Does Disavow tool still work? I was told no such thing as Negative SEO

[Broaster]

On Google help forums I asked if I should use Disavow tool now, and they told me its useless because the Bot can tell which links are good and bad, I said someone is sending over 3 thousand backlinks to my homepage from a website that has nothing to do with my subject matter

they said no such thing as Negative SEO

So whats the truth from your experience guys? are they telling the truth is there no such thing as Negative SEO and we don't need to disavow backlinks anymore?

[JesterMagic]

Google has been downplaying the disavow tool of late but I recently just updated mine as my site had dropped in rankings slightly and I had a pile of new spammer links.

IMO If the tool is still available then Google still does rely on it to a certain extent. It can't hurt if you disavow obvious spammer links.

[NeapTide]

Google help forums? They are not of much help. Only few bullies are there who pretend to be experts but they are not.

And disavow links tool does its job discounting spam links. I had over 900,000 spam links that caused me great trouble. They were discarded only when I submitted disavow links file.

[Broaster]

NeapTide

how long does it take for those spam links to get removed after the disavow?

and yes you are correct they are not a help to us, they think everyone is a spammer because they get so many spammers complaining there these helpers are looking to get hired by google and just butt kiss hoping they will get offered a job with the Big G.

Everytime you post they say the same thing nope G cant be wrong its you, something wrong with your website there has to be.

Ive never received an answer from them, I barely joined this forum and you guys are wayyyyy more helpful and offer more suggestions.

[NeapTide]

@Broaster In my case it takes about 1-2 months. But it all depends how fast your website is re-crawled. Google has set different crawl rate for every site. Spam links also get removed from "Links to your site" in Search Console. So your backlinks profile get clear.

[Broaster]

Neaptide

So it takes a few months, Im wondering every time I see a new spammer pop up should I just resubmit the disavow tool with those spammers.

once those bad links are removed from links to site could I uninstall disavow or does it have to be there forever?

[keyplyr]

I removed disavow files from that tool and my servers for the sites I manage over a year ago without any affect whatsoever. Having done that I assume there is no longer functionality.

[NeapTide]

I removed disavow files from that tool and my servers for the sites I manage over a year ago without any affect whatsoever. Having done that I assume there is no longer functionality.

When you disavowed links, they were blacklisted by Google. Now even if you remove the disavow file from tool, the links won't come back because they are gone permanently.

[Maximum44]

Disavow back in place. Thanks NeapTide. I removed it when site started to tank due to new update that just went out. Was kind of freaking a little. It was only removed for a week. It is not back in place with 40+ banned domains that spammed hundreds of thousands of links. Pretty insane. They just keep coming. Better stay on top of it.

[NeapTide]

Spam links once start piling up, they don't stop easily. You need to regularly check your backlinks by going to Search Traffic > Links to You Sites > More > Download Latest Links > Open with Google Docs on your browser. You will see new spam links appearing there every 5-10 days. Check each of them. If you see that they are from bad quality sites with no content and just links (usually these have cheapest domain extensions that are usually available for a dollar or less) or from p*orno sites add them to disavow links file and upload.

Also fix other problems with your site. Update old posts, no-follow all external links, fix duplicate posts issue and make sure there are least server errors. Compared to slow loading site, server errors can cause instant lose of ranking in SERPs.

[mirrornl]

but i dont think they disappear from console after diassavow

[NeapTide]

Those that are blacklisted disappear. I had 900,000+ some months ago. Now search console shows 650+. Just last month there were 1100. Site traffic has actually increased by 25%.

[levo]

What about spammy nofollowed links?

[seoskunk]

Does Disavow tool still work?

no

Did it ever work?

good quetion

I was told no such thing as Negative SEO

I was once told the tooth fairy existed

[Maximum44]

The thing with these tools and algorithms is that they not might work for everyone. The disavow tool was mainly developed for people with manual spam actions. I bet they noticed a difference using the tool!

[NeapTide]

Use the tool to remove spam links from your search console backlinks profile instead of being a stubborn jackass to let them pollute your list of healthy backlinks. otherwise, tell Google to stop supplying this tool.

By the way these days there are no manual actions. Just robots penalizing sites when they see sh*t piling up. Get your site devalued or thrown in trash I don't care because your sites turning into garbage or thrown away aren't going to hurt me. instead my sites will go up. good for me.

I also wish death to paid SEO. Although it is slowly dying. Sooner the better.

[Broaster]

NeapTide
So I just have to keep adding new links to my disavow every week everytime I see some spammer?

if the website linking to me is spam should I just disavow the entire website of that spammer instead or do I have to do all 2000 individual links on my list?

[keyplyr]

Just use domains in your disavow file.

Instead of:
http:www.example1.com
http:www.example2.com/directory/page.html

Just list:
example1.com
example2.com

That will also cover HTTP and/or HTTPS and other variants.

[MayankParmar]

This is a useful tool to clean URLs: < snip >

I believe it's better to remove the bad backlinks, no harm in doing that.

SEMRush warns that we should not nofollow all external links.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:40 pm (utc) on Mar 19, 2018]
[edit reason] Removed shortened link to an unknown tool. [/edit]