Google Launches a Disavow Links Tool

[Regent]

Apparently, Google has quietly announced a backlink disavow tool. Read about it here: [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...] [youtube.com...] .

Matt Cutts was on hand at Pubcon to issue the annual State of the Index address, sharing insight on what Google’s done this year, what webmasters should know, and, this time, to also announce a new tool for webmasters. Look alive!

[pubcon.com...]

[nethead]

@ Jessica, here is how I did it.

domain:domain1.com
domain:domain2.com
domain:domain3.com
domain: etc...etc...

[Splugged]

@Jessica

Here is an example, just submitted something similar

---------------------------------------------

# We don't know this website xxxxxxxxxx1.com and never asked them to put a
# link back to us,
# this is deliberate spamming against us and this (we think) harmed our ranking
# however we asked for link removal but got no response.

domain:xxxxxxxxx1.com

# We don't know this website xxxxxxxxxx2.com and never asked them to put a
# link back to us,
# this is deliberate spamming against us and this (we think) harmed our ranking
# however we asked for link removal but got no response.

domain:xxxxxxxxx2.com

etc... etc... etc...
-------------------------------------------------------------------

I have a lot of website pointing to mine with EXACT MATCH ANCHOR TEXT, starting from May 2012... is this only a case? Crazy bots coming only from May 2012?

Negative SEO is possible. Stop.

Sorry for the little #OT....

[mrguy]

Yes, this is "The work for Google for Free" tool.

Nothing like having people go in and let Google know which links are bad and they don't even have to pay them to do it because of all the FUD they put out there.

[mihomes]

For sake of the topic and because it is directly related, I think we should mention that rel=nofollow has a lot to do with this tool.

[Ralph_Slate]

I hope that when links are disavowed, they will disappear from Webmaster tools (or can at least be excluded from the reports). I get so many junk links right now that I can't even analyze them. Once I nuke a domain, I don't want to see those links anymore.

[mihomes]

Ralph,

Good point... I would prefer they list the links, but maybe color code or mark them. This way you still know they are there just you 'cleaned' them.

[Freedom]

Stupid question, the file name should be disavow.txt ?

Is that right?

I'm still going to continue cleaning up links manually, but there is one guy I can't get rid of.

[Splugged]

@Freedom

Just a .txt file, name doesn't matter.

[smithaa02]

Freedom...you can call your file that you upload whatever (this worked for me).

On finding bad backlinks...it would be nice if google provided more tools for this. WMT capping backlink exports to 1k when they show many more than that (in my case 20k) is quite inconvenient. I haven't found a third party tool yet that matches google's claim that I have 20k backlinks (and I've checked a lot!). Plus many of the tools all seem to have their various flaws. I'm trying to work with ahrefs now...but that only has 7k of the 20k links google claims I have, so this makes this very difficult to audit.

[diberry]

One thought to consider: this tool warns you not to use it unless you're sure you have spammy links you can't control, and that those links are giving you Google trouble. Who could possibly know this but an SEO?

So use of this tool will out you as an SEO to Google. Some have suggested that's really the whole point of Penguin - to get SEOs to show their hand by trying to fix the problems from an anti-SEO algo.

Just a thought. This is something I've wondered about ever since no-follow - once Google started issuing tools that only SEOs would know about, they had a way to compile a list of who's an SEO... just in case they ever decided to, you know, annihilate SEO entirely.

[mihomes]

Just a thought. This is something I've wondered about ever since no-follow - once Google started issuing tools that only SEOs would know about, they had a way to compile a list of who's an SEO... just in case they ever decided to, you know, annihilate SEO entirely.

If that is true then the world really is coming to an end lol... that would in a sense be like saying... hey, you care too much about this site and it looks too good... we want it to be fair for the guy who has a thousand errors on his page and updates every two months... its not his fault he doesn't care right?

It would be the demise of the web... as if there aren't enough poorly coded and visual appealing sites out there... if that happened they would be encouraging the web go backwards in quality rather than forwards.

[Donna]

What if a group of people(or a huge network of websites) decides to disavow links from a particular website/s , wouldn't that be instantly pointing out to google that the website in question is a spam website with low quality even if that's not the case. Is this another unnecessary can of worms google is opening again?

