How long to wait for updated link profile in WMT after disavow?

[Spyder_Cat]

At the end of April I used the disavow tool to disavow thousands of links to my site (which I never requested). I also reduced the number of internal links pointing to certain pages within my site.

It's now June and when I sign into WMT, the number of links shown (external and internal) remains at about the same level to that of April. How long does it normally take for changes to be updated?

[not2easy]

If the links still exist, they are shown in GWT as sites that link to yours. My understanding is that the GWT Disavow tool is offered for people who had received penalties or participated in linkbuilding schemes to assist ranking or paying for backlinks, creating networks of links or other paid or unnatural link setups.

I see sites linking to mine that I had nothing to do with creating and I see no reason to bother to disavow them as I didn't arrange for those links to exist. From the few I took a look at, they are not endorsing my site in their links, just using information they scraped from Google itself or other search engines. Disavowing these links doesn't stop them from existing and GWT is just providing that information to you.

[Spyder_Cat]

Thanks for the reply. However, it doesn't account for why many internal links are still showing in WMT when they have been removed from the site.

[not2easy]

For internal changes that you aren't seeing reflected in GWT it usually means they have not crawled those and updated yet. You can sometimes speed up calling their attention to things you want noticed by using the "Fetch" as Google" tool in GWT.

[Spyder_Cat]

WMT shows that my pages were heavily crawled a few days after submitting my updates early May - it's been a month now and the internal links are still the same.

Once this information finally gets refreshed I will post back.

[lucy24]

Then again they may never show the changes. Just because you've disavowed links doesn't mean google has wiped them from memory. gwt currently lists nofollowed links, so why should disavowed links be any different? It's their way of saying "We know where you live".

[Spyder_Cat]

I'd like to think they will show a change in the number of internal links to a given webpage - if they don't update that part then it's not of much value to me.

The reason I am so interested in this is that I had links on many of my sites pages pointing to my top 5 visited pages. I haven't received a manual penalty for this but may have a have had a little slap by Penguin. Since removing these internal links some pages are starting to bounce back (although I do not know if this is the reason for the recovery).

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I submitted an extensive disavow file 6 months ago

- No change in traffic levels
- No change in rank
- No change in links being reported via GWT
- No way to tell it did a darned thing, even six months later

So I have no data to guide you about disavow files one way or the other.

[RP_Joe]

I have heard reports that it can take up to a year.

I have not seen a site recover yet.

[Mentat]

You need to see another Penguin update in order to see effects of the disavow file...