Should I disavow links from Dead Domains?
-
Have a new client who hired a fly-by-night backlinking company. They made 500 links from directories and 160 of these are on domains that have been deleted.
So should I inlcude the 160 dead links in my disavow?
-
I'd still disavow these because you never know when those dead domains may come back online again. There is no disadvantage to disavowing spammy directories that no longer exist other than the time it takes to do so.
With that said, however, it's not likely to make a significant difference to your rankings whether you leave these or disavow them. In the past, these spammy domains had the possibility of causing your site to be suppressed by the Penguin algorithm. But when Google released Penguin 4.0 in September of 2016, Penguin no longer demotes. It simply stops counting any link metrics from spammy links.
So why disavow? There are a few reasons:
- If you ever get a manual review of the website by the webspam team and you haven't disavowed you're at risk for getting an unnatural links penalty. You do NOT want that.
-There are other algorithms outside of Penguin that look at links. We don't know much about them, but best to be safe rather than sorry.
-Even though Google says they are simply not counting spammy links, I wouldn't want to trust their word completely and simply ignore spammy links.
-
Well, here is a thing about disavowing - it takes quite a bit of time for google to recrawl everything and apply for rankings. The sudden change in gain and drop off was what hurt you guys. I really doubt disavow would help. You can do it - no difference to you, just time spent
-
Thanks Dmitri,
Quick follow up it was 40% of the domains backlinks that appeared on these now dead domains. And all the domains were deleted in the last 60 days so Google saw a huge number of our backlinks disappear overnight. We also dropped over that period and think this might be a contributor.
So I guess that's the second side of it - if we disavow Google will no longer consider the 40% of links from dead domains. Will disavowing boost in this case?
-
Howdy.
The only reason I would suggest disavowing is when the links are coming from spammy domains. So, if those dead domains were spammy - then sure. Otherwise it'll drop off on it's own without any harm.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Should I disavow these links?
Hi all, I have a ski website that I am currently performing a toxic backlink audit on. I have noted that a lot of the links being flagged as toxic/spammy by the tool I am using seem to be the same/similar sites with different URLs. The sites are vaguely related to skiing (relating to helicopter travel options for travelling to ski resorts) but it is concerning me that there are so many of them and they are being flagged as so toxic.
Link Building | | SolveWebMedia
Do you think it is worth disavowing these? Or contacting the owner to ask them to remove the link? I have included an example of some of the links below. https://www.cannes-helicopters.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://nice-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5 Slightly different site but same favicon icon:
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://www.whitetracks-holidays.com/Helicopter_Transfers_Villars_Switzerland.htm Thanks in advance for any advice / help!0 -
Xyz links
I have a lot of backlinks ending with .xyz, around 20%, and they look very suspicious. Should I disavow these? Here are a few: yourrelicsbargains.xyz fantasticsiteinfo.xyz yourvintagelifestyle.xyz usefuldiscount4u.xyz bestdealsaction.xyz bestmemorabilialifestyle.xyz 59177.net lovecollectorsbargains.xyz
Link Building | | moon-boots0 -
Link Exchange
Hi everyone, I just started working for a client in a new niche. After reviewing the backlink profiles of his competitors I can see that the top sites are using a ton of link exchanges. They are from really spammy sites too. The kind that will link to anyone that provides a link back. Anyone else seeing much of this?
Link Building | | SixTwoInteractive0 -
Link Detox and Link Removal
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png
Link Building | | CobraJones950 -
Linking from Blogs
Hi I like to link from blogs on similar keywords on a regular basis but I am thinking about changing tactics as it can appear monotonous and un natural. What are peoples experiences in linking from blogs ?
Link Building | | onlinemediadirect0 -
NEW LINKS
Hi If you plan to add new links to a site which currently has very few inbound links what is the maximum amount you could add in any one day before it is deemed by Google to be suspicious and unatural. I am referring ot manually added links, not robotic. Thank you 🙂
Link Building | | PH2920 -
Link Ratio
Does Google (or other search engines) penalize websites if they have a too many inbound links from a single domain? (Say for instance, I have 500 inbound links, and 400 of them are from one root domain.)
Link Building | | EricVallee340