Can you disavow a spamy link that is not pointing to your website?
-
We have submitted several really spammy websites to the Google spam team. We noticed they take a very long time to react to submissions. Do you know if it is possible to disavow a link that is not pointing to your website but rather to a very spammy website?
Thanks
-
Hi Marie,
You are absolutely correct. I was confused. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
Carla
-
You may be confused about what the disavow tool does. Sure, you can put any site in your disavow file. You're basically telling Google that if they crawl that site and find a link on it that is pointing to yours to not pass any Pagerank through the link. Google has said several times that they do not use disavow info against the disavowed sites. It is not a spam report.
-
Hi Jessy,
Well I am glad to see that I am not the only person with the same issue. I really delayed the whole submitting my competitors to Google spam but they continue to use black hat techniques. I will let you know if it works.
Thanks
Carla
-
Yes Carla it does make sense and thank you for the explanation.
I too am working in an industry where all of my competitors who outrank me are using blackhat tactics and they haven't been penalized for it at all. It's quite frustrating and I'd be lying if I hadn't considered submitting them to the Webspam team. However I worry that this will somehow come back to bite us later on so I haven't done so and probably never will. Instead I continue building quality content and trying to organically build authority.
That all said, I'd love it if you kept us posted. I'd really like to know how this all works out for you. Even though you are in another country, it might be a great indicator of the potential problems/benefits to this tactic.
Thanks
-
Hi Jesse and Tuzzell,
We have several competitors that use constant black hat techniques. They have been doing this for over 2 years and for some reason the Google Algorithm updates are not taking effect. We have stuck to white hat techniques but are getting a bit impatient. For over 2 years our black hat competitors continue to outrank us. We waited 2 years before submitting them to Google Spam and the only reason we did it was because they have not stopped using black hat techniques. It's a bit frustrating. We are not going on a spam crusade...its more like helping Google do their job and testing the Argentina Google Spam team and learning more about SEO. BTW, we also submitted ourselves to the Google Spam Team about 2 years back to see if our links were in line with Google's policies.
Hope it makes sense...
Carla
-
I can't wrap my head around why you would want to do this and what you seek to gain from it..?
Tuzzell is right, the answer is no.. but I absolutely am dying to know why you are leading the Spam Crusade? (I'm not against it.. nor am I for it.. I'm totally neutral so far just curious why)
-
Short answer no.
To use the disavow tool you need to be logged into webmaster tools, and you need to use the disavow tool under the profile of the relavent site. As such Google will know that any links you are trying to disavow are associated with, and only authorised for, the site you have signed in under.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to find if a website has paid or spammy back-links? Latest ways to investigate.
Hi all, I would like to investigate about our website back-links if something is wrong. If there are any paid or spammy back-links. How to proceed on this exercise? We have been using ahrefs and seems like it's quite enough. Is there any way we can pull out the fishy back-links? Do we have any helpful data from webmasters about this? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Do I lose link juice if I have a https site and someone links to me using http instead?
We have recently launched a https site which is getting some organic links some of which are using https and some are using http. Am I losing link juice on the ones linked using http even though I am redirecting or does Google view them the same way? As most people still use http naturally will it look strange to google if I contact anyone who has given us a link and ask them to change to https?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Lisa-Devins0 -
Deep Link Ratio
Hi there, What ratio links should be to a homepage compared to deep links? I'm aware there probably isn't a fixed ratio, and it may depend on niche, but i've heard Penguin is on the look out for people that link to heavily to content deep in their sites (product pages etc.) Any thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jennie.evans0 -
Can I use content from an existing site that is not up anymore?
I want to take down a current website and create a new site or two (with new url, ip, server). Can I use the content from the deleted site on the new sites since I own it? How will Google see that?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Guest post linking only to good content
Hello, We're thinking of doing guest posting of the following type: 1. The only link is in the body of the guest post pointing to our most valuable article. 2. It is not a guest posting site - we approached them to help with content, they don't advertise guest posting. They sometimes use guest posting if it's good content. 3. It is a clean site - clean design, clean anchor text profile, etc. We have 70 linking root domains. We want to use the above tactics to add 30 more links. Is this going to help us on into the future of Google (We're only interested in long term)? Is 30 too many? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Hiding content or links in responsive design
Hi, I found a lot of information about responsive design and SEO, mostly theories no real experiment and I'd like to find a clear answer if someone tested that. Google says:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NurunMTL
Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details For usability reasons sometimes you need to hide content or links completely (not accessible at all by the visitor) on your page for small resolutions (mobile) using CSS ("visibility:hidden" or "display:none") Is this counted as hidden content and could penalize your site or not? What do you guys do when you create responsive design websites? Thanks! GaB0 -
Penguin link removal what would you do?
Hi Over the last 4 months I have been trying to remove as many poor quality links as possible in the hope this will help us recover. I have come across some site's that the page our back-link is on has been de-indexed, goggle shows this when I look at the cached page... 404. <ins>That’s an error.</ins> The requested URL /search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGNI_enGB482GB482&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fforom.eovirtual.com%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ff%3D4%26t%3D84 was not found on this server. <ins>That’s all we know.</ins> If goggle is showing this message do I have to still try to remove the link, or is it a case goggle has already dismissed the link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcuk0