Is there proof that disavowing backlinks in GSC help to boost rankings in Google?
-
Hi Guys
Let's say you have a website and you got some questionable back links or lower quality ones. Does anyone have proof that after disavowing back links helped in the rankings or had some positive effects? I am concerned that Google will place our website on their radar and instead possibly demote it or smth.
Lastly, if disavowing is the way to go what criteria do you use to disavow backlinks?
So if you get questionable back links over time, should you disavow ongoing as well? If so how often?
Cheers
John
-
Thanks Everett!!
-
John Whiteboardwiz,
Since your question was specifically if there is any proof, I wanted to share a case study by Edd Willson, which shows the value of submitting a disavow file pretty clearly:
Search for "disavow file case study" and set the time preferences to the last 12 months. There are lots of other examples.
Also marking John Sammon's response as a good answer.
-
Hey John,
I've done SEO for 10+ years in an agency environment an I would encourage you to use the disavow tool. You'll want to disavow in both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Here's how to proceed:
Do it in phases - the first round should focus on the worst stuff in your backlink profile - I'd also look at spammy anchor text too. You can view these links in Moz or GSC.
You'll typically see results in 2-4 weeks.
You can come back to it after the 2-4 week period and try another round.
If you have additional questions about what to disavow, please fire away. I'm happy to review some links you may be on the fence about disavowing.
-
Hello,
Ask ten SEOs about disavow files and you're likely to get ten different answers, five of which say do it and five of which say don't. I don't personally put a lot of stock in them, but here's something you can do:
Set a minimum spam score threshold and disavow those links. If rankings go down, increase the minimum spam score threshold, remove the links from the disavow file that are not above that threshold, and resubmit the file. I just saw a case study about this last week at TechSEO Boost in Boston.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Do we lose Backlinks and Domain Authority of URL when we change domain Name?
Have 1 performing domain (Monthly - 4M visitor ) now we want to change domain name ( Brand name like SEOMOZ to Moz ). I have general knowledge about domain changing prevention tips like 301 redirection and other thing. My concern is about backlinks and DA. How can I prevent any lose from SEO Point of view. (backlink lose) Do I need to change all backlink form source or redirection is enough to get all reference traffic from that backlinks?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Referral source not indexed or showing up in GSC
I've been doing a lot of research about this and have not been able to find an answer just yet. Google analytics is showing over 43k referrals from about 35 different spam sources. I checked the hostname thinking that they were ghost referrals and I was surprised to see that they all show our domain so that part is disqualified. The next thing I did was to look at the referral path to look at the pages that were pointing to the site and when I clicked to launch the link the window loaded YouTube or did not load at all. After doing a bit of research I came across **Disavowing Links, **at first it sounded like the perfect solution for this, but after reading all the warnings that everyone gives I decided to spend more time researching and to use that as a last resource. I proceeded to check Google Search Console to identify those backlinks and to make sure they were coming up there as well. To my surprise, none of these links show up in GSC. Neither for the www or the non-www property. I have decided to avoid disavowing the links before making sure that this is the correct thing to do. Although it may still seem like it is, I want to ask for an expert opinion or if anyone else has experienced this. If GSC doesn't see them it means that Google is not indexing them, my problem is that GA still sees them and that concerns me. I don't want this to affect our site by getting penalized, or by losing ranking. Please help!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dbmiglpz0 -
Should I Even Bother Trying To Recover This Site After Google Penguin?
