Google launches their Disallow Tool

[activitysuper]

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.

[AlanMosley]

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.

[Marcus_Miller]

Very solid analysis Ryan, good stuff.

[irvingw]

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.

[irvingw]

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.

[tdawson09]

Thanks... Should have read the YouTube description.

[tdawson09]

Alan, good to hear from you. How is SEO doing down under?

Brad

iboats.com

[AlanMosley]

Very busy with a new project out of Arizona.

i have been following Mitt closely. He might just get over the line.

[AlanMosley]

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.

[William.Lau]

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.

[RyanKent]

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.

[Ahhprods]

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!

[RyanKent]

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.

[CommercePundit]

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