Google launches their Disallow Tool
-
-
Hi Irving,
Today i have Compiled a comprehensive backlink report for one of my hotel client (http://www.fairfieldinnhotelcedarrapids.com/).I have identified all bad links and create one .txt file and upload via google disallow tool. now my question is, How do i know that all dead links has been removed? Is there any way to know status?
Thanks
-
If you Disavowed "good" links to your site, your rankings may be lowered as a result.
If you Disavowed "bad" links, then your Penguin issue could be reduced or resolved.
The best course of action is to allow a trained SEO professional examine each linking domain to determine if the links violate Google's Guidelines and only Disavow the links which do violate those guidelines. Also, the Disavow tool should not be used until after every possible action has been taken to remove the link. Google is quite clear on this topic. If you use the Disavow tool without "significantly" reducing the manipulative links to your site, it likely will not help.
-
I admit it... I panicked and disavowed a ton of domains that I didn't recognize as good links and I went from mid-page-2 to lower-page-3. So...my question is: what happens if I submit a new disavow file that has only a fraction of the links. Or, better yet, what if I delete the disavow file altogether with a file that has a comment saying Oops, sorry, we didn't know what we were doing with this tool and respectfully request to undo our mess".
A very good SEO told me to not chase after my disavow list, and I get what he's saying, but it's hard to not remember the days pre-disavow when I was at least on page 2 ... I was on page 1 for 14 years since 1998 until penguin hit! (I sell bean bag chairs and am speaking of serps for "bean bag chairs").
www.ahhprods.com in case anyone is curious
Thanks!
-
So far my webmaster response is about 10%, so you have no idea how much this tool can relieve some pain after so many attempts.
To the best of my knowledge, the Disavow Tool will have absolutely no impact on your success rate. It seems designed to help ensure webmasters who have a manual penalty lifted are not affected by Penguin.
-
This is gonna be interesting how everything works out.
I've sent a reconsideration request a day or two prior to the release. I will see how that request goes and then update the spreadsheet with new links I've removed as well as using disavow.
So far my webmaster response is about 10%, so you have no idea how much this tool can relieve some pain after so many attempts.
-
The damage was done before i came on the picture and there is no stats from before. the site rangs below other sites owned by the same clent with much weaker linking profiles. As i mentioend the site has the best of links, this is why i am prepared to get rid of any links that look even the slightest doggy. The site should rank number 1 when you look at the competition
I just dont have the time or budget to try to ask for removal, a attemp was made long ago with no sucess.
-
Very busy with a new project out of Arizona.
i have been following Mitt closely. He might just get over the line.
-
-
Thanks... Should have read the YouTube description.
-
This says to me that your site was spared an across the board penalty, but your rankings for specific keywords that have been overused in your anchor text have been suppressed. I would look at your incoming link anchor texts and see which one(s) you are no longer ranking for.
-
Excellent sir.
We will know pretty soon how everything shakes out once people start reporting back, but my suggestion would be that if you have a site that is not penalized you should NOT use this tool as an effort to try and clean up any spammy back links and clean up your good-to-bad backlink ratio. The reason is, this is a tool to be used as a last effort in trying to come back from a penalty when there are some links you tried to remove but simply cannot.
Sending this report will put eyeballs on your site and bring unnecessary attention to your site. Why ask Google to review your backlink profile and look at the nastiest links pointing to your site if your site is currently healthy.
An exception to this rule I think would be if you notice you are clearly under a negative SEO attack. Then it would make sense to be proactive.
-
Very solid analysis Ryan, good stuff.
-
Long time comming and quiite a messy interface. why they could not do somthing like Bing did with there tool is a mystery.
I have a client with a unatural link warning, saying "for this specific incident we are taking very targeted action on the unnatural links instead of your site as a whole"
to me this sounds like these links have been discounted anyhow and that the site is not punished, and maybe no need to do anything, but then goes on to say "If you are able to remove any of the links, please submit a reconsideration request, including the actions that you took."
so that makes me think i do need to do something. not very clear.
This client has a lot of very good links from CNN, NYT and a host of others, but partisipated in a link wheel. The blogs in this link wheel are real blogs rather than your obvious mass made for links blogs and makes it hard to identify what are what. i am thinking to disavow anything thats could be doggy, he has such good links I think it better to have a few false positives rather then leave any bad links in the profile.
Back to my first point, i was hoping for a click and job done approch link in BWMT.
-
Nice write-up Ryan, thanks.
Looks like an aggressive tool, I can see a lot of Webmasters running into trouble with this one.
