Disavow wn.com?
-
I am cleaning up some spammy backlinks for a client and will be submitting a disavow at Google.
This particular company website has 2,000+ backlinks from the domain wn.com which appears to be "World News". If you go to it, it appears to be nothing more than scraped content from other sites.
Here is a recent example, where my client is linked to (I don't even see the backlink on the page, but it is in the source code!):
http://article.wn.com/view/2013/11/22/Hungarian_Woman_Sentenced_to_One_Year_in_Prison_for_Her_Role/#/related_newsBut when I look at Moz metrics, WN.com has a domain authority of 90! So I don't want to disavow something that could POTENTIALLY be helping us.
The client's website gets zero traffic from wn.com and I've never seen my client linked to in anything worthwhile... it kinda looks spammy to me.
If you were me, after looking at WN.com and taking everything into account... would you disavow it?
This client really needs to create a healthier backlink profile.
Thanks!
-
Good point by Kevin, too, that it does depend on the rest of your link profile and how solid it is. If you have thousands of linking root domains, just one domain isn't going to make or break you. Your overall profile is the key.
-
First, to Kevin's question, a high DA doesn't mean a site isn't spammy. It means the site has a lot of seemingly high-authority links (or just a large link profile from generally large sites, or a healthy mix). Some of the modelling controls for quality, but not necessarily spam factor - which is something we're actively working on.
I suspect the "articles." sub-domain carries less authority than the overall root domain, but it's tough to say. With so many links, you're probably getting some credit from the root domain.
Unfortunately, the weight of any one link or even 2,000 links from one domain is almost impossible to measure. So, it comes down to a risk/reward scenario. Are you just proactively cleaning things up, or are you fighting a serious fire, like an outright penalty that's killing traffic? If you're being proactive, I'd probably leave this alone, especially if you have solicited these links, paid for them, etc. If you're fighting a serious penalty, then you need to risk cutting deep, especially if you're doing a Penguin recovery.
-
I'm interested in this as well. I'm pretty new to this, but here are my comments/questions.
-
Does a high DA from Moz automatically mean that the site is not perceived as spammy by Google's index? I'm not sure about this. I've seen some pretty spammy looking directories pull up a high Domain Authority in the MozBar, but this could be because of the site's size, number of outbound links, and other metrics.
-
Have you determined whether there is any way to have the links removed by contacting the directory? From what I can see, Google recommends that we exhaust all possibilities for link removal before using the disavow tool, although in my experience it's not easy to contact anyone who "controls" these spammy directories.
-
Do you have a stockpile of legitimate, authoritative links from reputable domains built up to offset the link removal? This should hopefully soften the blow if in fact you end up suffering any ranking penalty from having the link disavowed.
-
Would it make sense to concentrate on building other reputable links before calling attention to links that are potentially spammy? Is it rocking the boat by disavowing a link to what seems like an authoritative site (at least as far as Moz is concerned) before having a solid foundation of reputable links? If that is the case, I'd focus my attention the other way: build the foundation first, then weed out the suspect links. But that's my opinion, I may be wrong. Very interested to see what other community members have to say about this!
-
-
I've found WN before and thought it looked quite good due to the domain authority. However, like you say, it's just a scraper.
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
-
Paid Link/Doorway Disavow - disavowing the links between 2 sites in the same company.
Hello, Three of our client's sites are having difficulty because of past doorway/paid link activity, which we're doing the final cleanup on with a disavow. There are links between the sites. Should we disavow all the links between the sites? Thank you.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
2015 Bing Disavow, should i copy and paste from Google?
So I just submitted my 2nd disavow file to Google, but what about Bing? I know i would have to submit one url at a time, but is it worth it? Is it safe yet to submit the same file from Google? I know Bing measures quantity of links and submitting the same file might hurt my rankings, but anything new in 2015?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Why should I reach out to webmasters before disavowing links?
Almost all the blogs, and Google themselves, tell us to reach out to webmasters and request the offending links be removed before using Google's Disavow tool. None of the blogs, nor Google, suggest why you "must" do this, it's time consuming and many webmasters don't care and don't act. Why is this a "required" thing to do?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RealSelf0 -
Should I Disavow Links if there is No Manual Action
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?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Prime850 -
Changing domains from .net to .com after 7 month of traffic loss.
We are in business since 2005 and we always used the .net version as it was the only one available when we started. In about 2007 we bought the .com version to the person who owned it but we kept using the .net as customers were already used to that version. In January we started to see a SE traffic loss, not to mention being outranked by several sites (95% of those site spammers). We had no manual penalty but it could be an algorithmic, we are not sure if we even have some sort of penalty or is just that our niche is too spammed. We are now considering moving the site to the .com version as all our tries of increasing and regaining our ranks were useless (backlink cleanup, disavow tool usage, excellent link building, excellent content creation and social interactions). Our DA and PA are both higher that any of the other ages ranking on top. We have about 3k pages indexed. What do you guys think? Should we move the site to the .com? (note that the change is ranking-wise, not in terms of branding). And if we do, should we 301 all pages? or rel=canonical to avoid a possible "penalty flow" to the other domain? Note: for years, the .com version was/is 301 to the .net one. Thank you all!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | FedeEinhorn0 -
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
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Website is not stable on maps.google.com
My website is daily showing different position on maps.google.com and for the last few days like yesterday it was on 21st position on some keyword and today it is no where and same with other keywords. Is this a Google Dance ?? what can be its period ? and what is the solution to handle it ??
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mnkpso0 -
Is it worth getting links from .blogspot.com and .wordpress.com?
Our niche ecommerce site has only one thing going for it: We have numerous opportunities on a weekly basis to get reviews from "mom bloggers". We need links - our domain authority is depressing. My concern is that these "mom bloggers" tend to have blogs that end with .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com. How do I screen for "reviewers" that are worth getting links from and how can I make the most of the community we have available to us?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Wilkerson1