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SEOs vs Penguins: Will Google’s Disavow Tool Help SEOs Win?

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Google Disavow Tool

Just recently, the community got shaken by some big news – Google had finally caught up with its rival search engine Bing and released the much-awaited links disavow tool.

Just as one would expect, opinions regarding this move by Google split. But in general, it is hard to find an SEO manager who’d be happy about the release of the tool – most regard it with suspicion and distrust.

A popular opinion seems to be – better not use the disavow tool. I think, if there were an SEO trade union, the leaders would simply call for a mass boycott of the new tool, since most view it as Google’s way to push the naïve and unsavvy part of the SEO community to turn in their own links (and the link networks they use), or to tell on a competitor.

I think that the emergence of the tool itself is not as significant as everything else that surrounds it – the prophesied “jarring and jolting” updates, Google’s plans to level the playing field and similar occurrences. In my opinion, Google released the disavow links for three main reasons:

Reason One: to make it even with Bing

Reason Two: to soothe those who fear negative SEO expansion

Reason Three: to have a moral right to launch future “jarring and jolting” updates.

Google’s disavow tool: much-awaited or much overrated?

To me, Google’s new link tool is just overrated. Why? Because it really doesn’t do anything to your site or to your links, UNLESS accompanied by such actions as:

  • Trying to remove the bad links
  • Filing a reconsideration request (if there was a manual action towards your site).

As Matt Cutts said in a recent interview, Google looks at the snapshot of the links you had when your site got penalized, and can tell whether any action was taken to remove any bad ones.

Another overstatement, I think, is that one can use the disavow tool to hurt another site.

Let’s say, I’m a black hat, and I’d like to hurt Apple.com. Kick them out of Google’s index. Tarnish their reputation. Destroy them. So, now, having Google’s disavow tool at hand, am I well-equipped to do it?

Not really. To hurt Apple.com directly, I’d have to have links from them that I could disavow. As Matt Cutts said:

“It’s certainly not a scalable way to hurt another site, since you’d have to build a good site, then build up good links, then disavow those good links.”

What Cutts means by this is that, if I really want to hurt a trustworthy site, I (A) have to be trustworthy myself, (B) have links from that site. Ooh, maybe I could shoot Apple a link exchange offer. 🙂

Second, if I wanted to hurt Apple indirectly, that is, by disavowing some of their good backlink sources, I’d have to build a trustworthy site, analyze Apple’s links, get backlinks from THE SAME SOURCES they use, and then disavow those links. Phew, mission accomplished.

Well, not really. As you see, this second way of hurting a competitor is just as time- and effort-consuming as the first one. Besides, its outcome is more than unclear.

So, to disavow or not to disavow?

No wonder, many SEOs are at a loss now. If I believed those crying “don’t use the tool, it’s from the devil”, I’d be confused, too. What’s ironic, the same community that has been asking for this tool now says it doesn’t want it.

In reality, if you listen to what Matt Cutts says, you’ll see that the disavow tool is pretty much like a canonical tag – Google may respect or may not.

As Cutts stated:

If a webmaster wants to shoot themselves in the foot and disavow high-quality links, that’s sort of like an IQ test and indicates that we wouldn’t want to give that webmaster’s disavowed links much weight anyway.

Now, what this means is that Google is not willing to put complete trust into any signal coming from the disavow tool. As Matt Cutts said in the same interview, Google has many other ways of determining whether a link is good or bad. So, the disavow tool is more of a complimentary means (along with removing links or filing a reconsideration request) of telling Google that – look, I’ve cleaned up my profile, and these are the links I don’t vouch for.

When to use the disavow tool

Never! OK, just kidding. This is what many SEOs seem to be saying – don’t use it, period. Even Google warns – use it only when you really know what you’re doing. I agree. One shouldn’t be disavowing links left and right. However, you may find yourself in a position when the disavow tool could do you good service. Examples?

A negative SEO attack

Come a negative SEO attack (you wouldn’t believe it, but some people’s entire businesses are built around them hurting other people’s site with bad links), you’re now more prepared to deal with it than before the disavow tool.

Now, how does one spot bad links?

  1. These are not the links you would expect to have
  2. They come in bulks and most likely from the same IP address
  3. The anchors are exact matches of your best-paying keywords
  4. Links come from shady, no-rep sites that (perhaps) have even been deindexed by Google already.

For instance, here is a spammy-looking link profile I analyzed with in the SEO SpyGlass tool.

SEO SpyGlass tool

An old link profile you inherited

If you’re a new in-house SEO, you might have to deal with a link profile you inherited from your predecessor and thus know very little about it. Some of those links may have been acquired ages ago and some of those sites’ owners may have changed. What does one do in this case?

My first recommendation is – don’t panic (a timeless piece of advice by Douglas Adams). That is why you probably got called in in the first place – to fix what the other SEO broke.

Second, in my view, it’s better to take no action unless the rankings drop or you get one of the scarier link warnings from Google.