It's well know that link power transfers in and out, so cutting the OBLs of the given site in that matter would translate in a demotion of the external structure-chain it supports and so on.

[lizardx]

So use of this tool will out you as an SEO to Google. Some have suggested that's really the whole point of Penguin - to get SEOs to show their hand by trying to fix the problems from an anti-SEO algo.

I don't think this follows at all. I do however think that google is admitting without saying the words that negative seo works, which of course it has to with Penguin, at least for a certain type of site that is lacking in high quality organic type inbounds.

And I think in a sense, it also lets people who naively hired one of those constant 'hi we are an seo firm in India and we can rank you...' firms, who then proceeded to generate tons of boilerplate pages/links/anchor texts, anyway, it lets those people get rid of the damage and try to start over. I don't see this as an impossible component of such a tool.

Not a google fan or non fan, but I can see valid reasons for them using such a tool, and once a site is damaged, which is of course the only time you should be using such repair techniques I think, why not just repair it and wait.

Remember the delay filters they have though, I view all attempts at repair as very long term, ie, I'm not looking for any changes within a month or 4, just long term to eventually get a site back in higher rankings for the target key words.

I enjoy knowing that we were guilty, and that the google panda/penguin body blows hit us exactly as intended, a fact I remind my employer of routinely when he forgets or is tempted to try the same thing again. In fact, no matter how fine tuned the penguin/panda adjustments were, our site got hit, lol, so I believe we have the poster child for a real site that has tons of panda and penguin triggers. We're removing them as time goes on, it is afterall a real site, just with a lot of mistakes, and I think that's sort of what Google has in mind, our stuff wasn't black hat in general, just gray/borderline, like most people were doing, and it's reasonable to allow people to go, ok, fine, we'll stop, and fix it, and return this old site/domain to proper methods. Google does after all like old sites, still.

Party on.

[mihomes]

What if a group of people(or a huge network of websites) decides to disavow links from a particular website/s , wouldn't that be instantly pointing out to google that the website in question is a spam website with low quality even if that's not the case. Is this another unnecessary can of worms google is opening again?

It's well know that link power transfers in and out, so cutting the OBLs of the given site in that matter would translate in a demotion of the external structure-chain it supports and so on

Donna, remember that the site would need to have links pointing to their sites in the first place for them to disavow anything. Frankly, I can't understand why anyone would disavow anything they felt was a 'good' link because you would be hurting your own site in a sense.

[chalkywhite]

Tempted to use this for removing updowner links to see uf they actualy do make a difference.

[aristotle]

Well I just watched Matt Cutts' video, and he said that you should manually "clean up" as many bad backlinks as possible before you use this disavow tool, which is apparently only meant to get whatever is left. Really? How many people are going to expend all that time and effort when this tool should be so much faster and easier? I didn't clean up any backlinks before, and I'm certainly not going to do so now.

[ethought]

What if a group of people(or a huge network of websites) decides to disavow links from a particular website/s , wouldn't that be instantly pointing out to google that the website in question is a spam website with low quality even if that's not the case. Is this another unnecessary can of worms google is opening again?

I agree - I run a couple of link directories. Suddenly over the past few months I have had half a dozen people asking me to remove links to their website, threatening me with legal action in one case if I did not. Today I got one that said they will add my website using Googles new anti-link tool and that I should remove the link because if they add my site it will cause my directory 'damage'.

I am beginning to wonder if that could actually be the case. What's stopping competitors adding links to a directory / website then disavowing them.

One year people are begging for links the next they are threatening to take me to court if I don't remove a link. What is Google doing...?

[celgins]

I am beginning to wonder if that could actually be the case. What's stopping competitors adding links to a directory / website then disavowing them.

I'm guessing nothing is stopping them from adding the links to a directory site. But this is the type of situation where I believe Google could apply a "freshness" test.

If a competitor adds their site links to your directory, and then submits a disavow.txt file to Google the next day, it should raise a red flag. If Google is crawling your directory site, they will know when the link appears, and they will certainly know when they receive the disavow.txt file from the competitor.

Could a competitor add his/her site links to your directory and wait 6 months to submit a disavow.txt file to Google? Probably. And there are so many other possibilities for gaming this system.

