Disavow or not? Negative SEO
-
Since last November we have been receiving a lot of low quality backlinks from over 700 websites.
It looks like one of our pages from our website has been copied with the links being kept as they are. I have left a link to an example of this here: https://goo.gl/eWQODJ Please note, all examples seem to be copied in the same way.
We have also started seeing a decrease in the amount of organic traffic (Analytics Picture), As you can see the decrease is not yet so drastically high, but it is still a decrease and this is the third consecutive month we have seen this decrease.
Do you think it is worth it to use Disavow tool for all of these bad link or not?
-
Funnily, I saw this topic pop up yesterday on twitter. The advice is to still disavow:
http://searchengineland.com/google-responds-mass-negative-seo-extortion-emails-200689
-
Disavow is a powerful tool and using it is something you should be certain of, but it sounds like it would be the right choice in your case.
The disavow file is something you should always keep on top of; it's better to add 2 or 3 domains so that you can attribute results to changes made than adding 700 domains at once as it may be more difficult to pin point exactly which domains affected you negatively.
-
You can also file DMCA against the sites that are stealing the content - and if they are running Adsense ads, complain there too while you are at it.
If there are a lot of sites copying this content you can easily file DMCA reports rapid-fire using the "Copyright Removal" form in your Search Console.
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-dashboard
Fill out the form, submit, use the back button, change a couple lines of the form and submit again. Adsense complains can be filed by clicking the information link in the ad and navigating to the complaint form. Very easy to file these quickly too.
Before you start filing DMCA rapid fire, and getting their adsense turned off, be sure you have a clear understanding of copyright law. Google is required to tell them "who done it". That means that the website owner is going to get your name as the person who had their site whacked. They can sue you if you are making wildass complaints. One meeting with an IP attorney to explain your situation and hear his/her cautions might be adequate.
-
Hello there!
If you are the responsible for that site SEO and you spot potential harm in those backlinks then you should not wait to disavow them.
Keep in mind that it is possible that the keyword dropping might no be because of those backlinks only, I do suggest you to do a full check in that site SEO.Best luck.
GR.
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
-
More or Less pages helps in SEO?
Hi all, I have gone through some articles where less pages are suggested and they claim that they will be favoured by Google. I'm not sure as with limited pages, we can only target limited keywords. There might be threat from Google in-terms of doorway pages for more pages. But one of our competitor has many pages like dedicated page for every keyword. And their website ranks high and good for all keywords. I can see three pages created with differnet phrases for same on keyword. If less pages are good, how come this works for our competitor? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
What sort of knowledge differentiates a good SEO from a great SEO?
This is definitely more of a discussion than a clear cut answer.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Edward_Sturm0 -
A doorway-page vendor has made my SEO life a nightmare! Advice anyone!?