Now, in case you decide to try to remove any bad links and then disavow them to be on the safe side, I’d recommend acting as if you were on a mine field – to take careful steps bit by bit, starting with the most obvious culprits and constantly measuring the results. So:

  1. Try to change the anchors where possible
  2. Try to remove any footer/forum signature links you might have (or at least to change the anchors)
  3. Try to contact webmasters whose sites point a substantial number of spammy-looking links to your site.

Final thoughts

So, to sum it up, I’d like to say that I don’t think the emergence of Google’s disavow tool makes much difference (if at all) to the state in which many websites now are because of the Penguin update. If you simply disavow your links and don’t do anything else, most likely this will not affect your site in any way.

At the same time, I don’t think it is possible to hurt a site by disavowing the links it has or by disavowing it as a link source, because it is just not worth the effort. Hence, all in all, to me, Google’s disavow tool is just an overrated phenomenon.

Filed Under: SEO

About

Currently I'm working as a freelance online promotion manager and chief internet marketing manager at SEOlots, a startup SEO agency. I have been working as a copywriter (software development and marketing topics), pay-per-click manager, and have provided strategic consulting to search marketing clients. A cycling freak, in love with cats!

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{ 25 Responses }

  1. Deepak Singh says:
    I have read about disavow on Matt cutt blog but if someone got 4000 links from other website wiil he able to delete spammy sites and my question is this if some of good links will be deleted then can i get that link or not?
  2. Ken Robinson says:
    I recently had to use the disavow tools for one of the websites I was working on. A spam blog was stealing content and linking back, but way overboard with tens of thousands of pages of duplicated content linked back to my site. Still waiting to see if there's an SEO impact.
  3. Brian Greenberg says:
    I personally like the new google disavow tool. I go through each link/domain to see for myself how much of a risk that particular link is. It is a great opportunity to get rid of all the high risk links that might be currently hurting your site, or might cause issues in the future. It is very important that you know what you are doing though. I have been an seo for many years and can make a decision very quickly on whether the link/domain is too high a risk to keep in the link profile.
  4. Rachel says:
    Unless you've been involved into some heavy blackhat link spamming (and gotten heavily penalized for it) I don't think you should use the disavow tool, as there's a a risk that some links might not actually be hurting you.
  5. ace says:
    Will this Disavow Tool change the negative effect Google Penguin did to a site? What I mean to ask is, if your website was hit hard by Google Penguin because of spammy sites linking to you and then you use this Tool, will Google bring your site back to its original rankings in Search?
  6. JamesW says:
    Honestly, this is very dangerous tools and just hearing Matt repeating how it;s not for everyone proves that it can hurt more that help. You can loose your rankings and traffic, if you didn't involved in any backlinks buying don't use thsi tools. Rather improve your content and services. thanks for sharing
  7. Brianjohnson says:
    Matt Cutts says that you’ll see that the disavow tool is pretty much like a canonical tag – Google may respect or may not.
  8. Vivek says:
    Actually I have personally used Google Disavow tool and I have seen good results. Most of the websites which I have added in the list were either spam sites which were scrapping my content or where those which were just launched and wanted link exchange.
    • Iness Bokhan says:
      Hey, Vivek, that’s good news. Would you mind specifying by how many positions (on average) your rankings improved after you disavowed those links? Also, did you provide any evidence of having tried to remove those links before disavowing them? I’m sure everybody here would be interested in hearing more on that!
      • Vivek says:
        Iness Bokhan it was really good new for me. Would you mind specifying by how many positions : Few of my posts were out of 1st of Google. I can't point them all, since they all are back to the first page and have much better placements. One of my post : " onpage seo factors " ( article length 1600 words plus ). Backlink : 1 ( nofollow ), web page PR- 4 When I was hit, it moved backed to 8th page and today its on first page for both : " onpage seo factors ", on-page seo factors ". Also, did you provide any evidence of having tried to remove those links before disavowing them : As I already said, those sites were spam, and they were just scrapping my content and were giving worthless dofollow links. Have a nice day.
  9. Jacko says:
    My two issues with "the disavow": > Will Google tell you which link is hurting you? > Why are you punished for someone else linking to You? I don't think this is the direction Google should be taking things. Aol went too far back in the day. Here's another question, who demanded this enhancement?
    • Iness Bokhan says:
      Hey, Jacko, actually, when Bing added the disavow option to their Webmaster Tools, many people said that Google should have done the same. Besides, many SEOs were complaining that after the Penguin update came out their sites became vulnerable to negative SEO.
  10. Reg says:
    As far as I am concerned, you can't change the past. Panda was the removal (de-indexing) of low quality links and linking sites.This was done without considering if these sites generated any traffic, but only if the sites were an attempt, (in Google's opinion), to influence their results. Penguin was a recalculation of a site's linking profile with the calculations based on relevance and not PageRank totals. In either case, what is done is done. For one of my sites, Google's removal of low quality sites cost me tens of thousands of totally ORGANIC links and hundreds of visitors a day. When I say "organic", i mean that the visitors to my site and users of my software placed the links themselves. This totaled over 3000 links a month. Totally hands off on my part. This site is an example of what Google wants. Totally organic link building based on content. Penguin was a recalculation of a site's linking profile with off topic links being the target. Penguin did this by applying its new, relevance based PageRank algo. PR was re-adjusted and the new findings applied retroactively. Anchor text used on the non-relevant links was used as a basis for position penalties, if sufficient quantities were found. Not only is this a site-wide penalty, but it is attached to the domain's owner as well. If an owner decides to start over, the penalties follow across to new sites. I can see no positive use of the Disavow tool Reg
