Spammy links on client site in 2019 - should I disavow?

[TomSnow]

I'm auditing a site. Their org traffic grew 90% in 2019. Found hockey stick growth in links around Feb 2019. Then a drop in traffic after the March update.

These links are on thin content domains that have different domain names but the same layout.

They look identical. Some of them 404.

I think the site owner bought these. Or the owner of the link farm just spammed the hell out of them.

I hear Google ignores spam links. But does anyone think these links could have caused the drop in the traffic?

Should I disavow?

[StoneSolid]

My sites are heavily link-spammed by such sites in last few years (identical layout, different domain, different pages and pics targeted).
I don't bother disavowing because it would be a daily task to catch them all, next to impossible.

If google is really retarded to the point where they'll think I build or buy 100 backlinks from such sites DAILY, they are welcome to penalize me.
Google does a lot of silly things these days so nothing would surprise me anymore.

[tangor]

Should I disavow?

Recent commentaries suggest this is a waste of time, g has moved on in that regard after all the help in fine tuning their algos. :)

I have never bothered with the disavow tool. Never made any sense for me to do their work.

YMMV

[dennisjensen]

Depending on how many links,and whether they occur daily, as StoneSolid mentions. You could test it. Disavow them and see, if you get any change. And, naturally, share the outcome :)

[JesterMagic]

Google has really been down playing disavowing links lately and I don't think they even plan to move it to the new search console. This seems to suggest it doesn't do much any more.

It most likely will not hurt if you test but when I have updated my list over the years (sometimes adding hundreds of urls) I have never experienced a improvement or decline except when a algorithm update has been reported. This means you will most likely not see any changes right away.

[TomSnow]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your help.

Aside from the disavow question, don't you think having a bunch of low quality links in the backlink profile might hurt rankings?

There's 11K links and 90% are 0 to 10 UR (URL Rating) on Ahrefs.

[not2easy]

GSC showed me thousands (several thousands) of links from one site I had never heard of and since my own site being linked to had only 35 pages, it seemed excessive. I copied a few links and later went to see what the heck those links were. The domain was gone. My site did not suffer. I would not lift a finger to disavow links of any kind from anywhere if I did not arrange for those links. You have no control over what some clown might do with information they find online.

Google seems to be pretty adept at identifying junk links. I have never seen solid evidence that fake or malicious backlinks are stored in some profile that can hurt sites with Google. I have never seen anything to indicate that Google uses "UR" numbers for anything. Google may well have an URL rating system but if they do, you will not easily learn how it is achieved or how much value it holds or what number is assigned to your backlinks.

I would not be as concerned about either the number or quality of random (not arranged or created) backlinks as I would about usability, good fresh content, easy navigation, user friendly layout and such things that you can control.

[Rndm]

If i was analyzing, I would look at the anchor text these links use and take it from there. Even if you are pretty sure that these links are the issue I don't think that disavowing them will have the results that you want.

[timmyb]

I'd say don't with disavowing the links. One of my clients has a bunch of spammy links and is ranking in top positions. I thought about disavowing the links a while ago, but I've heard it's a waste of time. I've just focused on the things that I can control.