Showing Revision 1 created 10/19/2012 by Amara Bot.

1. Title:
   Disavow links
2. Description:

   Matt Cutts explains the "Disavow links" feature of Google Webmaster Tools.

   Learn more about how to use the disavow links feature on our blog and in our Help Center:
   http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.html
   http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2648487

   Access the feature here:
   https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

   More webmaster resources:
   http://www.google.com/webmasters/

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   >>Matt Cutts: Hey everybody. We just released
   a new tool called the disavow links tool,
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   which lets you tell Google which links to
   your site you'd like to ignore. Let me give
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   you a little bit of context, tell you about
   how it works, and basically fill you in on
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   the background.
   As Google has gotten better and better at
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   assessing backlinks, there are some people
   who more or less want to clean up their backlinks.
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   Maybe you've been doing paid links, or someone
   on your behalf has. You might have been doing
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   blog spam, comment spam, forum spam, guest
   book spam, you-name-it link spam. Maybe you
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    paid somebody to write some low-quality articles
    and syndicate those all over the place with
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    some very keyword rich anchor text. And maybe
    Google sent you a message that says, "We've
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    seen unnatural links to your site" or "We've
    taken targeted action to some unnatural links
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    to your site." And as a result, you want to
    clean up those backlinks.
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    Well, first and foremost, the main thing that
    we recommend is getting those links actually
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    removed from the web. If a random person looks
    up links to your site, you don't want to see
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    a bunch of spammy links. It's good to clean
    up for other purposes. You don't want them
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    to jump to conclusions. It's also good so
    that other search engines won't see spammy
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    links to your site as well.
    We do recommend that you write to people,
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    try to get the link taken down, and basically
    get as many of those links as possible. Now,
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    at the same time, we realize that sometimes,
    it's not possible to get in contact with everybody.
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    So at the point where you have written to
    as many people as you can multiple times,
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    you've really tried hard to get in touch,
    and you've only been able to get some certain
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    fraction of those links down, and there's
    still a small fraction of links left, that's
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    where you can use our new tool, called the
    disavow links tool.
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    So how does it work? Well, first off, you
    need to figure out "Which links should I disavow?"
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    Hopefully, you have a pretty good idea, but
    there's a couple ways you can take a whack
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    at that. First, you can look at your recent
    links. We will show you, now, Google will
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    let you download a list of links sorted by
    the date that we discovered them. So you can
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    look at the most recent links, if you might
    have just gotten a message or a warning about
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    unnatural links.
    We're working on ways where when we provide
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    links that we, the unnatural links warning,
    we'll actually, in the text of that message,
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    give you maybe one, maybe two, possibly up
    to three examples of the sorts of links that
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    we're talking about.
    Now, this is not a comprehensive list. We're
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    saying, "These are the sorts of links that
    we're trying to ignore, or that we don't count,
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    or that we think looks low-quality or spammy."
    And so the message does not mean "Remove these
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    two or three links and now do a reconsideration
    request." It's to give you a flavor of the
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    sorts of links, whether it's a low-quality
    article bank thing that you were syndicating,
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    or whether it's a paid link network, or whatever.
    The sorts of links that we would like to see
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    taken down.
    So how do you actually use the tool? How do
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    you disavow links? It's actually pretty simple.
    We want to reiterate that most people do not
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    need to use this tool. There's been a little
    bit of brouhaha in the last few months where
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    some people really want to clean up their
    backlinks. But if you're an average Mom and
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    Pop, if you're just doing normal sorts of
    things, you're not doing really especially
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    egregious or aggressive SEO with all kinds
    of weird link networks or stuff like that,
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    this is not a tool that you should need to
    use under any sort of normal circumstances.
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    So when you load up the tool, you'll hopefully
    see a lot of disclaimers that remind you,
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    under normal circumstances, you shouldn't
    need to use this. Only if you've gotten a
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    message, if you really think there's an issue
    with your backlinks, and you really want to
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    clean it up, and you're a power user, you
    feel comfortable doing technical things.
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    The first version of the interface that we're
    launching reflects that. It's basically the
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    ability to upload a text file of links that
    you'd like to ignore. So my site, for example,
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    is mattcutts.com. Suppose I want to ignore
    a link from example.com/page.html. You simply
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    make a text file that says "example.com/page.html"
    and you upload that. So the format is just
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    one URL per line. We try to make it a little
    bit easy. Suppose you have a porn site, pornsite.com,
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    and it links to you. And you want to ignore
    all links from that domain. You can say "domain:pornsite.com."
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    You can also have comments, you can have little
    hash signs, you can document your efforts
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    to try to get links pulled down or provide
    some more context there. And then you just
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    basically upload that text file.
    Now, it's a single text file for a domain.
