Webrings, yes, they must be dead right?

[Mark_A]

Our web company posted an orphan links page (years ago it seems) in all their client's websites comprising links to their other clients.

I was only recently aware, checking inward links and wondered if I should disavow these?

The other sites are unrelated to our business, as are we to them.

We have one of these link pages on our site also (an orphan), with links to them as well.

I wouldn't recommend such an action today, but should I do something about these historic pages / links ?

[keyplyr]

...should I do something about these historic pages / links ?

IMO they're toxic and even though the links page is unconnected to other pages on your company's site, the breadcrumbs are there.

We never know how the next algo tweak may impact us. Backlinks are easy prey for either positive or negative influence.

[Mark_A]

Hi keyplyr
I didn't spot them looking for inward links in G, perhaps someone else already disavowed them there?
Or perhaps I need to take a closer look!

[keyplyr]

Disavowing a link doesn't remove it from Google's backlink list.

It *was* supposed to disassociate whatever negative influence that linked site had from passing onto your site - however there is a wide belief (search for previous discussions here at WW) that the disavow tool, and the list of sites we all uploaded, are no longer actively a factor.

[Mark_A]

Aha, yes I do recall reading something about that.

Are you saying there is no longer any point in my using the disavow link at google?

I suppose for these I could go the longer way around and get the actual links taken down, but it will take a bit more work.

[Leosghost]

we all uploaded

We ? All ? ..

[engine]

Are you saying there is no longer any point in my using the disavow link at google?

Google pretty much knows what's what now that so many disavows have been submitted. Last year at Pubcon Las Vegas, Google's Gary Illyes was playing down the need for using disavow. He said, "If you do not have a manual action then you do not need to submit a disavow"

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Mark_A]

Hi engine, thank you for the link, interesting reading.
I need to check G inward links to see if they are there, I found them initially via Bing Webmaster Tools.
Bing does not seem to see any other links apart from these odd ones, there are more links in G.

[Mark_A]

G link does not seem to work as I recalled it, I thought it went "link:www.yoursite.co.uk" but that lists any page in which the word "yoursite" exists, anyone?

[Mark_A]

I just saw some videos from this site and I will probably not use disavow on G. I don't know enough about it.

[lucy24]

You forgot one question. Is the page getting crawled regularly? If not, there’s no need to disavow anything, because all you’re doing is drawing G###'s attention to something they would otherwise not have noticed. If the page has been orphaned for years, it would not be surprising to learn that bing crawls it far more often than google.

What is the purpose of the page? How would humans find it?

The fine print at the bottom of Google Advanced Search (the page I use by default) says “Find pages that are similar to, or link to, a URL” but the linked page [support.google.com] does not, in fact, say anything about the “link:” operator. site: yes, info: yes, lots of others yes, but no link:

[not2easy]

I thought I had read some time back that Google's link: operator is no longer functional, something about being deprecated. I'll try to find that reference.

Found it fast enough to add it here: RIP Google link: operator [webmasterworld.com] from January 2017.

[Mark_A]

Thanks lucy24, a useful link!

I can't be certain the page is orphaned, I haven't seen any links to it in the live site, but that isn't the same as saying for certain that there are no links.

As to it's purpose, I can only assume it was a way of getting inward links for the clients of the web dev company.