Should I disavow these links?

[Bee159]

Hi all, I have a site that is a year old, we have been building backlinks organically - probably around 50 or so - then almost overnight we had100s of spammy links. Screenshot here: https://ibb.co/cijiub

My questions:

1. Should I disavow these?
2. What happens if I don't disavow these?
3. Can I work out where they came from?
4. If I disavow a few of them, is this a token offering to the Google Gods that will lower my risk of being penalised?

Thank you.

cijiub

[GastonRiera]

Hello Bee159,

On one hand, Google (though their spokemen) said that the algorithm is pretty good finding and diminishing the strenght of spammy links. So, if you talk to someone from Google right now, they might said: leave them, probably the algorithm will consider those as spammy and there will be no harm.

On the other hand, If you are absolutely sure that those links are spammy and malicious... then go ahead and disavow them. Remember that it's possible to disavow an entire domain.
More info here: Disavow backlinks - Search Console Help

Answering the list:

1. Its up to you.
2. Google might eventually recognize them as spammy and ignore them in your site's backlink profile
3. I don't know any good way of reverse engineering how backlinks end up in spammy sites.
4. I don't believe that Google might think more of your site just if disavow some links. Sure, if the penalty is caused by any of those links, then you will lower that risk.

Hope it helps.
Best Luck.
GR.

[VeroBrain]

Hi Bee,

1.- Yes, please disavow those! I do not recommend to wait.
The awful quality of them is by default harming. Also the amount, if you have 50 good inbound links, I mean that you worked hard for getting them, having 100 low quality, that is a great proporcion. Please do it carefully, include only the spam ones.  You can use Moz´s Open Site Explorer for verify the spam score. Never use "disavow all".

How: verify into the Google Search Console:

a) Search Traffic, b) Links to Your Site, c) Who links the most, d) All domains.

There you will get a list of all domains.

Download it, erase from the list all the good inbound domains. Then you will have a list of domains for disavow, save as .text and upload to Google Disavow Tool.

You have to verify in all the properties, just in case. If it is necessary repeat the process in the affected property. Remember that for Google, every possible version of your website is a different property, for this purpose and many others.

http://www.example.com

http://example.com

https://www.example.com

https://example.com

Remember to disavow into Bing Websmasters too.

2.- Google might notice those as spammy or might "think" that you bought those.

3. It is possible, by the police or a highly skilled hacker. Therefore not many options.

4.- On the contrary. You notice them you took action. Good luck!

Mª Verónica

2648487 disavow-links-main

[Paddy_Moogan]

Hi there,

Gaston's reply below is very helpful so I don't have too much to add apart from a couple of points.

Personally, I think I'd disavow these links a bit at a time - perhaps submit a few of them to start off with and make sure there are no negative effects, then add more over time. Right now, no one really knows how Google handles disavow because on one hand, Google say they handle things automatically, but on the other hand they still provide the tool for us to use...

1. If you don't disavow now, just make sure you keep a note of all of these kinds of links (and watch for new ones in the future) and if you do experience any penalty problems, you have a list ready to go to submit.

2. If you do disavow now, take your time to get the list right and make sure you only disavow links which are purely manipulative and / or look spammy. If you haven't seen any traffic or penalty problems, you want to be extra careful when using disavow. At the same time, if links are clearly spammy, they're unlikely to help long-term anyway, so disavowing them may not hurt at all.

I hope that helps!

Paddy