Does Disavowing Spam Links have a negative effort on SEO?

For the past few months, I have been noticing that I have been getting a lot of backlinks from spammy looking websites such as porn, some indian and Chinese websites, coupons, etc. For the past few months I have been noticing a steady drop in my organic traffic from google but I am not sure if its due to these spammy links or because these constant algorithm updates. I noticed that my ahref's domain authority score also dropped even though I received more backlinks.

In addition, one of my competitiors that just started to rank for my keywords I suspect used negative seo on my website to link to my #1 ranking article so that he can outrank me. I noticed one of my other competitor who used to be ranked #2 got the same spammy backlink except this new guy.

I'm wondering whether or not I should disavow all of these spamming backlinks?

I have read mixed advice on the net.

Some people say to just leave those links alone because google is smart enough to not count them.

Some other people say that disavowing links can sometimes cause your DR to drop and your traffic to drop as well.

And then another group of people say you should absolutely disavow those links and that they are causing your rankings to drop.

So I am not sure who to listen to.

Right now my traffic has been steadily declining since January and I'm not sure what to do. I don't know whether or not I am being punished by these recent algorithm updates due to these spammy backlinks linking to site or not.

I'm not sure what to do now.

I think recent algorithm updates.
Those links are effect means you disavow those links then add fresh unique quality of content.
Always content is king so i think gradually may be increase.

wolf3000 said:

Some people say to just leave those links alone because google is smart enough to not count them.

Some other people say that disavowing links can sometimes cause your DR to drop and your traffic to drop as well.

And then another group of people say you should absolutely disavow those links and that they are causing your rankings to drop.

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I am sure you will get the same kind of mixed advice here also.

wolf3000 said:

I don't know whether or not I am being punished by these recent algorithm updates due to these spammy backlinks linking to site or not.

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Have you received any manual action notification in GSC? As you mentioned recent updates might cause your rank drop.

wolf3000 said:

I'm wondering whether or not I should disavow all of these spamming backlinks?

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It is not that easy to tell straight away to disavow those links with checking those domains and dates of those links. Better to hire some experts for auditing your site.


Instead, just beliving google about their negative SEO attacks algorithm, Better to take action by yourself by manually disavow those links.

In my opinion, just disavowing will not be the final solution, Because you may get attacked again with those kinds of spam links. You have to keep on monitor your backlink profile.

Sometimes spammy links affects site value and performance. Disavow those links and analyze the site performance. Keep monitoring backlink profile, update relevant content and add quality links and increase site authority.

Yes I have often seen whenever disavow links their rankings drops

True SEO said:

Have you received any manual action notification in GSC? As you mentioned recent updates might cause your rank drop.

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No nothing yet, however my rankinsg and traffic has tanked by 50% since January.

True SEO said:

Instead, just beliving google about their negative SEO attacks algorithm, Better to take action by yourself by manually disavow those links.

In my opinion, just disavowing will not be the final solution, Because you may get attacked again with those kinds of spam links. You have to keep on monitor your backlink profile.

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I am only worried that if after I disavow those links maybe my domain authority and rankings will drop even further. Is there a way to reverse it if this happens?

Pretty much my case, I received 150-200 visitors daily on my new casino niche site after months but suddenly I noticed few shady links targeting my best pages, few days after that my traffic dropped like hell. I got only 19-20 daily now on this site.

I've been disavowing those links for 5 days now but It's still there ;(
Rough.. just rough.

I've been targeted before and I never disallow anything. Even had a manual penalty on one domain, I didn't disavow then either and it still got reapproved, indexed well now.

My thought is big sites always get a portion of spam links. If you have enough healthy links there's nothing to worry about.

magicjones said:

I've been targeted before and I never disallow anything. Even had a manual penalty on one domain, I didn't disavow then either and it still got reapproved, indexed well now.

My thought is big sites always get a portion of spam links. If you have enough healthy links there's nothing to worry about.

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So would you suggest that I purchase some guest post links then?

I was pretty much all white hat except for doing some blog commenting, sharing links on social media, and dropping 1-2 links on forums.

I was thinking about getting 2-3 guest post links with DA of 20 and 30+ after disavowing those links.

wolf3000 said:

So would you suggest that I purchase some guest post links then?

I was pretty much all white hat except for doing some blog commenting, sharing links on social media, and dropping 1-2 links on forums.

I was thinking about getting 2-3 guest post links with DA of 20 and 30+ after disavowing those links.

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Yes because blogs, social and forums are all mostly nofollow links.

Get a push of dufollow links, whether it's buying guest posts or even starting your own little pbn

It sure helps me

If you are disavowing links that helped your website to rank and are related to your niche.. then yes it will have negative impact

alonelywriter said:

If you are disavowing links that helped your website to rank and are related to your niche.. then yes it will have negative impact

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But how do you know what helps or what doesn't help? I want to disavow porn, coupon, and foreign language backlinks.

wolf3000 said:

But how do you know what helps or what doesn't help? I want to disavow porn, coupon, and foreign language backlinks.

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Export all links first ..
porn links can be easily detected with a good idea.. make a list of them..

Setup a google alert for your website domain name. Fastest way to keep track about every spammy link to your site

And you can take an action quickly.

alonelywriter said:

Export all links first ..
porn links can be easily detected with a good idea.. make a list of them..

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What I mean is if the porn links and other spammy links are ******** and let's say have a DA of 20+, would that hurt your ranking or improve it by disavowing those links?

sanjananb said:

Setup a google alert for your website domain name. Fastest way to keep track about every spammy link to your site

And you can take an action quickly.

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Alright thx, I just set up google alerts with my domain name.

wolf3000 said:

What I mean is if the porn links and other spammy links are ******** and let's say have a DA of 20+, would that hurt your ranking or improve it by disavowing those links?

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If they aren't related to what your website is about.. remove them

alonelywriter said:

If they aren't related to what your website is about.. remove them

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Damn, I just checked my ahref's domain authority rating and it dropped by another .2 points and I got 1-2 new porn backlinks. I really suspect someone is doing a negative seo attack on my site because I am getting porn links pointing to different articles on my website usually from the same or similar domain.

It's pretty clear you've been the target of an SEO attack and it's starting to take effect on the SERPS. You can try to manually request each website to remove links to your site. If that's not possible, then disavowing them is your last option.