  11. Mark says:
    @Iness Personally, I would never use the disavow tool. I have heard from the grapevine that this is a way for Google to root out private networks used by link blasters. disavow = admissions of guilt ??? Mark
  12. Nishadha says:
    I don't think you have understood the true power of Google disavow tool and how it actually works. You can't actually hurt any legitimate website without actually hurting yourself, because you can only disavow links pointing to you. Also there are some cases where you get bad links but you have no way to get rid of them. Where contacting the webmaster or any other options wont work. In such cases the disavow tool can be a life saver. Also it acts as a signal to Google to identify bad or spam sits. If 100 people are disavowing some site then clearly there is something wrong with it. Overall this tools is embraced by the SEO community, just don't use it if you don't know what you're doing.
    • Rishi says:
      Right, it just allows you to tell Google that that particular site is responsible for making your site down in the Search Engine. It actually don't act as reporting the site as spammy or something.
    • Avi ( says:
      You're correct Nishadha. I mean, disavow tool is helpful sometimes when you get links from spammy sites. But Google already knows which links to accept, which are good and which are not. The tool is not useless but not that important either. You're right, we should use it only when it's very necessary. Otherwise Google is always smart in this things as my friend Penguin is already there... :)
    • Iness Bokhan says:
      Nishadha, this is exactly what I was saying – that you can't really hurt a legitimate site with this tool. ;) And, as far as not being able to contact the webmaster of a spammy site is concerned, like I said, by just disavowing bad links you probably won't achieve much, because Google themselves pointed out that you have to provide evidence of having taken at least some steps to remove the bad links before you disavow them.
  13. Phil Buckley says:
    I have to disagree with your first suggestion. If you have a "suspicious" link that Google has flagged and you change the anchor text, you've signaled Google that you are in total control of a back link passing PageRank! You might as well just remove it.
    • Iness Bokhan says:
      Well, Phil, too many variables here, I think. First, you never know what links exactly Google flagged. Second, does Google really have a way of knowing WHO changed the anchor texts and why? I don’t think so. Third, some links might have spammy anchor texts, but be sitting at quite legitimate websites and bringing you decent traffic. So, just to dilute their anchor text profile (change the ratio of “money” to “non-money” anchors), one might want to change those anchor texts.
      • Joel says:
        Hi Iness, Very informative piece of content.Thank you so much for your tips on Google disavov.Keep up the good work
  14. Servando Silva says:
    Hello Iness. I've been waiting so long to talk about the Disavow link here at Famous Bloggers and clear some initial ideas. You just did that. I was OK until the point getting the sources of the backlinks of any site you wanted to damage was "Easy" with the correct tool. However, I didn't think about needing those links to point to my site so I could make a request. Duh, silly me! Anyway, I've seen many videos from Matt, and from that POV, I think we shouldn't really worry about it. However, let's say someone wants to disavow their own links from a network and you're somehow related to that network too? I guess thy would be doing a favor to you already, instead of hurting you. Would that be correct? Yes, you're loosing the links juice but you're building a better quality authority. Even though not all people would see it like that. Hope to hear back some great/interesting comments on this thread.
    • Iness Bokhan says:
      Hello Servando, You’ve raised an important issue – ‘what should one do when they have network links pointing to the site?’ I remember Google saying that they don’t need a confirmation from webmasters that a site is part of a link network, meaning they have other means of identifying link networks. However, Google could be bluffing. To find out if that is true, I would first take a deeper look at my backlinks and try to assess the good backlinks vs. bad backlinks ratio. If the ratio doesn’t look that bad, I would just try to get some more legitimate backlinks and see if that helps improve rankings/increase traffic. Then, if that doesn’t help, it probably means that Google DOES really know that those links are bad, and disavowing them won’t make the situation any worse, if only better. So, then I would just try disavowing those links to regain my site’s reputation.
      • Assaf says:
        IMO Google is bluffing big time with the disavow tool. I see it as a snitching tool on networks and other link schemes. Yes, Google has other means to find the bad neighborhoods but now they also have the disavow tool. In addition, it might flag your site to be monitored if you use the tool as it is kind of admitting that you used to get "bad links". Regarding negative SEO - with all the automatic tools out there, the disavow tool cannot be fast enough to fight. In addition most sites do not have the authority of Apple.com and damaging a common site's ranking is very easy these days in the Panda/Penguin era.
        • Iness Bokhan says:
          Hi, Assaf! Thanks for your opinion! I guess, I wouldn't make 100% straightforward conclusions, since some SEOs claim the disavow tool worked for them just fine (like in Vivek's case), I just want to stress it's not the KEY to all link-related issues.