Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
The problem with disavowing, if the same domains or links were never devalued you are, in theory, reducing your available PageRank which in turn impacts ranks, and thus traffic diminishes.
This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results.
What would happen if I reduce the numbers of links in the disavow file?
Unknown... Google had never hinted about what happens when undoing disavows for either good or bad reasons or whether they would even trust a reversal action.
"Links are essentially only disavowed as long as they are in the disavow file. So, if you remove them after some point, then essentially when we recrawl and reprocess those URLs ... then we will treat those as normal links again. If you remove them, then essentially you are returning them to their normal state. If they were problematic links in the past then they would be problematic links again."
"Google tends to look at buying and selling links that pass PageRank as a violation of our guidelines and if we see that happening multiple times, repeated times, then the actions that we take get more and more severe," Cutts said. "So we're more willing to take stronger action whenever we see repeated violations."
So if you're looking to recover from a bad backlink penalty in Google, the fastest way to resolve it will be to simply disavow all the links obtained during the "suspicious" period of time when you purchased links. At the very least, you should disavow everything that could possibly be a problematic link. You'll be able to get back into the index quicker....
If a link you reavow was indeed one that Google had considered unnatural, removing it from your disavow won't do any good and actually could do you harm. A client of mine got penalized a second time by Google by reinstating links that they had previously disavowed. When you get penalized a second time, Google makes you work even harder to get your penalty lifted! / A good example of a situation where you might want to reavow a link would be the case where you have disavowed an entire domain, but now have a truly natural link from that domain....
There seems to be a mode of thought that if one removes the bad links that the penalty will be lifted and the rankings will return. But what if those previous rankings were not earned? What if those previous rankings were due to links considered unearned? Then that would mean that the previous rankings were unearned....
There seems to be a mode of thought that if one removes the bad links that the penalty will be lifted and the rankings will return. But what if those previous rankings were not earned? What if those previous rankings were due to links considered unearned? Then that would mean that the previous rankings were unearned.
I've heard your question before. Some people are of the opinion that there is an algorithmic anchor weighing down your rankings, keeping you from the high SERPs where your site belongs. What that means is that your site is entitled to be in the top. But the reality is that your site might not be entitled. The anchor theory is just that, a theory. It is not based on any scientific research or patent application. I've never read a paper about a suppressing sites that belong at the top for the purpose of punishing them. What would be the point? It's ludicrous when you think about it.
The reasonable assumption is that once you remove all the unearned links, where your site is left ranking is where it belongs. There may be issues with the content that needs fixing. Previously the content issues may have been overlooked because of the links. Or it could be you need to start over and build more links to replace the links you lost. In my opinion, for cases such as these, the site may be suffering from ranking where it belongs to rank.
