Using The Disavow Tool With No Manual Penalty

[engine]

Matt Cutts talks about using the disavow tool when there's no manual penalty applied to a site.



As i've said many times, use the disavow tool with care.

[austtr]

Finally.... some clarification for the collateral damage sector!

[phranque]

just a reminder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA#t=6m56s

[SevenCubed]

MC² is wearing a Firefox teeshirt in that video :)

[viral]

I think that the thinking at Google about what the disavow tool is and how to use it is fluid.

I am seeing lots of complaints about how it was supposed to be only use it when you have a manual penalty or if you got a message about spammy links.

I believe at least initially that was true. However I think even Google is seeing that this tool is pretty good at helping them and us work out what is spam and therefore opening up usage parameters on the tool.

[aakk9999]

I would still advise to be cautious before making a decision to use Disavow tool. Matt stresses twice on this video:

Primary purpose of this tool is: you've done some bad SEO, you hired a bad SEO, they messed things up, now you need to clean up
(...)
Again, the main purpose is if you made some bad links yourself...

Hence engine's comment above "use the disavow tool with care..." and phranque's link to a particular point in the original Matt's video which covered the launch of this tool.

[austtr]

One of the points I took from the first viewing of MC's video was that the disavow tool is not limited to just links that you had a part in creating. It can also be used to define IBL's (or the whole domain) where you have no control, where you don't want/trust those links, but the site owners ignore your take-down requests.

Prior to the video I was under the impression that Google would only respond to a disavow request associated with a site that has a manual action notice. That always struck me as a very unbalanced, even punitive, approach to impacted sites without a GWT message.

Maybe this is an olive branch to sites that strongly believe they became collateral damage for no good reason. At least now all sites have the same opportunity of getting their problem IBL's attended to.

Now lets just hope Google takes on enough staff to handle what I am sure will be tsunami of requests from the "I didn't get a message" sector.