If you contact a blog to get a link removed and then realise after actually I have made a mistake, or you login to a directory and remove it yourself and realise after you have made a mistake you can work on getting it back.
I get the feeling if you don't go through the process Ryan put down and you make a mistake with the Disallow Tool you wont be able to get those links back.
-
You are so right Ryan! This tool is not a shortcut at all. I fear that a lot of webmasters who have an unnatural links warning are going to jump straight to the disavow tool and ignore the actual reconsideration request process. As Matt says in the video, you still need to make a thorough attempt at trying to get the links removed on your own in order to have a manual penalty revoked.
-
Thanks for opening this discussion Irving. I have had calls from clients today regarding this "change" and it seems many site owners are simply caught up in the idea without realizing the true impact of this change. Resolving a manual Google penalty for manipulative links involves 4 steps prior to the release of this tool:
1. Compile a comprehensive backlink report. Many sites which suffer from a manipulative link penalty are absolutely doomed to have their Reconsideration Requests declined before they are even submitted. Why? Because they have not captured all the links to their site. You cannot rely on any single tool or even 2 tool combination. For each client I work with we compile a list of every known backlink to their site. How? By combining Google + Bing + OSE + Majestic + AHREFs data. Each data source offers links the others do not seem to find.
2. Properly identify all the manipulative links to the target site. Once again, many site owners repeatedly fail their Reconsideration Request and have no real chance at success because they try to take the easy way out. Attempting to replace real effort with fake work is what caused the penalty in the first place.
a. A thorough understanding of the difference between an organic link and manipulative link is required. In short, you must calibrate your understanding of links to match Google. How do you view free directory links? The reality is 99%+ of them are manipulative. How about press releases? Do you think most press releases are organic links? When site owners pay another company to publish articles they wrote with links back to their site, does that sound natural to you?
b. How about broken links? Can you use an automatic link checker and then if the link is not on the URL simply cross it off the list? In a significant percent of cases the link has simply moved to another page on the linking site. Some sites have very dynamic link structures where one day a URL is at ?page=20 and the next it is at ?page=21. Other sites make URL changes over time. You must search each site using their search widget and a Google site: search before assuming the site's link is gone.
c. Is the link marked NoFollow? You need to keep searching the page to ensure there are not other followed links on the same page.
The above are just some examples of gaps in the process of many who attempt to resolve this type of penalty. The disavow tool's introduction does not impact this step.
3. Webmaster Outreach. Once you have a comprehensive list of all known links to your site and have properly identified all the manipulative links, there is a need to contact every site on the list. Another common issue is those attempting to resolving a manipulative link issue give up far too easy. Site owners can be contacted via their WHOIS email address, the email address on their site AND the contact form on their site. You can call them, send a letter and chase them down on social networks. This type of sincere effort can lead to 50%+ reduction in links to your site.
Once sincere and comprehensive efforts have been made to remove the links, Google can clearly tell because there will be a "significant" reduction in manipulative links. At that point, THEN the Disavow tool can be used.
4. Filing a thoroughly documented Reconsideration Request. Three days later, the Reconsideration Request can be submitted.
So the introduction of this tool actually did not reduce any step in the process at all. Matt clearly outlined Google's expectation the tool is only used after a webmaster outreach campaign has been completed. If you expect to be able to simply submit a list of links without webmaster outreach, you are likely going to be disappointed.
Watch the first 2 minutes of the video a few times. Matt clearly says "...when you have contacted each webmaster multiple times....and there are only a small fraction of links left....that is when you can use the tool."
-
Nice summary at SEWatch:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2217602/Google-Disavow-Links-Tool-Now-Available
I'm curious about the "Most sites shouldn’t use this tool,” Cutts said. “Use caution." caveat. I've basically got only one client out of many that I'd even need to consider using this for. But I can't help but imagine hyper paranoid SEOs trying to massage their link profile down to the last drop of relevance. My gut feel is that this is a 'last resort' tool, and not a 'everyday SEO' tool.
-
Based on what Matt said, it sounds like Google only wants you to use the tool for links that you've tried to remove manually but couldn't. My guess is they may ignore your disavowals if you rely too much on the tool.
-
The links are in the YouTube video description.
"Access the feature here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main" -
Cutt's did not indicate how to download the tool. Did I miss that?
-
Thanks for the heads up. Just watched the video.
-
Really looking forward to this tool... But Joeys question is Really important. Does anyone have suggestions?
