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Has anyone seen positive impact from using Disavow tool?
I'm finding a LOT of toxic links in my backlink profile, and after spending the last 10 years avoiding that tool, I'm wondering if it is time to do some maintenance. Has anyone personally seen positive results from disavowing spammy toxic backlinks?
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1 Reply
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People say they still do it. I’ve struggled to find case studies that show this tactic as driving a positive impact on performance. Google also recently announced they’ll be removing the tool from GSC so I get the impression it’s not providing much for site owners
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For every 1 person saying it works, I find 20 people saying it’s a waste of time.
Think of it like sucking on a boar’s teat expecting milk.
You’re better of starting from scratch (if you got nuked hard)
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I doubt the tool is even actively functioning. Meaning, you are probably submitting into the void having wasted your time.
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What’s a lot for you? Like 100 or 1000s?
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I used it on spam backlinks I built, I dropped heavy for this specific site. Don’t take my word as many different factors at play.
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# WE HAVE TO STOP THIS BS ABOUT “Spammy looking Back Links”
NO – JUST STOP – YOU DO NOT HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOOGLE TO “MAINTAIN”
LEts be adults here – lets stop thinking SEO is magical and that Google is watching everyone like big bother.
Google is not the Stasi-Santa. There’s no threshold for spammy backlinks. “Link Spam” is well defined: it is guest posts, paid backlinks, buying a link in a well ranked page or blog post. Spammy looking
How can there be a positive tool – its like going to the police station and asking for a plea deal on a crime that you haven’t been convicted of and then not getting time for it. Sure, its great that you didn’t have to go to prison….
Let me ask you a question (or anyone else): do you think that Googe is watching every link, title, ahref, meta-descirption wondering if you’re tipping some balance where Goolge is like ” I see you , you’re trying to rank for “pro gym equipment Rebecca”?
Like its not a scorecard, gradient, rate, ratio, percentage. People thinking that spammy backlinks are “reducing” this “SEO Scorecard”: No, that’s not how link spam penalties work: If you did and you got caught, You are NOT getting traffic.
# ITS THiS QUESTION THAT HAS RESULTED IN GOOGLE TO RETIRE THIS TOOL
You can and should be able to publish what you want on site – and how you want to – headings, navigation, footers, tables of content, video. There are exceptions: Keyword stuffing, cookie-cutter text (e.g. afiiliatne text – where you paste the boiler-plate texts from different affiliate sales rather than writing unique content), and doorway pages.
There are no “rules” around content publishing – like dates, frequency, word count, headings – these are all debunked yet 90% of people in SEO think that this is SEO? Its bizarre – watch the downvotes I get…
tl;dr
Disavow means you are saying to Google “Sorry – I bought these links or paid someone or did a favor or exchanged services/goods/money/crypto to get t a link to help my page rank” – that is it.DISAVOW doesn’t mean “A Relationship check-in” where you’re like – hey, don’t know what those links are, don’t want to have anything to do with them, please don’t hit me..
There is no “boost” for not having spammy b backlinks – there’s just no value and no harm in them existing
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# Part 2 of why there’s no benefit to using Disavow
IF you did buy or someone bought you links and you Disavow them – you are signaling that you do not deserve authority from these domains. IF – like the thousands of sites “hit since HCU” got caught buying backlinks and have no authority from them, then your site has no authority.
At best, you can after a few months, try to rehabilitate the domain and build up positively but you don’t get to say “Well I stole the money from the back, I came clean, I’d like to walk AND Keep the money”
Disavow is not “Date night” for you and your relationship with Google. Its not lets grab dinner while the kids are asleep and get some cocktails and make more rank babies – its over.
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I have done disavows for several clients with almost each one having positive increases the following month.
However, this was only for links where someone had scraped content and ended up building over a hundred dofollow links that were exact match. The situation was very obvious that they had harmed the rankings because of the dates on the articles. I would not recommend anyone inexperienced with it to try it though.
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I think it’s a nice extra service SEO’s can sell to gullible businesses..
Think about it logically, if it worked, then the opposite would be true and everyone would be purchasing cheap toxic links to “negative SEO” their competition.
For a few hundred dollars you can buy software that will create tens of thousands of these links daily.. and decimate all competitors.. of course you would use it to create a 100/week (something believable) that they are clearly continuing to buy them. And if you’re an unethical SEO you’ll generate them, to have unlimited work disavowing them…
The only fair and logical thing Google can do, is identify and pass on zero authority from these kinds of links. Don’t waste your time/budget disavowing, at best you’re just doing Google’s job for them.
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I had a site that had a few hundred spammy/toxic links and used the disavow tool. Once they cleared it had a positive impact.
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Unless you have a manual action or believe you’re under heavy penalty, don’t do it. Simple as that.
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Yes, there have been reports of positive impacts from using the Google Disavow Tool. While opinions on the tool’s effectiveness vary, some experts and users have shared success stories and observed improvements in their sites’ performance after disavowing links.For instance, in the case study mentioned in 1, the author uploaded disavow files for four sites and reported that some of these sites showed improvements in their performance over time. Although the study was ongoing at the time of the report, the author noted that the disavow files could potentially have a dynamic impact on performance, which could be positive or negative depending on the specific circumstances.Additionally, in 2, Dr. Marie Haynes shares her experience with disavowing links and notes that while it can be challenging to determine whether a disavow has contributed to improvements in traffic and rankings, she has seen cases where sites have made significant improvements following disavows. However, she emphasizes that disavows are usually part of a broader strategy that includes other site quality improvements and link audits.
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10 years in SEO, have used it multiple times in the past (earlier in my career). Never made a difference. Don’t waste your time unless you have a manual penalty.
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I used disavow and noticed no difference in it.
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The SEMrush toxic backlinks tool is garbage and basically useless.
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