Is link disavow becoming a necessary defensive strategy?

[jandunlop]

We have a large site which attracts a massive amount of link spam on a continual basis. I'm talking thousands of links every day. The reason we get so much spam linking to us is that we are an authority site in a highly spammed vertical.

So, to avoid falling foul of Penguin are we fast coming to a point where sites have to constantly monitor their link profiles and disavow anything that looks remotely dodgy?

[johnny122]

Did you notice a loss of ranks/traffic? Did you get a warning message in Google Webmaster Tools for "unnatural links"? As an "authority site", the answer is probably "no". No need to use the disavow tool in my opinion.

[David_ODonnell]

Hi Jan,

I posted a similar question just the other day (http://moz.com/community/q/thoughts-on-proactive-link-disavow)

Sheldon commented on that question with a link to an interesting G+ Hangout where they touched on it slightly. You might want to check that out.

I also posted the question on G+ and got a number of replies which may be interesting to checkout:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/112470203895742795102/posts/gAXXxDWMLNS

Like most things SEO, there are people on both sides of the fence. One side suggessts that you don't want touch the disavow tool unless you get a warning email (or penalty) from Googs. The other side are all for regularly, proactively disavowing junk. You may need to take all the available info into consideration and make your own judgement call.

Hope this helps.

[jandunlop]

Loss of rankings/traffic = Yes for penguin 1.0
GWT Warning = No

[jandunlop]

Thanks David, some interesting comments on those posts. Normal, I would not bother with disavowing but in this particular instance the volume is at a level to cause serious concern.