Do you disavow spammy links?

[pirxus]

Hey guys,

I have someone "threatening" me that he'll negative SEO my website with thousands of bad links and that he'll copy my site's content on some low quality sites, if I don't buy his "white hat" backlinking service.

I didn't reply, but it got me thinking about the vulnerability of my site.

If I'll start seeing an increased number of spammy backlinks, is it advisable to disavow them? Or should I just leave everything as it is? I've read that Google says that nobody can do any damage to you, but a friend of mine lost all his traffic about 2 years ago, exactly because of a negative SEO attack. His site was already big and established with about 300K visits per month. He got manual actions by Google and his traffic went literately to zero.

After two months of disavowing backlinks (he also hired a company to help him on which he spent $10K), the manual action was removed and his site needed a whole year before it fully recovered. From then on he's disavowing bad links weekly.

Also, if someone copies the texts from my site and posts them on some low quality sites, could that really have a negative effect?

I'd appreciate your opinions. Thanks.

 

[mzonas]

Is he selling here? Report to mods so they can ban this asshole. Generally, I wouldn't worry about neg SEO. Just disavow if you fear.

 

[Rj268]

If you are getting spammed, then disavow them. It could get a bit overwhelming if they are sending thousands or millions of links at you from GSA.

Fortunately for you, Google is fairly decent at detecting negative SEO attacks and just devaluing the spam links.

 

[pirxus]

Nope, he's not selling here, he found my website and contacted me. I'm pretty sure he emails 100's of people each day.

Google's official answer is to not to use the disavow tool unless we built the bad backlinks ourselves. But, like I mentioned, my friend had a very bad experience couple of years ago. He definitely didn't buy any shady backlinks, yet his site got penalized.

I only wish that Google was as smart as they say they are.

 

[pirxus]

If you are getting spammed, then disavow them. It could get a bit overwhelming if they are sending thousands or millions of links at you from GSA.

Fortunately for you, Google is fairly decent at detecting negative SEO attacks and just devaluing the spam links.

There's nothing yet, but I truly hope that Google is smarter than two years ago.

 

[mzonas]

It certainly is smarter now. I get such emails, I just ignore them.

 

[MrSempay]

I just ignore those emails.

You probably should disavow the links. The good thing is that no one that has threatened me with a negative SEO attack has actually done one to me.

 

[pirxus]

I just ignore those emails.

You probably should disavow the links. The good thing is that no one that has threatened me with a negative SEO attack has actually done one to me.

Good to know!

I just found this article from Kinsta: https://kinsta.com/blog/negative-seo/. Their site actually got attacked.

Well, I guess I better keep monitoring the link profile and if stays fairly normal, I won't be disavowing anything. After all, all sites get bad backlinks, but unless there's a huge spike, it's probably normal.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

Google's official answer is to not to use the disavow tool unless we built the bad backlinks ourselves.

Where is this official answer at?

 

[Deleted member 813988]

If the site is copied > file DMCA, even if he's in the 3rd world country it may still work.

 

[pirxus]

Where is this official answer at?

Here's the answer from John M: https://twitter.com/johnmu/status/1088929651593039872

I also read this on a few other Googel sources. I think it was mentioned on a Webmaster Hangouts, too.

 

[Steph Curry Jr.]

Idk, that Google thing is pretty smart.

 

[Mr Positive]

Yes you should disavow them immediately

 

[bartosimpsonio]

Here's the answer from John M: https://twitter.com/johnmu/status/1088929651593039872

I also read this on a few other Googel sources. I think it was mentioned on a Webmaster Hangouts, too.

You misread that.

> Disavow links that were really paid for (or otherwise actively unnaturally placed), don't fret the cruft.

Disavow is for any bad link you suspect, not just for the ones you buy. Otherwise nobody would use it!

I've used it to successfully clean up sites with manual penalties.

 

[dongosho]

I'd not worry if I were you. Most probably these are empty threats, and even if they are serious, you can disavow safely.
I recommend that you monitor your links frequently and disavow any that look suspicious.