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    So if you have multiple registered owners,
    and you want to add or edit or update that
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    file, we provide a way to download that file.
    Then you would be able to edit it. You can
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    add another link to ignore, or anything along
    those lines. If you wanted to, you could empty
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    that file out, and then you can reupload that,
    and we will process that in turn.
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    Now, how will Google actually treat it when
    you say, "I'd like Google to ignore this link"?
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    We treat it as a very strong suggestion, but
    we don't treat it as something that we absolutely
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    have to abide by. And before you get nervous
    or worried, that's the exact same methodology
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    that we use for rel="canonical." So we have
    seen some guys where they will have a website,
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    and they say, "Oh, I'm going to rel="canonical"
    over here," and that's a 404, and they can
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    shoot themselves in the foot. So we do reserve
    the right to look at things and say, "Oh,
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    we think this is something that the user didn't
    intend to do." But in normal circumstances,
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    we will take it as a very strong suggestion,
    and basically treat it a lot like 'nofollow'.
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    Drop that link out of our processing.
    We do expect that it will take probably weeks
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    once you upload your list of links to disavow
    for all those links to be disavowed because
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    we have to recrawl those pages, reindex those
    pages, and reprocess them in order to attach
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    the attribute that says, "Okay, this link
    we would like to no longer treat with the
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    same weight. We would like to treat it with
    zero weight."
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    So it does take a fair amount of time. If
    you're doing a reconsideration request, I
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    would explicitly mention, "Hey, I have disavowed
    links," just so that we can go and try to
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    check up on that whenever the manual web spam
    team is investigating.
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    The other thing I would say is this is a power
    user tool. We don't want people to go overboard
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    with this. Most people shouldn't need to use
    this. Really only use it if you have good
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    reason to think that you need to. In particular,
    somebody is sure to ask, "Well, what if I
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    want to undisavow a link, or reavow it?" And
    the answer is, "That will take even longer."
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    So I would say, once you disavow a link, make
    sure that it's a link that you really want
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    to disavow, that you don't want to have it
    count anymore, because it will take a lot
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    longer, and we might not give it the same
    weight if we start to allow it to be reavowed.
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    So only take a look at the links that were
    either provided as examples or the links that
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    you think are truly spammy, and those are
    the ones that you really want to disavow.
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    Try as much as you can to clean things up
    beforehand, and then use the disavow tool
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    afterwards, if you feel comfortable.
    The last thing I just want to reiterate, and
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    I want to really get this across: most people
    should not need to use this. We build our
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    algorithms and we look at our spam processing
    such that in most cases, we handle things
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    just fine. A very small number of people are
    getting these unnatural links warnings. Proportional
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    to the web, most people do not need to be
    using this tool.
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    It's also an advanced tool, just like with
    rel="canonical." If you rel="canonical" to
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    somewhere that doesn't exist, it is possible
    to shoot yourself in the foot. So be carefully.
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    Don't just go in willy-nilly and submit a
    ton of files, and you're like, "Okay, I'm
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    changing a whole bunch of stuff every single
    time." You really want to maybe do an audit
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    of your backlinks and try to get an idea of
    the ones that look truly spammy, or the ones
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    that, according to recent stuff, look like
    they are not what links that they should count.
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     Those are the links that you might want to
     think about disavowing.
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     I realize, even if I tell everybody this,
     there will still be a lot of people who just
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     run for the disavow link tool. But again,
     whenever we're doing reconsideration requests,
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     we are going to look at the set of links that
     existed before. And then we're going to be
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     doing spot checks. We're going to be look
     at "Are those links off the web?" So don't
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     just immediately think, "Disavow is the answer
     for all my ills!" You're also going to want
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     to try to remove stuff off the web first.
     And this is a power tool. It's something where
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     it is possible, in the process of telling
     Google to ignore links to your site, to make
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     mistakes. So I would approach it with caution.
     I wouldn't just jump in. If you are a Mom
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     and Pop, if you haven't used your own SEO,
     if you haven't used random link networks that
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     you found on SEO Forums, this is probably
     not something that you should be using. I
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     just want to try to reiterate that. Hopefully,
     everybody can remind everybody else of that
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     if people are talking about it on forums or
     conferences or whatever.
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     But we are pretty excited to be able to offer
     this because we do hear from SEOs who try
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     to do clean up. There's an entire niche for
     people, for SEOs, whose job it is to clean
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     up backlinks. And this is a tool in that arsenal,
     after you've done all the other cleanup that
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     you can do. So we're really happy that we
     are providing this option. And thanks for
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     all the feedback for the people who asked
     for it. Let us know what you think of it,
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     and then we'll continue to iterate and look
     at other ways to improve. Thanks.