Google launches its version of the “Disavow Links” tool

Further to our previous article in September 2012, which announced the introduction of a “disavow links” feature in Bing’s Webmaster Center, this month we review Google’s recent release of their own much-anticipated version of this tool. As with Bing’s tool, this feature allows webmasters to protect their sites from malicious link building that could result in their website’s rankings being penalised on the Google search engine.

Google has recently been increasing its focus on targeting bad links, which has consequently affected some business website rankings. The new “disavow links” tool is therefore designed for those websites that have been impacted by Google’s ‘Penguin’ Update, which in particular impacted those websites that may have purchased links or gained them through spamming.

Following the Penguin Update, there was a sense of panic from some SEOs and publishers who wanted a way to ensure that they could discount bad links and start afresh. Others worried that people might point bad links at their sites in an attempt to harm them with “negative SEO”. The situation was compounded when Google released a new set of link warnings that didn’t clarify if publishers really had a problem they needed to fix, or not.

By counting ‘bad links’ as negative votes against a website, Google has now enabled website owners to try to avoid the negative impact on their site via this new tool, which can accessed through the Webmaster Tools service. It should mainly be used in response to a warning from Google about ‘unnatural links’ pointing to a webste and it therefore enables the person responsible for a business’s website indexing to tell the Google search engine that their site shouldn’t be associated with un-trusted links pointing to it from nominated external websites.

However, this tool should be used with extreme caution, as the incorrect use of it could result in a decrease in a website’s genuine rankings. Website publishers should therefore first try to remove links they are concerned about pointing at their site by first working with site owners hosting the links or with companies they may have purchased links through. Google’s blog states that: “in general, Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking. However, if you’re worried that some back links might be affecting your site’s reputation, you can use the Disavow Links tool to indicate to Google that those links should be ignored”.

If you’d like to know more about how Google’s “Disavow Links” tool may benefit your website’s rankings, you can read more here, or contact us now for more information.

Leave a Reply