I just wonder if the Google engineers thought of all of these angles and potential hiccups from rogue competitors.

[Panthro]

How many people are going to expend all that time and effort when this tool should be so much faster and easier?

If you remember in the MC video, he made a point to emphasize that he really did not want people rushing to use this tool. Interesting ...

[MikeNoLastName]

Has everyone done their due-diligence in disavowing all backlinks from the worst spammer of all (goo---.com) yet?

Maybe someone can put together a baseline disavow.txt file (a 'vaccine' if you will) which we can ALL submit today, so that, just in case one of these sites LATER links us, we'll be safe (i.e. 'immune'). I can certainly see a new niche market for such a list or service.

I don't see anywhere that it says a site in your .txt HAS to be currently linking you. What if one site was linking when you submitted the list and then later stops? Does that invalidate the whole file? I hope not.

[zeus]

OK I will say it load and clear as soon you touch that tool you say to google im a spammer watch me. I know its tempting to remove all kind of weird links, i also have a lot but never used any link company/buying links, it just comes over time, thats the internet.

[klark0]

This guy says he was a beta tester for the Disavow tool and that he recovered during the October 5th Penguin refresh.

[davidnaylor.co.uk...]

I've submitted my list of links that I've been unable to remove.

[tedster]

The advice from Matt Cutts is worth repeating. His advice is: only use the Disavow Links tool if you already received an unnatural backlinks notice and can see that your rankings have been impacted.

If you didn't get one of those little warning gems in your WMT account and your rankings are "steady as she goes" - then I would not tinker around. Google already ignores bajillions of backlnks.

[klark0]

The Q&A seems to differ from Cutts advice then:

Q: Should I create a links file as a preventative measure even if I haven’t gotten a notification about unnatural links to my site?

A: If your site was affected by the Penguin algorithm update and you believe it might be because you built spammy or low-quality links to your site, you may want to look at your site's backlinks and disavow links that are the result of link schemes that violate Google's guidelines.

[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

[tedster]

Thanks for that correction, klark0.

There is one similarity - both say you should bee seeing a ranking demotion before you use the tool. But the Q&A discusses Penguin and Matt mentioned an unnatural backlinks notice. Penguin is algorithmic and the notice is a manual action. Interesting.

[edited by: tedster at 12:11 am (utc) on Oct 18, 2012]

[lucy24]

Go to the reconsideration request page.
Click Check Disavowed Links.
Click Disavow links.
Click Choose file.
Select the file you want to upload, and click Submit.

OK, I take it back. Google didn't swipe the idea from Bing-- their Disavow is simply part of the ordinary wmt suite. This one's on a completely different level. Just finding the Reconsideration Request Page was an expedition of its own. (Never been there before. I'm not big enough to get stomped. That nearby 950-penalty thread makes me grateful I show up in searches at all.)

But I still wish their computer had the brains to see that calls to piwik.php aren't links. It makes it look as if I'm gratuitously linking to myself, which can't possibly be healthy :(

[tedster]

Again, I apologize that my remarks above were incorrect and based on partial information.

I think the main point here is don't try to be preemptive in using this tool, use it only if you already have ranking troubles. I've already heard of people who are disavowing any backlink from a URL with a PR below 3, even though their rankings are fine. That's really not a good idea.

[klark0]

Yep, definitely not a good idea to disavow links in bulk. I saw that already happening on some other forums.

Also seeing many ignoring the part where it says you still need to make an effort to clean up links. Disavowing alone will probably not be enough for successful reconsideration requests.

[Whitey]

I think the main point here is don't try to be preemptive in using this tool, use it only if you already have ranking troubles.

With a Google link related update always around the corner, webmasters should be wary about keeping their link profiles healthy with a regular housekeep. And that's a delicate balancing act, between loosing immediate ranking with revenue, to building a sustainable site.

I've seen big sites taken over by new SEO admin, cut their questionable links en-masse, and guess what happened? They tanked. A real mess.

We need to hear over the coming months what the effects are from this tool, but personally I think anyone working on bad profiles needs to have a careful action plan, before launching into things with this tool.

[kidder]

What percentage of people seriously monitor back link profiles? Hmmm most people don't have a clue and the ones that do are probably building their sites with an SEO focus, big red flag.