Hello all, I would like to get your opinion on whether I should invest time and money to improve a website which was hit by Google Penguin in April 2014. (I know, April 2014 was nearly 2 years ago. However, this site has not been a top priority for us and we have just left until now). The site is www.salmonrecipes.net Basically, we aggregated over 700 salmon recipes from major supermarkets, famous chefs, and others (all with their permission) and made them available on this site. It was a good site at the time but it is showing its age now. For a few years we were occasionally #1 on Google in the US for "salmon recipes", but normally we would be between #2 and #4. We made money from the site almost entirely through Adsense. We never made a huge amount, but it paid our office rent every month, which was handy. We also built up an email database of several thousand followers, but we've not really used this much. (Yet). In the year from 25th April 2011 to 24th April 2012 the site attracted just over 500k visits. After the rankings dropped due to Google Penguin, traffic dropped by 77% in the year from 25th April 2011 to 24th April 2012. Rankings and traffic have not recovered at all, and are only getting worse. I am happy to accept that we deserved our rankings to fall during the Google Penguin re-shuffle. I stupidly commissioned an offshore company to build lots of links which, in hindsight, were basically just spam, and totally without any real value. However they assured me it was safe and I trusted them, despite my own nagging reservations. Anyway, I have full details of all the links they created, and therefore I could remove many of these 'relatively' easily. (Of course, removing hundreds of links would take a lot of time). My questions ... 1. How can I evaluate the probability of this site 'recovering' from Google Penguin. I am willing to invest time/money on link removal and new (ethical) SEO work if there is a reasonable chance of regaining a position in the top 5 on Google (US) for "salmon recipes" and various long-tail terms. But I am keen to avoid spending time/money on this if it is unlikely we will recover. How can I figure out my chances? 2. Generally, I accept that this model of site is in decline. Relying on Google to drive traffic to a site, and on Google to produce revenue via its Adsense scheme, is risky and not entirely sensible. Also, Google seems to provide more and more 'answers' itself, rather than sending people to e.g. a website listing recipes. Given this, is it worth investing any money in this at all? 3. Can you recommend anyone who specialises in this kind of recovery work. (As I said, I have a comprehensive list of all the links that were built, etc). OK, that is all for now. I am really looking forward to whatever opinions you may have about this. I'll provide more info if required. Huge thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | smaavie
David0 -
Does Backlinks from User Profile Page Still Matter
Though, lot of algorithmic changes, updates have happened. However, backlinks from quality source or trusted sites has hardly lost its importance and thats why Open SIte Explorer or Majestic seo is still there to find quality of backlinks, trust factor and authority factor of the backlinks. I need to know does having backlink (dofollow) from Profile Page - still matters and if yes - will a do follow backlink from Moz Profile Page or any authority site or forum page, having dofollow link from user profile page - does it still count as a mark to authority of your site.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
Is bad English detected by Google
Hi, I am based in the UK and in a very competitive market - van leasing - and I am thinking about using an Indian SEO company for my ongoing SEO. They have sent me some sample artilces that they have written for link building and the English is not good. Do you think that google can tell the difference between a well written article and a poorly written article? Will the fact that articles are poorly writtem mean we will lose potential value from the link? Any input would be much appreciated. Regards John J
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Johnnyh0 -
Where can i see ejemple of disavow files to adapt mine in order to send to google
Can i send a disavow file to google as CSV file. Where can i see ejemple of disavow files to adapt mine in order to send to google
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
I think my site is affected by a Google glitch...or something
Although google told me No manual spam actions found i had not received an unnatural link request notice i figured it would be a good idea to clean these up so i did. So i have submitted 3 reconsideration requests from google. They all came back with the same response: No manual spam actions found. I really doubt that anyone at google really checked those out.You will notice that i don't even appear on page 1-10 at all...its clearly google filtering the site out from the results(except for my brand terms), but i have no idea what for.What do you guys think it is? If you see anythign let me know so i can have it fixed.This has been going on for 2 months now...my company has been around for a long time...i dont understand why suddenly im not showing up in searches for the keyword si used to rank for...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CMTM0 -
Someone COPIED my entire site on Google- what should I do?
I purchased a very high ranked and old site a year or so ago. Now it appears that the people I purchased from completely copied the site all graphics and content. They have now built that site up high in rankings and I dont want it to compromise my site. These sites look like mirror images of each other What can I do?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TBKO0