Finally, it has arrived…on October 17, Google released their long awaited disavow tool. If you have been affected by the Penguin updates you may have been waiting with anticipation for this to arrive. But is it the answer to our dreams – will it really get our sites back and ranking again? Let’s find out.
What is the Google Disavow Links Tool?
For those that don’t know, the Google Penguin updates targeted websites with poor quality links or those that overused the same keyword in their anchor text. Both of these, we suspect, were what happened with our sites. We had used blogging networks in the past and they only generate poor quality links and in the early days we did tend to overuse the same anchor text a little too much when backlinking.
Okay, so fair enough, we did a few no-no’s in the eyes of Google and we got slapped on the wrist for it. However, the problem with those Penguin updates is that:
1. It made it very difficult for anyone who was affected to fix their websites. Just try emailing hundreds or even thousands of website owners to ask them to remove your links from their website.
2. It made it too easy for a competitor to get someone elses sites penalized by simply generating hundreds of poor quality links to their site. This got everyone riled up because although Google denied it we all knew that it was possible, and it was happening. Many webmasters were even testing it on their own sites to see if they could get them penalized and yes they could.
So, because of the number of complaints they received from irate webmasters, Google listened and they have now provided a disavow tool that allows us to ignore specific backlinks to our websites.
The Official Google Word
Here is a video from Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) explaining how the disavow tool works.
[youtube width=”535″ height=”355″]http://youtu.be/393nmCYFRtA[/youtube]
So what Matt is saying in the video above is that you only need to load up a text file with a list of the websites you want removed and low and behold (after a few weeks) those sites will be ignored. Simple right? Well if it is so simple, why does Matt Cutts reiterate a number of times that not many people should need to use this tool? It’s almost like he wants to scare us away from using it. Why?
Just take a look at what Google has to say about it on their Webmaster Tools blog:
“This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results. We recommend that you disavow backlinks only if you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you. In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool.”
I love the last sentence, “In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust with additional guidance..”. If that’s the case, why do we even need such a tool?…more on that later.
How Does the Disavow Tool Work?
These are the steps for using the disavow tool:
Step 1: Assess the Links
The first thing you need to do is find the sites that are linking to you so you can determine which ones you want to disavow. You can do this using your own keyword tool or you can use Google Webmaster Tools (instructions below)
1. Login to Webmaster Tools.
2. Click on the site you want to assess.
3. Click on Traffic from the right menu.
4. Click on Links to Your Site.
5. Click the More link under section titled ‘Who links the most’
6. Click Download this table.
Step 2: Create a Text File
This step involves creating a text file that will list all of the domain urls that you want to disavow.
1. Open up Notepad or other text based editor and add one link per line in the following formats:
- To ignore an entire domain use:
- domain: thespammywebsite.com
- To ignore a page from a domain use:
- http://spammerswebsite.com/page-1.htm
So your text page might look like this:
domain: thespammywebsite.com
http://spammerswebsite.com/page-1.htm
2. Save the file to your computer.
Step 3: Upload List of Links
1. Go to the Disavow Links Tool page.
2. Login to Webmaster Tools if you haven’t already done so.
3. You will now see the Disavow Links box.
4. Select the website from the drop-down box and click the Disavow Links button.
5. You will see a big warning message from Google. Just click the Disavow Links button.Again you will see another warning message from Google…hmm, why do they need to keep warning us??
6. Click Choose File and find the text file you just created and click Submit. And your done!
Why Do We Need This Tool in the First Place?
Although I appreciate this tool being made available I am left wondering why we even need it. The tool lets us tell Google to ignore spammy or poor quality links but why can’t Google just ignore them to begin with? Google can pick a spammy site can’t it? I mean, if they don’t know the difference between a poor quality site and a high quality site by now, then they really need to reassess the system.
So what it essentially means is that you, the web owner, needs to determine what you consider to be poor quality links or not. But how do you do that? Do you look at the page rank of the page? Is that really an indication of the quality of the site.
Take a look at the pagerank of the site you are looking at right now. Do you see the pagerank – it’s a big fat zero. Why?…because in Google’s infinite wisdom they decided that the site doesn’t meet their quality guidelines. I have no idea what that means because we have never bothered to actively backlink to the site and we can’t see any other reason for the penalty. (At one point, we started to backlink but we stopped pretty quickly and didn’t bother after that)
We have asked them what the exact problem is but we keep getting back the same old email in Google Webmaster Tools which tells us absolutely nothing:
We’ve reviewed your site and we believe that some or all of your pages still violate our quality guidelines.
In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, pages from https://www.probloghq.com/ may not appear or may not rank as highly in Google’s search results, or may otherwise be considered to be less trustworthy than sites which follow the quality guidelines.
If you wish to be reconsidered again, please correct or remove all pages that are outside our quality guidelines.
Funnily enough, the sites that we have backlinked to aggressively in the past, received no such message in Google Webmaster Tools.
We have given up trying and just continue to add content. It’s a bit hard to change something when you have no idea what the problem actually is.
So figuring out what site is considered poor quality, a spammers site, or one that doesn’t meet Google’s guidelines is really a subjective thing. Who knows if a site we tell Google to disavow is actually okay or not?
