Disavowing a .edu
-
I have a backlink that I found from http://onucdm.onu.edu/mt/hmlref/2010/10/see_below.html . . . it is a nofollow, so it doesn't seem to be doing much harm. But this is obviously spam. It is from a .edu, so I'm not sure what I should do. Think it's harming my site at all? In general, how do you determine what to disavow?
-
Very helpful as well --- thanks so much :).
-
Hi Kevin,
As you mentioned that link is nofollow so if link is nofollow there is no need to disavow them because "When a link is disavowed, the next time that Google crawls that link they essentially add an invisible nofollow tag to the link."
To know more on this please read Marie Haynes article @ http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2330944/7-things-you-may-not-know-about-googles-disavow-tool
Hope this helps.
Thanks
-
Thanks so much --- I sent them a message, and won't worry about disavowing the link currently.
-
I would get in touch with the webmaster. Let them know that they have been spammed. They will probably take that page and other pages down. They don't want this stuff on their website.
(I doubt that it is hurting your site. But getting the page taken down will help the school and eliminate worry for you.)
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
-
Value of EDU Links?
Greetings: We are considering hiring a firm specializes in developing .EDU links. Is the ROI on EDU links better than non EDU backlinks from reputable domains? Will obtaining EDU links results in greater domain authority and improved ranking for search engine results? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
How long for a Disavow file to take affect for a non-manual penalty?
Hi guys, hope you're all good, quick question in regards to a Disavow file. A page of ours recently crashed from page 2 all the way to page 7ish. It's weird that it happened considering it was ranking on the 2nd page for around a year, then all of a sudden it came crashing down. I identified an affiliate link which was placed in a sidebar, webmaster tools picked up 24,000+ links coming from the site so I have decided to disavow it. I disavowed the site around 3 days ago, and in the mean time we have managed to grab ourselves some very good do-follow links from very authoritative sites. At the moment the page has gone up 1 page, sitting at 4-5th page, but the rankings have been very inconsistent. Any ideas to when we may see an increase in ranking for this page? I am being very impatient, at the moment my workload has been dedicated to get this one page ranking again. All comments greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Disavow links established in 2009??
Sorry for the length, but I believe this is an interesting situation, so hopefully you'll enjoy thinking this one over a little. Thanks for taking the time! Historical Information We’ve owned and operated printglobe.com since 2002. In late 2009, we acquired absorbentprinting.com and operated both sites until Mar, 2015, when absorbentprinting.com was redirected to printglobe.com. The reason we chose to redirect absorbentprinting.com to printglobe.com is that they were same industry, same pricing, and had a lot of product overlap, although they did have unique product and category descriptions. We saw a long and steady decline in organic traffic to absorbentprinting.com in the last couple of years leading up to the decision to redirect. By the way, while I understand the basics of SEO, neither I nor anyone else at our company could be considered an SEO practitioner. Recent Information An SEO firm we used to be engaged with us reached back out to us and noted: “I started looking through your backlink and it looks like there has been a sharp increase of referring domains.” They included a graph that does show a dramatic increase, starting around November, 2015. It’s quite dramatic and appears anything but natural. The contact from the SEO firm went on to say: “After doing a cursory review, it looks like a handful of these new links are the type we would recommend disavowing or removing.” We do little in the way of “link building” and we’re in a relatively boring industry, so we don’t naturally garner a lot of links. Our first thought was that we were the victim of a negative SEO attack. However, upon spot checking a lot of the recent domains linking to us, I discovered that a large % of the links that had first shown up in AHREFS since November are links that were left as comments on forums, mostly in 2009/2010. Since absorbentprinting.com was redirected to printglobe.com in Mar, 2015, I have no idea why they are just now beginning to show up as links to printglobe.com. By the numbers, according to a recent download from AHREFS: Total # of backlinks to printglobe.com through mid-Feb, 2016: 8,679 of backlinks “first seen” November, 2015 or later: 5,433 Note that there were hundreds of links “first seen” in the months from Mar, 2015 to Oct, 2015, but the # “first seen” from November, 2015 to now has been 1,500 or greater each full month. Total # of linking domains through mid-Feb, 