Disvow Tool Question

[Palmbourne]

Please forgive me if this is a silly question but I am an online retailer not an SEO man, If I was to upload a file with all the links I thought were spam links on and some weeks later I thought some of them were good links, if I uploaded another file with all of what I thought were good links removed would Google start taking these into account?

[MarieHaynes]

You know, I was going to mention that you could use the disavow tool if you suspected negative SEO.  My issue with this, though, is that I think that the vast majority of people who think they have been affected by negative SEO really have not.

I regularly get people telling me that someone is negative SEO'ing them when really they've just picked up some of the low quality odd backlinks that most sites get.

There have been many discussions about whether or not negative SEO exists.  I think that it can happen but that it doesn't happen often.  So, if you were very confident that you have been negative SEO'd then yes, this is a place to use the disavow tool too.

[PIXUS]

Hi Marie

Good post you made however I would add more from experience of cleaning up a Negative SEO camapign that the disavow is the only real weapon you have against these type of links.

100,000's of low-quality, spammy links built using automated tools cannot be removed overnight, especially when the suspect sites they are linked from conveniently have no contact or whois details to follow up on.

Whilst I agree in part that spammy low-quality wont hurt a site in small numbers, large amounts of these links will and disavow is the only way forward to deal with them hence why I advised previously to do proper research on what links are harmful and what are actually OK before submitting a final disavow file.

I agree with people going overboard with the Disavow tool though, ive heard some stories of people trying to disavow their whole backlink profile which is just madness in my eyes and begging for Google to get suspicious!

[MarieHaynes]

I'm assuming your concern was over Penguin.  Personally I think that Penguin is way more than just the percentage of anchor texted links going to your main page.  If you have serious anchor text spam then perhaps it might not be a bad idea to disavow.  If you do so, you'll likely lose some link juice.  Even though those links are low quality, I've seen sites rank with them and lose rankings as they disavow.

Then, you could concentrate on getting good links from this point on.  But if you haven't been aggressively spamming then I would just ignore those links and move on from here.

[Palmbourne]

Marie

Thank you for your reply, using open explorer I added a lot of links to my disvow file that had my main keywords where the domain was at very low value, 5 up to 30, over the years my two main keywords were getting far more links than my main site which as I understand it is not a good thing.

[MarieHaynes]

The disavow tool really is only meant to be used by people who have had an unnatural links warning in their WMT.  If you haven't had this warning then I wouldn't advise using this tool.

Since the tool came out, I regularly have clients emailing me when they find a spammy link to their site wanting to know whether they should disavow it.

Every site is going to collect spammy looking links.  Don't worry about them.  They won't hurt you.

If I didn't have an unnatural links warning in my WMT there are only a couple of reasons why I would use the disavow tool.  The first is if I knew that I was affected by Penguin.  However, as of yet, Penguin has not refreshed since the disavow tool became available and what that means is that no one knows if disavowing your links is actually going to help.  It would be unlikely for me to use the tool other than that unless I knew I had made anchor texted links in low quality sources.  But, be careful...removing those could do more harm than good!

I have seen a number of people use the disavow tool incorrectly.  There is a reason why there is a warning when you go to use the tool that tells you that you should not use it if you don't know what you are doing.

With all of that being said, if you did submit a disavow.txt and you wanted to change it, you would just download the file from the disavow tool, make changes on it and then re-upload it.  As Google crawls the web, when they see a link pointing to your site and that link is listed in your disavow tool they will add an invisible nofollow to the link in regards to their algorithms.

[MozAddict]

As as per my experiences when you update the dissavow tool, your latest file is taken into account.

[PIXUS]

Good to see you are starting to see a recovery. Keep us posted how the disavow process goes!

[Palmbourne]

Thank You, I have been been adding links on a weekly basis and uploading on a weekly basis, up to now my site has moved back up to nearly where we were prior to a panda update last April, I will however follow advice and stop doing this.

[Palmbourne]

Thank You.

[PIXUS]

Hi John

Not a silly question at all, thats what the SEO MOZ Q&A is all about!

With regards to your query, as I see it, when you upload a second disavow text file with the links removed that you feel are good, Google will just take the latest version of the Disavow tool into account therefore not de-valuaing the links you class as good.

One word of discretion though, I wouldnt keep playing around with the disavow file, just spend the proper analysis time, make your final selection, upload and monitor your rankings over the following days/weeks/months etc to see if it has an effect.

Hope this helps!

[SVmedia]

I haven't looked into it extensively, but given Google's recommendations about the tool I wouldn't expect that kind of flexibility.  It's really meant as last resort type of tool, after you've tried contacting webmasters to get the links taken down.

I would just be sure your situation is really bad enough to warrant disavowal.  Maybe consult a doctor.  Hope that helps!