Have We Used the Disavow Tool?
Not yet, but we will. Whenever something new is released by Google, we always like to let the dust settle before taking action. The other problem we have is finding the time but that’s another story.
We want to get our sites ranking like they used to so it will be interesting to see if the disavow tool actually works.
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Thanks for keeping us updated on all these things. It’s nice when someone can take the jargon and simplify it.
No problem Elisabeth. And thanks for visiting.
Disavow or anything else, can we ever trust anything that Google offers is actually going to be for our good?
There are many of us that thought that we were doing all the right things,`staying away from the get rich schemes to go by the book but we still got penalized anyway.
The constant changes has to have many questioning whether it’s time to give up or move away from Google altogether. There doesn’t seem to be any real guideline’s to follow because they keep changing.
Look how many times in the past year alone that Google has had so many people scrambling, taking away their ability to make a living. A normal business organization would probably be pulled over the coals for taking peoples livelihood away. Google have just got too powerful for their own good as their reputation is failing. They may have the money but they are losing respect. It’s like a game they play where they make all the rules so they can’t lose. But things can change even for the mighty.
Financially I haven’t been affected much as I wasn’t making much anyway, for me it’s more about the waste of my time providing unique content and trying to do things right but it looks like that may not count for much.
Well said Shirley. I think the problem with Google is that they just live in their own little world. They don’t really understand what it’s like for small businesses and people like us who work at getting a quality site up on the net. They just don’t get it.
And I agree that they are losing respect. They are just too big now and they have lost the plot. People are starting to catch on that Google doesn’t really care.
Like you, I’m waiting for the dust to settle to find out how this disavow tool is going to change SEO and SEM practices.
On some very paranoid, almost insane level – how willing are you to voluntarily surrender your entire link profile to the Big G?
I think a lot of people are paranoid about it all and for good reason. Google have been punching us all down and a lot of us are a little gun-shy.
Things change so quickly with Google that it is getting hard to keep up.
Perhaps it’s time for Internet Marketers and bloggers alike to quit gaming the system and start writing content for people rather than search engines.
Granted, a lot of us have been doing exactly that for the better part of the decade. Still, I think it’s high time that all of us stopped littering the web.
If we can answer a searcher’s question, fill a need or make someone’s day better – I see no reason how Google could ever, ever hurt our rankings.
Just my two cents. :)
I agree, there is a lot of junk on the net. However, Google don’t seem to be able to distinguish very well between high quality and low quality. They have penalized many high quality sites. Take a look at askethebuilder.com. This guy did everything right – very high quality content, all unique and never bothered to backlink to his site. All his bacilinks are natural. He was hit hard by the latest Penguin update. That is just one of many examples – so it really has nothing to do with how good you are.
Very interesting! It sounds great, but at the same time a bit scary! What if, in an effort to recover your rankings, you make them even worse?! Thanks so much for the great info and I look forward to hearing more!
That is definitely something that needs to be considered. I guess it will depend on how much you have to lose.
Hey Paula,
Great post. I guess we have to remember also that Google’s search engine is based on algorithms not human reviewers. It’s not going to be a perfect system. There will be plenty of casualties as they try to figure out how to make search a great experience for it’s users. My problem is how they are going about it.
The information they provide to us on optimization 2 years ago is no longer valid and we get penalized for using it. Doesn’t make sense. I’m going to stick to providing quality content on my sites and tap into social media for shares and linking.
Exactly Samuel – you’ve hit the nail right on the head. We are being penalized now for something that was totally okay years ago. That seems to be how Google works these days.
Hello Paula,
thank you for commenting on Matt Cutts video. Your thoughts are very valid and insightful.
Matthew
Thanks Matthew!!
I’m still a newbie but I’m really learning a lot from your programs. I thank God I signed up for your program.
Thanks Alexis – glad we can be of help.
Basically, Google’s Disavow tool is simply awesome. Some people were doing negative SEO on my blog and i was loosing my rank but this tool helped me adn solved my problem easily. Thanks for Sharing :)
Good to see that it has worked for your Raheem. Did you try and get any backlinks removed manually first. In other words, did you email any of the sites or did you just go straight to using the disavow tool?
3 Things:
1. Your pagerank is 0, and your traffic seems to be declining slowly over the last year, but your home page seems to rank well. Can you explain more how the penalty affected your site?
2. If your pgaerank is 0, I would first start by checking to see if you are linking to bad sites, or more importantly, selling links. If those fail reinclusion, try removing outbound affiliate links, then request again.
3. Can you email me your answers, and if you get it fixed?
We don’t really care about the traffic or pagerank of this site. This is more of a play site – we don’t make much money from it and it is just here for us to write about what we do in this business and to help others.
So we don’t worry about what Google thinks about it and we don’t try to solve pagerank issues for it or increase traffic or worry about affiliate links being good or bad. We just write about what we do and are happy doing it.
As for our niche sites, they were hit by the Penguin update and I suspect it is because of overuse of similar keywords when backlinking back in our early days.
Lets see big updates on penguin in the future.So Google Disavow tool may be the answer again for Penguin updates.