What to do about spam links I didn't create?

[CalicoKitty2000]

I have dropped in rankings 3-5 points over the past 6 months and have been trying to figure out why.  One thing I found was a ton of my pictures on a image net ring.  I obviously didn't put those photos there or give permission to use them.  It looks like an offshore website.  How do we deal with these type of bad links?

[Vijay-Gaur]

Hi There,

I am sorry to hear about your problem. You can use disavow such links, the whole process is given on this blog article

https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool

I hope this helps, let me know if you have further queries.

Regards,

Vijay

[CalicoKitty2000]

Thank you... is the disavow tool still controversial?  It used to be that SEOs didn't recommend using it because it told Google that you did indeed have spammy links and needed them gone.  Is that different now?  Here is a link to the weird image farm I was talking about.

http://seafoodnet.info/

[Vijay-Gaur]

All your queries have been answered on this article

https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/7282/8-renowned-experts-bust-common-google-disavow-tool-myths/

You will have to trust the experts on this.

[Seenlyst]

Hello there,

Some people believe that Google doesn't penalize you for being linked from some spammy site, it simply just devalue those link. Whether it's true or not only Google knows, but for your situation there's 2 option:

• Disavow those spammy links
• Prevent hotlinking, which disables people linking to your images directly
  https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/smarter-way-to-prevent-image-hotlinking-with-htaccess/

Hope this answered your question.

[Jesper-Bak-SEO-specialist]

Hello there,

Like Joseph says allot of people thinks that Google doesn't give them penalty for the spammed links. That is NOT true, i have ben testing that fact and actually even tho Google knows that a site is a spamming site, they will give you penalty untill the current domain / server IP is blacklisted by Google.

To blacklist spammers theres actually only 1 way:

Disavow the links comming from spammers, as more and other site owners will disavow the same domains / ip, the faster Google will blacklist them. If you aint sure how to Disavow and make sure you dosn´t disavow some urls that is known as a good site on Google, coz that can also make you suffer a penalty on youre rankings.

So a good tip is to check the page Aut. and domain age, if it is an old domain with allot of Aut. You need to ask the siteowner to remove the links, after that and if they dont remove the link, you can Disavow followed with a message to Google regarding youre dialog with the websiteowner refuses to remove the link to youre domain.