2016: 1,182 of linking domains first seen November, 2015 or later: 850 Also note that the links contain good anchor text distribution Finally, there was a backlink analysis done on absorbentprinting.com in April, 2013 by the same firm who pointed out the sharp increase in links. At that time, it was determined that the backlink profile of absorbentprinting.com was normal, and did not require any actions to disavow links or otherwise clean up the backlinks. My Questions: If you’ve gotten through all that, how important does it seem to disavow links now? How urgent? I’ve heard that disavowing links should be a rare undertaking. If this is so, what would you think of the idea of us disavowing everything or almost everything “first seen” Nov, 2015 and later? Is there a way to disavow at the linking domain level, rather than link-by-link to reduce the number of entries, or does it have to be done for each individual link? If we disavow around 5.5k links since Nov, 2015, what is the potential for doing more harm than good? If we’re seeing declining organic traffic in the past year on printglobe.com pretty much for the first time in the site’s history, can we attribute that to the links? Anything else you’d advise a guy who’s never disavowed a link before on this situation? Thanks for any insights! Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PrintGlobeSEO0 -
When to Disavow
I'm in the process of doing a link cleanup (nothing I have done just ended up with them). I stumbled across one or two doc hosting sites, the domain parameters aren't bad but I don't think they drive any value and they do look a bit dodgy. They mainly only comprise of a little bit of text and Google custom search. 1. Is there any point disavowing? 2. Could it do any harm?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Site recovery after manual penalty, disavow, SSL, Mobile update = but dropped again in May
I have a site that has had a few problems over the last year. We had a manual penalty in late 2013 for bad links, some from guest blogs and some from spammy sites. Reconsideration requests had me disavow almost all of the incoming links. Later in 2014, the site was hit with link injection malware and had another manual penalty. That was cleared up and manual penalty removed in Jan 2015. During this time the site was moved to SSL, but there were some redirect problems. By Feb 2015 everything was cleared up and a an updated disavow list was added. The site recovered in March and did great. A mobile version was added in April. About May 1st rankings dropped again. Traffic is about 40% off it's March levels. Recently I read that a new disavow file will supersede an old one, and if all of the original domains and URLs aren't included in the new disavow file they will no longer be disavowed. Is this true? If so, is it possible that a smaller disavow file uploaded in Feb would cause rankings to drop after the May 3 Quality update? Can I correct this by disavowing all the previously disavowed domains and URLs? Any advice for determining why the site is performing poorly again? We have well written content, regular blogs, nothing that seems like it should violate the Google guidelines.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robertjw0 -
I want to Disavow some more links - but I'm only allowed one .txt file?
Hey guys, Wondering if you good people could help me out on this one? A few months back (June 19) I disavowed some links for a client having uploaded a .txt file with the offending domains attached. However, recently I've noticed some more dodgy-looking domains being indexed to my client's site so went about creating a new "Disavow List". When I went to upload this new list I was informed that I would be replacing the existing file. So, my question is, what do I do here? Make a new list with both old and new domains that I plan on disavowing and replace the existing one? Or; Just replace the existing .txt file with the new file because Google has recognised I've already disavowed those older links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
EDU Backlinks wrapped in Wiki worthwhile?
I asked below question yesterday and got some answers, but am still looking for more justification whether such links are worthwhile getting or not. Here is the question: An SEO expert offers my site backlinks from .edu's wrapped in wiki. Structure as follows "wiki.xxx.UNINAME.edu/etc..etc" - the pages have authority of 1 (domain obviously high with the dot edu) but there is no relevant info on the pages and obviously wiki links are no follow. This does not sound right to me, but can anyone share some insight since it is wiki + edu combined it sounds on surface like credibility, but with page having no relevant content I feel it isn't right.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Will links still show in WMT after you disavow them?
Does anyone know a definitive answer to this? I'm thinking they will still show up in WMT links to your site? Anyone seen anything different? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Further
Chris0