-
Awesome tool. How can I tell which links to my site I should disavow? We get a bunch of random links per day that look spammy, but how can I tell for sure that removing them will help rather than hurt?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Apparent Bot Queries and Impressions in Webmaster Tools
I've been noticing some strange stats in Google Webmaster Tools for my forum, which has been getting spam queries with impressions and no clicks. See the queries in the attached images. This might be a motive for the spammers or scrapers. I set the date range to just 22 Aug - 22 Nov and I see very obviously the spike is due to impressions. Questions: What should/can I do? Is Google doing something about this? How to avoid this? o6gKB
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SameerBhatia0 -
Tool to check google index status for backlinks?
I would like to check to see which backlink urls are indexed in Google. Is there a tool that can automate this work or will I have to do it manually?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Choice0 -
What penalty would cause this traffic drop (Google Analytic Screenshot)
This ecommerce site was hit (mostly) slowly by updates but there is nothing in GWT. Below is the graph. Keep in mind that most of our traffic is return customers, so the drops don't look dramatic, but they are. "New Visitors" doesn't show the drop. This is a "Daily" Google Analytics setting. The drop I've circled is May 23-May 24, 2013. It was a huge hit in non-return customers. This graph is "Unique Visitors" I don't know why the "New Visitors" graph is not showing the dip Although we had some big drops, a lot of the drop was gradual. Any help in identifying what could be causing the problem is appreciated. ga.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Got dropped on Google rank - Tips to discover why please
Hi guys originally my website was poor ranked on Google. So, after sign in on Moz and follow their tips I achieved the 4th position for one of my keywords (amazing!). But a few days ago my page dropped to bellow the first 50th pages for this same keyword, but I didn't make any changes on it. Anybody has some tips of how can I discover/repair what happened? Thank you all in advance. Best regards Paulo
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | phlcastro0 -
What is the difference between Positive Impact, No Impact, Negative Impact and Extremely Negative Impact in term of Google Update like panda or penguin etc.
What is the difference between Positive Impact, No Impact, Negative Impact and Extremely Negative Impact in term of Google Update like panda or penguin etc.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dotlineseo0 -
Keywords in Google Local results
We have a client in the moving business and I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the "local" results and the number of them that are not following Google's guidelines for Google Local accounts. 3 of them are using exact match keyword strings as their company names. I've reported all 3, every week for the last 2 months and have not seen a single dip in the rankings. Meanwhile our client has a duplicate listing we've verified and "suspended" and it hasn't changed for 4 months! Any tips? I've attached a photo of the listings as well. xwWZWyT.gif
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SmartWebPros0 -
Passing page rank with frames - Is this within Google Guidelines?
It appears this site is gaming Google for better rankings. I haven't seen a site do it this before way before. Can you tell me what enables this to get such good rankings, and whether what they are doing is legitimate? The site is http://gorillamikes.com/ Earlier this year this site didn't show up in the rankings for terms like "Cincinnati tree removal" and"tree trimming Cincinnati" etc. The last few months they have been ranking #1 or #2 for these terms. The site has a huge disparity in MozRank (8, very low) vs. Page Rank (6, high). The only links to this page come from the BBB. However, when you look at the source code you find 100% of what is displayed on the site comes from a page on another site via a frame. The content is here: http://s87121255.onlinehome.us/hosting/gorillamikes/ When I go to onlinehome.us I'm redirected to http://www.1and1.com/. I'm only speculating, but my guess is onlinehome.us has a high page rank that it is passing to http://gorillamikes.com/, enabling Gorilla Mikes to achieve PR of 6. Does this make sense? In addition, the content is over optimized for the above terms (they use "Cincinnati (Cincinnat, OH)" in the first three H2 tags on the page. And all of the top menu links result in 404 errors. Are the tactics this site is using legitimate? It appears that everything they're doing is designed to improve search results, and not in ways that are helpful to users. What do you think?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | valkyrk0 -
Google Penguin w/ Meta Keywords
It's getting really hard filtering through the Penguin articles flying around right now so excuse me if this has been addressed: I know that Google no longer uses the meta keywords as indicators (VERY old news). But I'm just wondering if they are starting to look at them as a bigger spam indicator since Penguin is looking at over-optimization. If yes, has anyone read good article indicating so? The reason I ask is because I have two websites, one is authoritative and the other… not so much. Recently my authoritative website has taken a dip in rankings, a significant dip. The non-authoritative one has increased in rankings… by a lot. Now, the authoritative website pages that use meta-keywords seem to be the ones that are having issues… so it really has me wondering. Both websites compete with each other and are fairly similar in their offerings. I should also mention that the meta-keywords were implemented a long time ago… before I took over the account. Also important to note, I never purchase links and never practice any spammy techniques. I am as white hat as it gets which has me really puzzled as to why one site dropped drastically.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BeTheBoss0