To disavow or not?!

[Jon-C]

Hi,

I've been rooting around my GWT account and noticed two what may be dodgy links, they look like a blog network - no contact details on the site and basically just blog posts about various subjects that all contain keyword rich links.

The two that are pointing at me are two seperate articles on two sites that both contain around 3 keyword links to our website.

I have no idea why these are linking to me as I have not requested them, so not too sure if someone has done this on purpose on what! Looked on the sites in question and there is no way of contacting the person responsible for the sites.

Not had any warnings yet (touch wood) in GWT, how you you go about trying to get shut of links when there is no contact info on the sites?

Bit wary of using the Disavow thing in Google as some people say go for it while others say avoid?

Any hints/tips would be welcomed as this has got me a bit worried!

Cheers

Ted

[TomRayner]

Hi Ted

Myself and a few others here are of the mind set that you should only use the disavow tool when prompted by Google.  This is when Google sends you an unnatural links warning to your website and asks you to remove these links.

Colour me sceptical, but I feel that if you can avoid opening up to Google on the issue, then you should.  Not that you should have anything to hide, but I think there's nothing to be gained by doing so unless you have been requested by Google themselves, and you could potentially be putting yourself on their radar.

If you're traffic and rankings have not severely decreased and there's no visible penalty on your site, then I would leave the links alone. I'd certainly keep a note of them and mention that you cannot contact them because there is no email or contact form (incidentally, have you tried looking at the registrar's data on who.is?). Should anything happen in the future (touch wood it won't) you're ready to rock straight away.  There's also a chance that Google has already devalued these links - we've seen evidence that Google is moving towards monthly refreshes in its algorithm to devalue links on the fly (which is a much better solution then a dramatic fall because of a penalty).

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has had success in being proactive with the disavow tool (disavowing bad links before a penalty has come, rankings improve), but so far I don't think I've met anyone on the forums that has done so. Would love to be proven wrong, but until then my advice would be to make a note on the domains, but don't disavow.  Concentrate instead with the good inbound marketing strategies you've been using so far - I think this is a much better use of your time.

[Jon-C]

Hi Tom,

That was my instinct to be honest, leave it and see what happens as I don't want G to go digging and find anything else that I've not found myself - just wanted a different view

Bit pee'd off really as I 100% did not gain/add these links myself - always steered away from stuff like that

Would also be interested if anyone has had luck using the disavow tool before any penalties or warnings, be handy to know!

Ted

[TomRayner]

You and I both, Ted!

It's very annoying I know, but I think we can be a bit optimistic over the matter.  If those links are just a one-off and are not replicated en masse, then I'd be pretty confident that Google wouldn't penalise you for it.  I'm of the opinion that it would treat the links like an anomaly in the data - an exception to the rule and not indicative of the actual website.  It's quite a sophisticated algorithm after all and, despite the flak that they get (definitely from me), Google site reviewers are pretty reasonable folk.

[mememax]

Completely agree with Tom, save your findings in an excel file, which may help you in the near future. Just because if those lnks may be hurting you you'll receive an unnatural link warning or a descrease in traffic. The disavow tool is helpful on removing links in a great scale, not for removing jsut a couple of links each week. Is good to prevent but as Tom said, better to not raise google eyes on your site, a manual review can only spot bad things; I've never seen a manual promotion after a review

[purpleindigo]

The general consensus in this area is to leave using the disavow tool unless Google have sent you a notice regarding your linking profile.

However, Penguin is an algo, which can penalise people for their linking profiles and in this case no email gets sent out. I think this question highlights the fear that if you all of a sudden get these "bad" links or have them in your profile then you might be penalised and not know why. Because everyone runs around saying "only do it if Google told you to" then you avoid using the disavow tool and Penguin continues to own you.

So in essence, I agree with what people are saying, but there are still a bunch of unknowns here and we shouldn't all just take what Matt Cutts says as gospel (I.E. only us disavow if you've received an email). Google are getting tons of stuff wrong right now (hopefully with some Holy Grail future yet to be shown to us) and things need to become more transparent so things can be fixed.

[MarieHaynes]

Two spammy links are not going to hurt your site at all.  I would ignore these and move on.

I run a fair sized information site that gets links like this all the time.  I have no idea why but I am not about to spend time trying to remove them.

[garyshack]

Hi Ted,

If you have dodgy links seen from GWT which you suspect as part of a blog network, you might as well further investigate it using other tools like OSE, MajesticSEO, Ahrefs or LRT in order to assure you that only 2 dodgy links are pointing to you. GWT in most cases won't tell you the complete picture of your link profile.

Of course, 2 dodgy links won't hurt you but it won't hurt you either to use the Disavow Tool when you see incoming spammy links en masse. Being proactive using it is fine IMHO. Why? I would not want to be hit first and lose revenue along the way. By experience, bringing back a site from penalty takes time. Dropped traffic over a period of time is tantamount to revenue loss.