Best practice to disavow spam backlinks

[MattJankulovski]

Hi everyone,

I hope you don't mind me starting a new thread as soon as I've joined, but I've got quite a pressing question.

I've currently got a disavow file processed for a site I work with, tackling spam scraper sites mostly, etc. However, in the last couple of days, I've seen a big increase in spam sites linking to us. Most of these sites are aged domains which have either been bought or hacked and are now targeting money phrases in their URLs/ H1s and then redirecting to sites either filled with affiliate links or fake products (some just seem to have thousands of dead pages).

My question is, how best to deal with these sites with our disavow file? I know it generally takes Google a couple of weeks to process the file, so I don't want to just keep uploading it and knocking us to the back of the queue, but I'm also wary of leaving these sites untouched. The links are being picked up with a range of tools, but I've not actually found a page with a link to us on (they all either redirect or are just dead).

Any advice would be most appreciated.

Thanks!

[piatkow]

The links are being picked up with a range of tools, but I've not actually found a page with a link to us on (they all either redirect or are just dead).

I have seen a few of those, I have never been sure if there is a genuine link there or something temporary. I have never managed to track down a real link to one of my sites.

From reading these forums I have formed the opinion that for Google it is a case of "all things in moderation". A sudden surge in any activity seems liable to ring an alarm bell.

[Shai]

Welcome to the forums. As an answer to your question. You should not have any worries about updating the file as many times as you need. The disavow file does not take weeks to be processed. Its a common misconception. It is processed (pretty much) immediately. What does take time is the re-crawling of the links so that Google can then discover that they are being filtered out by the disavow file. Some of the worst links can take months before they get re-crawled hence they can take months before they are nullified (NOFOLLOW). No queue involved so just update as soon as you find spammy links or just make it part of a weekly or monthly job. On one client site that has been affected by negative SEO, we added and uploaded a fresh Disavow file every day until things calmed down a little and now we only do it on a weekly basis.
Other misconception is that comments are read by Google staff - No one reads the comments. Its only there for the webmaster to keep notes if he/she wished to do so. In fact, the whole disavow file is 100% automated requiring no input from any humans unless maybe when a manual penalty is being reviewed.

Hope this helps. Shai.