Is domain popularity no ranking factor any more?

[deeper]

Hi,
traditionally the domain popularity is an important ranking factor. Nowadays millions of webmaster disavow billions of backlinks using the domain operator. This way they reduce their domain popularity heavily.

But nobody cares!? There are so many discussions about disavowing but nobody seem to care about the domain popularity?

Is it no ranking factor any more?

[edited by: aakk9999 at 9:15 am (utc) on Aug 16, 2013]
[edit reason] Clarified domainpop = domain popularity [/edit]

[netmeg]

What do you mean by "domain popularity" ?

[deeper]

A site may have 10000 backlinks, but they are from only 100 domains.

So the domainpop is "100" and this number should be more important than "10000", because 1000 backlinks from only one domain do not count as 1000 links.

Every link research tool considers the domain popularity as an important number.

[Robert Charlton]

Matt Cutts communicated this with regard to the disavow tool...

Google's Matt Cutts On Disavow Tool Mistakes
Jun 11, 2013
[seroundtable.com...]

Typically, the first attempt by users are to be very specific and fine tuned with their individual urls. Instead use a domain: command and disavow the whole site. That is often better....

And also here...

Best practices for using the Google disavow tool, confirmed
Feb 3, 2013
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4542078.htm [webmasterworld.com]

"Be aware of the site-wide disavow possibility, it will make your life easier" have been the key sentences in his reply. I am thankful for such a definite answer and thought I’d share it here.

I think the idea is that when corruption hits a site, the whole domain tends to be corrupt, and it needs to be "hacked out with a machete." Implication is still that things work on the domain level, but a consequence of this is that entire domains can go bad. Trying to preserve individual domains by trimming the individual decaying rose petals is probably not an efficient way to go about it, and webmasters miss a lot when they disavow that way.

[deeper]

For disavow-purposes it may be often a good idea to work with domains, as it is recommended in the links you have been given.

But in terms of SEO you reduce your domainpop, i.e., the number of different domains linking to you. Usually this should harm your ranking, because usually a high domainpop improves your ranking and a low one is bad for your ranking.

So I'm surprised that since disavowing has become popular nobody at least hits on the idea that the reduced domainpop will harm the ranking. At least as one factor.

[aakk9999]

Usually this should harm your ranking, because usually a high domainpop improves your ranking and a low one is bad for your ranking.

I do not think the Google algo is that simple to look just at the number of domains. Even when this was used as comparison with competitors, it was know that this was a very crude measure.

In fact, having links from many domains that are off-topic or low quality can harm your site more than help it. On the other hand the number of scraper sites linking to you by scraping Google SERPs or by doing automated "reports" on your site could be already ignored by Google and disavowing them may not make a difference at all.

Having to disavow a good quality doman whose link to you was on-topic with your site/page - yes, this could be a problem.

[Planet13]

So I'm surprised that since disavowing has become popular nobody at least hits on the idea that the reduced domainpop will harm the ranking. At least as one factor.

Yes, it WILL reduce your rankings... just less so that getting a manual penalty or getting hit with an algorithmic filter (i.e., Penguin).

[Planet13]

Besides, having one great link is much better then several ok links, and much better than thousands of spammy links.

[deeper]

Sure, it's just one factor as I said already and sure, the algo is not so simple. But no SEO checking your link profile will ignore the domainpop....

I suppose when webmasters are faced with any penalty they tend to "forget" this one ranking factor. And hey, this may be justified: May be backlinks from bad sites never were counted as contribution to the domainpop? May be disavowing them actually does not harm/reduce the domainpop, because they never were part of it? Who knows.