Hey Everyone, So I am the SEO at a mid-sized nationwide retailer and have been working there for almost a year and half. This retailer is an SEO nightmare. Imagine the worst possible SEO nightmare, and that is my unfortunate yet challenging everyday reality. In light of the new algorithm update that seems to be on the horizon from Google to further crack down on the usage of doorway pages, I am coming to the Moz community for some desperately needed help. Before I was employed here, the eCommerce director and SEM Manager connected with a vendor that told them basically that they can do a PPC version of SEO for long-tail keywords. This vendor sold them on the idea that they will never compete with our own organic content and can bring in incremental traffic and revenue due to all of this wonderful technology they have that is essentially just a scraper. So for the past three years, this vendor has been creating thousands of doorway pages that are hosted on their own server but our masked as our own pages. They do have a massive index / directory in HTML attached to our website and even upload their own XML site maps to our Google Web Master Tools. So even though they “own” the pages, they masquerade as our own organic pages. So what we have today is thousands upon thousands of product and category pages that are essentially built dynamically and regurgitated through their scraper / platform, whatever. ALL of these pages are incredibly thin in content and it’s beyond me how Panda has not exterminated them. ALL of these pages are built entirely for search engines, to the point that you would feel like the year was 1998. All of these pages are incredibly over- optimized with spam that really is equivalent to just stuffing in a ton of meta keywords. (like I said – 1998) Almost ALL of these scraped doorway pages cause an incredible amount of duplicate content issues even though the “account rep” swears up and down to the SEM Manager (who oversees all paid programs) that they do not. Many of the pages use other shady tactics such as meta refresh style bait and switching. For example: The page title in the SERP shows as: Personalized Watch Boxes When you click the SERP and land on the doorway page the title changes to: Personalized Wrist Watches. Not one actual watch box is listed. They are ALL simply the most god awful pages in terms of UX that you will ever come across BUT because of the sheer volume of this pages spammed deep within the site, they create revenue just playing the odds game. Executives LOVE revenue. Also, one of this vendor’s tactics when our budget spend is reduced for this program is to randomly pull a certain amount of their pages and return numerous 404 server errors until spend bumps back up. This causes a massive nightmare for me. I can go on and on but I think you get where I am going. I have spent a year and half campaigning to get rid of this black-hat vendor and I am finally right on the brink of making it happen. The only problem is, it will be almost impossible to not drop in revenue for quite some time when these pages are pulled. Even though I have helped create several organic pages and product categories that will pick-up the slack when these are pulled, it will still be awhile before the dust settles and stabilizes. I am going to stop here because I can write a novel and the millions of issues I have with this vendor and what they have done. I know this was a very long and open-ended essay of this problem I have presented to you guys in the Moz community and I apologize and would love to clarify anything I can. My actual questions would be: Has anyone gone through a similar situation as this or have experience dealing with a vendor that employs this type of black-hat tactic? Is there any advice at all that you can offer me or experiences that you can share that can help be as armed as I can when I eventually convince the higher-ups they need to pull the plug? How can I limit the bleeding and can I even remotely rely on Google LSI to serve my organic pages for the related terms of the pages that are now gone? Thank you guys so much in advance, -Ben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | VBlue1 -
Black Seo --> Attack
Hello there, Happy new year for everyone, and good luck this year. I have a real problem here, I saw in MOZ link history that somehow the "Total Linking Root Domains" is growing from a medium of 30 - 40 to 240 - 340 links and keep it growing. I guess somebody make me good joke, cause i did not buy any link :)) even cn, brasil, jp links, my store is from Romania. How I can block these links I think google will make me bad instead. What should i do? Thank you so much. With respect,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Shanaki
Andrei 0tYg1wB.png0 -
Negative SEO to inner page: remove page or disavow links?
Someone decided to run a negative-SEO campaign, hitting one of the inner pages on my blog 😞 I noticed the links started to pile up yesterday but I assume there will be more to come over the next few days. The targeted page is of little value to my blog, so the question is: should I remove the affected page (hoping that the links won't affect the entire site) or to submit a disavow request? I'm not concerned about what happens to the affected page, but I want to make sure the entire site doesn't get affected as a result of the negative-SEO. Thanks in advance. Howard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | howardd0 -
A case of negative SEO?
We came across today some very strange forum postings. Essentially they look like some nonsense text followed by a list of "adult" terms. In the middle of the list, completely randomly and strangely our brand terms appear in the list. There are no links to anything. The only thing I can think of is that someone is trying to make our brand terms algorithmically associated with questionable "red flag" terms in the eyes of search engines. I have no idea why else this would be happening. Could this be a case of some kind of Fiverr negative SEO attack? Is there any risk? Doesn't seem like anything we can do about it...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edu-SEO0 -
Tools to check Google Local SEO with suggestions.
Is there any tool for to check website position on Google maps ?? and also what is the way to check that a website is listed on which local directories and on which not listed and to get suggestions for improvements ?? so need Tools to check Google Local SEO with suggestions.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mnkpso0