Should I Disavow Links if there is No Manual Action

[Prime85]

Hello,

I just recently took on a client that had hired a very black hat seo and used their service for roughly two years.  He outsourced link building and the link profile is full of spun articles and blog commenting on chinese websites etc…

The anchor texts/pages used for all this spamming no longer rank, but there is no penalty in Webmaster tools manual actions.

I was thinking about disavowing some of the obviously spammy backlinks that exist but would that be raising a red flag that could lead to a manual action and even more negative movement?

Have you ever heard of anything like the situation i'm dealing with where its obvious the pages have been hit but there is no manual action?  What do you all think/suggest?  And Should I disavow some terrible links and potentially open a can of worms?

[customerparadigm.com]

In the past, the disavow tool was the "tool of last resort."  You weren't supposed to use it unless you'd had a manual action.

But Google's Matt Cutts has broken from the previously stated mantra on the disavow tool, and now is encouraging Webmasters to use it if they are worried if a link is from a bad domain, due to poor SEO (or someone else trying to hurt your site by creating bad links):

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2309486/Matt-Cutts-Use-the-Link-Disavow-Tool-Even-if-Your-Site-Hasnt-Been-Penalized

Hope this helps!

• Jeff

[Chris.Menke]

As Jeff say, there's no problem with proactively disavowing low quality links to your domain.

[Dr-Pete]

There are many link-based algorithmic actions that can hit a site, including Penguin, so just because you don't have a warning of a manual action doesn't mean that you're not in trouble. I can't see the data, but this doesn't seem to be speculative - you're basically saying that certain pages and keywords have clearly been devalued.

If you've ruled out technical issues with the pages (including duplicate/thin content issues), and you know the spammy links are targeting these pages, then I think disavowing is probably a good way to go. Ideally, try to have some of the links removed first, as that will make Google take the request more seriously (and disavow is basically a request, although it's semi-automated).

It's entirely possible, too, that you're already headed for a manual action, so even if you do nothing, the situation could get worse. If you were unaffected, I might suggest pruning some of the bad links and focusing your future link-building on better tactics, but you're already taking damage.