The Google Zoo algorithm updates has caused an amusing side industry in SEO digital marketing to pop up – identifying and removing “toxic” links with the Google Search Console Disavow tool.
I’ve watched and seen business and SEO companies evaluate their backlinks, compile them into a file, then submit it to Google with hopes of improving their SEO.
Guess how many times I’ve seen it do anything measurable?
The question was rhetorical.
Moving on…
Back in the day, the only thing an SEO professional cared about was getting a nice, anchor text rich link.
Directories, blogs, nobody cared, just link baby!
Then Google came out with an SEO algorithm change designed to punish webmasters who were cheating.
Good quality websites had their organic traffic stripped overnight and the Google Zoo began.
A lot of people freaked out, Google made algorithm adjustments, and the disavow tool was born.
Here’s the rub… Google doesn’t let us know what a bad link is. We can all spot a poor quality link, but is a local newspaper website really a bad link because it has a ton of advertising?
Nobody can say for sure, so webmasters could potentially be doing more harm than good to their backlinks and SEO by removing legitimate backlinks from their site’s profile.
On top of that, there are millions of potential links, how in the heck can Google evaluate all of them without making mistakes?
It turns out they can’t, so they’re making the smart play… they’re ignoring them.
Say what?
When asked about notifications for suspicious links in Search Console to help with disavow tool work, Google’s resident SEO guru answered:
“If we recognize them, we can just ignore them – no need to have you do anything in most cases.”
Don’t believe me, here’s the link: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-bad-links-ignore-26811.html
How about them apples?
So, stop wasting time with disavow files and start linking the right way!