www.socialseo.com/blog/an-experiment-nofollow-links-do-pass-value-and-rankings-in-google.html, "Google may not "count" the link as a weighted backlink but this doesn’t mean they ignore the anchor text being used or the authoratative status of the website being linked from."

Further, nofollow links can still engage with active readers and provide tremendous lift--a moz example--while spam en masse is usually found on sites that have very little real world presence.  Google has a pretty good idea of many sites that are worthy of a disavow...

For your precise situation you're going to have to run your own tests to get your own data and your own numbers that specifically back up what you believe, but my advice is that you don't let your client expect to get a substantial--if any--lift from their past links that they are planning to disavow.

P.S. Top secret... It's over 9000.

[MiguelSalcido]

What are you basing these statements on? Are you 100% certain in your opinion? Is it based on facts?

I don't agree with what you are saying. I've read that the disavow tool is essentially telling Google to nofollow those links.

I'm looking for anyone that has data to back this up. I don't think that anyone has really addressed this issue in detail. Maybe we need to ask Google?

[RyanPurkey]

...disavowing is supposedly the same thing as adding the nofollow tag to links.

Ah I see where you've missed what I was saying. Disavow and nofollow are two different things. Just like nofollow has undisclosed benefits--especially when being links coming from highly trusted sites--disavow isn't as easily categorized as the stock description of nofollow.  Fundamentally they're different as well, nofollow is linking to something purposefully, but with the caveat that for search engines, this isn't a 100% normal link. They're still intentionally making the link.

Disavow on the other hand is basically saying, "Hey, this link you found pointing to us on this site that's TOTAL spam... we want nothing to do with it. Please don't ban us, and ignore those links."  In Disavow's use, ideally for the site trying to get rid of the link they'd be happier if it didn't exist. That's in contrast to a site intentionally creating a link to something, but nofollowing it.

[MiguelSalcido]

So my question remains unaddressed. Does anyone know if anchor text is completely removed when you disavow links?

Its because nofollowed links still pass anchor text and count towards your anchor text rations. And reading into it, disavowing is supposedly the same thing as adding the nofollow tag to links. The only difference is that because you don't have access to the site to add the nofollow yourself, you can use the disavow tool to do it.

[MiguelSalcido]

Thanks Ryan, but to answer...

" if the site is considered spam and the link juice from it is negative, why wouldn't the logical conclusion be that the anchor text is not going to count as well"

Its because nofollowed links still pass anchor text and count towards your anchor text rations. And reading into it, disavowing is supposedly the same thing as adding the nofollow tag to links. The only difference is that because you don't have access to the site to add the nofollow yourself, you can use the disavow tool to do it.

So my question remains unaddressed. Does anyone know if anchor text is completely removed when you disavow links?

[Travis_Bailey]

In your position, I would want to know more about what I'm getting into as well. Before I have a contract, I would like to know what they've been doing over the last three years. There's a lot of time there where, potential, previous actions could help or hinder your efforts.

• Did they disavow?
• What did they (or a contractor) disavow, if anything?
• If they 'performed a disavow', where is the file? (There's a possibility it wasn't properly formatted, or it may not have been submitted.)
• Have they sent out link removal requests?
• If so, what were the results?
• Did they continue building low quality links after the fact? (History is a factor.)
• If so, for how long?
• Have they tried a reconsideration request after a, what you would deem sufficient, disavow/removal effort? (Though it may walk and quack like an algo/filter penalty, it could be manual.)

The above would be a few of my primary concerns before I started looking at anchor text ratios. If you've already covered those bases, good on you. Just let it be known, to everyone's general disinterest, that I said as much.

You may find that a lot of the heavy lifting is already done, but the execution was flawed at some critical point. Which may free resources toward building a better internet and generally making your client giddy. Easy peasy, right?

I agree with Ryan's second paragraph. Definitely under-promise and attempt to over-deliver. I haven't seen many sites that didn't have at least a chance at recovery, if money were no object. However, there are sites where it would be wise to start over from an economic perspective. (Time/Opportunity Cost+Actual Money)

It's that nearly three year long penalty that would give me pause, prior to jumping in. Again with the ratios, if there's been a disavow and you don't have the file; you're not looking at anything remotely accurate - until you go through the same process. Still, no one ever has the entire picture. It's various shades of confidence in what you can gather about the situation.

There. I made it two paragraphs without emoting. I can go play video games now.

[RyanPurkey]

I think the perspective is a little skewed on this... If you look at it form the angle of a link from a spammy site is a bad thing (hence the need to disavow), that includes the anchor text being bad too, even if it's targeted anchor text.  What I mean is if the site is considered spam and the link juice from it is negative, why wouldn't the logical conclusion be that the anchor text is not going to count as well, or even be a negative ranking factor for that anchor text.

Within the RFP I'd err on the side of caution (under promise - over deliver) and say that we're going to disavow X number of links and start targeting quality.  If by some strange reason you do get an anchor text boost some how, it's extra to the above board work you're doing moving forward.