Can we disavow any sub.domain in Disavow Tool?

[sepath]

Hello,

Is there any way to disavow the sub.domains in Google Disavow Tool?

#for domain
domain:example.com

#for sub domain ?
domain:abc.example.com

#or ?
subdomain:abc.example.com

Please share your thoughts.

Thanks
Sandeep

[aakk9999]

The syntax is:

domain:something.example.com

But although Google will do their best, they may decide to disavow the whole domain (see below).

A new tool to disavow links
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.html [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]
Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Q: Can I disavow something.example.com to ignore only links from that subdomain?
A: For the most part, yes. For most well-known freehosts (e.g. wordpress.com, blogspot.com, tumblr.com, and many others), disavowing "domain:something.example.com" will disavow links only from that subdomain. If a freehost is very new or rare, we may interpret this as a request to disavow all links from the entire domain. But if you list a subdomain, most of the time we will be able to ignore links only from that subdomain.

[adder]

Yes, you would use this format:

domain:abc.example.com

Mind you, there have been cases where Google ignores the subdomain bit and disavows the whole example.com

When it comes to disavowing subdomains located on well-known free blogging sites, Google usually handles them correctly. It's the obscure websites that might occasionally be a problem.

[sepath]

Okay, many thanks to both of you.

It seems a kind of guarantee that
[For most well-known freehosts (wordpress.com, blogspot.com, tumblr.com, and many others), disavowing "domain:something.example.com" will disavow links only from that subdomain.]

So now I can disavow the sub domains like "something.blogspot.com" without getting worried about good links from other sub domains of blogspot.com

[sepath]

Any suggestions? If I want to keep getting a link from the home page and disavow the rest links from a sub.domain or domain.

Thanks

[sepath]

Could anyone please share the views if we want only 1 link from the home page of a sub domain and disavow rest of all hundreds of backlinks from that sub domain?

Thanks

[phranque]

when referring to link spam, google usually uses terminology like "editorially given", so you should make your decision in that context.

[Clay_More]

If there were links from something.blogspot.com that you wanted to disavow, it should have no impact on links from another site such as something1.blogspot.com

Interesting question about how to disavow hundreds of links from example.blogspot.com while retaining a link from the home page or that site.

I'd probably set a site up and do a 301 redirect from the example.blogspot.com site index page to the new site's index page.

As phranque infers, it's a lot of work.

[Robert Charlton]

Could anyone please share the views if we want only 1 link from the home page of a sub domain and disavow rest of all hundreds of backlinks from that sub domain?

Google looks at many things statistically. It's a dumb machine with a superb ability to correlate, an excellent sense of the odds, and a very long memory... so it's not as dumb as you may be assuming, and it's gradually getting smarter.

Those "hundreds of backlinks", along with other signals from your site, have already provided Google with a strong indication that the original links were not natural (ie, that they were not freely given editorial links). "Hundreds of links" suggests a special relationship between the linking site and your site, which makes Google think that there might have been some manipulation going on.

I would not assume that Google won't notice if you don't disavow that juicy link from the home page. It was undoubtedly part of the original deal, and Google's not likely to forget it. And the home page link is the link that Google knows that someone manipulating links would want to hold onto. Because of that history, it's now tainted. Google's aware of the odds that there was a relationship, and it knows your history... so you can save yourself a lot of time and grief and treat these things on the domain or subdomain level and disavow the entire package.

This is what Matt Cutts was talking about regarding using a "machete", when he answered a question about problems he was seeing with disavow in his blog post...

What to expect in SEO in the coming months
May, 2013
[mattcutts.com...]

One common issue we see with disavow requests is people going through with a fine-toothed comb when they really need to do something more like a machete on the bad backlinks. For example, often it would help to use the "domain:" operator to disavow all bad backlinks from an entire domain rather than trying to use a scalpel to pick out the individual bad links. That’s one reason why we sometimes see it take a while to clean up those old, not-very-good links.

Barry Schwartz followed up with some further details at Search Engine Roundtable...

Google: Use The Disavow Tool Like A Machete & Not Fine-Toothed Comb
[seroundtable.com...]

And we had some follow-up discussion in this thread here...

Matt Cutts on stages of Penguin recovery
June, 2013
[webmasterworld.com...]

In general, I would not try to hold on to favorite links from domains that are no longer trusted, and I wouldn't try to add variations to previously arranged inbound anchor text in an attempt to rewrite history.

[sepath]

I'd probably set a site up and do a 301 redirect from the example.blogspot.com site index page to the new site's index page.

Usually we do not own that example.blogspot.com

@Robert Charlton: Perfect
Thanks