Disavow Tool - WWW or Not?
-
Hi All,
Just a quick question ... A shady domain linking to my website is indexed in Google for both example.com and www.example.com. If I wan't to disavow the entire domain, do I need to submit both:
domain:www.example.com
domain:example.com
or just:
domain:example.com
Cheers!
-
To clear up any uncertainty, I think there are two questions being asked:
- Link to be disavowed: Do I disavow both the www and non-www versions of a bad link?
- Site you own: Which site in webmaster tools do I upload the disavow list to - www or non-www?
The link to be disavowed is an easy answer because in most cases if you want a link disavowed, you probably don't want a link from that domain (because its suspect, de-indexed, etc.). Therefore you can simply blanket it with domain:badwebsite.com. This will be sure to get any link from this site to yours, regardless of the subdomain (i.e. www.badwebsite.com, ww2.badwebsite.com, forum.badwebsite.com, etc.)
Answer #2 isn't quite as easy. The safest (and arguably proper) way is to link mine both the www and non-www versions of your website and treat each as a separate site (as Google does). Even if you are using 301 redirects or canonicals I still recommend this method. In many cases, one version will have a much smaller backlink volume. In any case, pick out the bad links and try to get them removed by emailing the website. Once the attempt has been made, Compile the remaining backlinks (still in separate lists for www and non-www), and upload them to their respective disavow tool areas.
-
The correct syntax, whether there is a www or not is to use domain:example.com. this will disavow both the www and the non www.
-
Just to be clear can someone answer this for me?
I am about to disavow some links and when I get to webmaster tools I have both the www.site.com and site.com and it's asking me to select one. Which one do I pick to disavow the links?........www or non-www?
-
If you use:
domain:example.com
then this will disavow www.example.com, example.com and all pages coming from this domain.
-
Based on the situation, I would only disavow the ones that are indexed and be sure to keep track of your work. The Read More link I posted above explains everything you need to know. You should also check both versions (www and non) of the back links to your site.
another quote from that page:
'Note: When looking at the links to your site in Webmaster Tools, you may want to verify both the www and the non-vww version of your domain in your Webmaster Tools account. To Google, these are entirely different sites. Take a look at the data for both sites.'
-
Hi Sean - Thanks for your reply. That means we'd have to check for all domains we want to disavow whether both versions are indexed or not. Or disavow both versions just to be be on the safe side...
-
Hi Sean - Thanks for your reply. I just edited my question, maybe it wasn't very easy to understand. I was just wondering if to disavow a domain that has both WWW and not-WWW versions indexed in Google, I had to disavow both:
domain:www.example.com
domain:example.com
or just:
domain:example.com
I understand the risks of using the disavow tool and asking for the links to be removed is no longer an option.
-
No do not do this.
Which version do you want to keep? You will need to look at the data to determine which version is the most linked to. Than just redirect www to non www or vice versa. You should also setup both non www and www versions of Google webmaster tools.
Also in the version you want to keep, go to your google webmaster tools>configuration>settings and than define which version yo want.
Disvow tool should be considered the last resource for removing links to your site that are shady.
-
Hi Carlos,
Remove both Google looks at them as two separate sites. However, I would not recommend using Google disavow tool unless the linking page is not accessible, or the webmaster of the linking site will not take it down after a couple attempts.
"This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results. We recommend that you disavow backlinks only if you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you. In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool." Read More
This should help.
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
-
Tool to help find blog / news pages?
Do you guys know of any tools where if I have a list of Url's it can help find blog and news pages and let me know which ones have these.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Not appearing when www.domainname.com.au is searched
We are working on an SEO campaign that has an issue, of which we are unsure of the cause. When the domain is searched for in Google as domainname.com.au. The search results show the website just fine. See here for the display of this. http://imgur.com/a/Vcbqs However, when the domain is searched for in Google as www.domainname.com.au. The search results do not display our website. See here to see this issue. http://imgur.com/a/jX692 We are unsure why our website does not appear in Google's listings when the www. is added in search. If anyone can help us here to explain and help us resolve this, that would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo0 -
Disavow files and net com org etc ....
When looking at my backlinks if I see something like this: www.domainPizza.net
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HLTalk
www.domainPizza.com
sub.domainPizza.com
www.domainpizza.org
domainPizza.net
https://domainpizza.com
https://www.domainpizza.net What is the actual list of disavows that I put into the file if I want to disavow this domain? I am seeing so many variations of the same domain. Thank you.0 -
Mega Good Bulk Keyword Tool
I have over 1000 keywords to sort out , I need a tool that picks up on variations and symmons. Does anyone know of a very good tool that is available? If not I'll do it the long way round with Excel 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Tools to scan entire site for duplicate content?
HI guys, Just wondering if anyone knows of any tools to scan a site for duplicate content (with other sites on the web). Looking to quickly identify product pages containing duplicate content/duplicate product descriptions for E-commerce based websites. I know copy scape can which can check up to 10,000 pages in a single operation with Batch Search. But just wondering if there is anything else on the market i should consider looking at? Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Removing www from printed and digital
I wanted to make sure there will be no negative SEO implications if we change all ‘www.fdmgroup.com' references (printed and digital)?After some Googling, apparently some search engines regard www.fdmgroup.com and fdmgroup.com as two different websites and split SEO rankings (quote me if i’m wrong!).To date, a lot (if not all) of our online presence (e.g. adverts, banner links etc) use www.fdmgroup.com (both visually and in HTML markup) so these would also need updating to remove the 'www'.What are your thoughts? For the sake of SEO and canonical/duplicate content/ranking issues etc, would changing all www.fdmgroup.com references have a negative effect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fdmgroup0 -
Google webmaster tool (GWT) owner removal issue
Hi! I have a new client, the former agency added the client property with the agency account so we had to create a new GA account (as you can’t transfer ownership at the account level) but we also kept access to the former account to keep historical data. We were granted owner access to the GWT (which is more flexible, you can remove owners and creators) and we now want to remove former agency users. We have 3 adresses. One was verified with delegation method (no pb for removal), one with meta tag (no pb) and one with Google Analytics. Here it becomes tricky as Google says regarding GA verif method “If this account was verified using a Google Analytics tracking code, you should make sure that the user you want to unverify is no longer an administrator on the Analytics account. Otherwise, removal may not be permanent”. The thing is that this user has the same email address as the one used to create the agency GA account (no ownership transfer) so I basically can’t remove admin rights. The other possibility, as Google mentions when I try to unlink this user, is “remove the administrator status in Google Analytics or delete the Google Analytics tracking code on the website”. But we don’t want to remove the code as we still want to track data with the former account for historical analysis purposes. Has anyone ever faced this situation? Do you know how to handle this? Do you think that unlinking the GWT and the GA accounts will unverify the GA method? Many thanks in advance ! Ennick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ennick0 -
Reciprocal link finder tool - not looking to do reciprocal links.
The company I work for had an old SEO company that did a lot of reciprocal links with websites that are not what we want to be associated with. Does anyone know of a tool that might be able to tell us if there are still reciprical links to our site? I want to try and find them, but the old pages we had with links going out have been deleted.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | b2bcfo0