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00:00:01
Is Google killing off the Disavow tool?
18 Plays7 months ago
This episode examines the history and functionality of Google's disavow tool, discussing its initial purpose and its role in current SEO practices. Your host, Andrew Laws, discusses the backdrop of link-buying strategies that led to the development of the disavow tool, which allowed webmasters to disassociate from harmful backlinks.
Key Points Discussed:
- Background on Link Buying: Learn about the era when buying links was a common SEO strategy, and how it prompted the need for a disavow tool.
- Introduction of the Disavow Tool: Explore the reasons why Google introduced the disavow tool and how it helps webmasters clean up their link profiles.
- How the Disavow Tool Works: Understand the functionality of the tool within Google Search Console, where users can submit lists of links they prefer to ignore.
- Relevance and Effectiveness Today: Analyse the current relevance of the disavow tool, why Google has diminished its prominence, and when it might still be necessary.
- Insights from Industry Experts: Listen to commentary from SEO experts and real-world stories about using the disavow tool.
Closing Thoughts: The episode concludes with recommendations for SEO practitioners to focus on earning high-quality, organic links and to steer clear of outdated tactics such as link buying. Andrew also invites listeners to share their experiences and views on the disavow tool.
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Transcript
Dubious Link Practices in SEO
00:00:01
Speaker
disavowings almost almost almost but what is disavowing let's look back in history for a little while there was a time when in ye olden days some people were buying links of mysterious whole big networks of some fairly sketchy websites weren't seen as sketchy by many people at the time but going back to an age where people
00:00:27
Speaker
thought fooling Google would be the best way to do SEO, some people spent a lot of money buying links on link farms and private blog networks and loads of other things like that. And it's essential to remember those people knew they were doing black
00:00:45
Speaker
SEO they knew that they were doing something Google probably wouldn't like the problem was a lot of them got to the point where they spent an awful lot of money potentially spent an awful lot of their clients money on buying these links and in a surprise move and I'm paraphrasing and smushing lots of complex things together into one simple thing Google said we know what you've been doing but
00:01:11
Speaker
Instead of burning you all with a cleansing fire of de-indexing, we're going to give you a second chance.
Google's Response to Questionable Links
00:01:20
Speaker
If you tell us where the links you built are, we'll ignore them when we figure out where to rank you.
00:01:29
Speaker
Now quite naturally, this sector of the SEO community is a little restrained when it comes to just sharing all their information with Google. So a lot of people just didn't. But for those who wanted a second chance, who wanted to hold up their hand and say, I think we made an innocent mistake, Google created the disavow tool.
00:01:51
Speaker
This is a tool where through Google Search Console you could go and upload lists of all the sketchy links you'd bought and Google might or might not ignore them. Why didn't they tell you if they were going to ignore them or not? There's a really good reason behind that.
00:02:08
Speaker
If Google was to tell you which sketchy old links they're going to ignore, you could theoretically upload large lists of, let's say, for example, the websites that were selling the sketchy links, and then Google would tell you which ones are those they were going to ignore and which ones they thought were okay.
00:02:30
Speaker
So one of those cases where Google is very open and honest to a certain extent, but isn't going to make it really easy for people who want to try and pull the wool over their eyes.
Evolving Role of the Disavow Tool
00:02:40
Speaker
So this is how the disavow tool came about. It sort of fell into favour ship with good SEO practice because any website that's been around for a long time can attract a lot of sketchy links anyway. It's just the way the web works. If you've looked at your backlink profile, and you should, you'll find there is all kinds of junk in there, just completely meaningless stuff.
00:03:05
Speaker
But, you know, as Google's got better, they know in a much more straightforward way what they can ignore and what they should pay attention to. They know the web just spawns all these really rubbish backlinks. So largely, we think they ignore them. They say they ignore them. But as a yet another caveat, the world of the Google algorithm is so big,
00:03:32
Speaker
that we can't always be sure. And the shocking truth is, nor can Google. So Google stopped talking about this disavow tool after a while, they just sort of didn't really mention it much. And when they brought out the new style Google search console, the one we call the domain Google search call, as opposed to prefix or suffix, the old one,
00:03:56
Speaker
It wasn't a massive surprise to see that the disavow tool was no longer there. It hadn't been migrated over to the new style of Google Search Console. It's still available in the old style, and for some reason the old style Google Search Console is still available.
00:04:15
Speaker
we've done it in the past, we would see that a client had accrued a whole load of just meaningless low value backlinks. So occasionally, if that number started to grow, we would drop in a disavow request and then nothing much happens.
00:04:36
Speaker
We don't know for sure if Google even looked at them if they took them into consideration. I doubt when we did this, for example, on a test on one of our test accounts that just 25-year-old domain that accrued a load of junk. We submitted the disavow list.
Questioning the Disavow Tool's Future
00:04:53
Speaker
after doing some research in SEMrush, and I'm under no illusion that Google didn't call an extraordinary meeting. There wasn't a darkened room with loads of Google engineers looking round at my disavow tool to decide what to do with it, so they just disappeared. Google stopped talking about it, but the internet and the world of SEO being what it is,
00:05:15
Speaker
people in SEO like to just press buttons with people who work at Google, ask them questions, push them. In some ways I feel a bit bad for people like John Mueller who just gets pestered all the live long day with very specific questions. But then I remember I've seen his robots.txt file and that's interesting.
00:05:38
Speaker
Did a whole podcast about that on the SEO or Die podcast. Go look that up. It's fun. It's a fun robots.txt. My point is, the people who work at Google aren't perfect. They're human beings. But occasionally, they get pushed hard enough that they will give a response. Sometimes I think how exas, polite exasperation. And that happened today.
00:06:01
Speaker
somebody said, well, why is Google something about, are you going to just kill off the disavow tool? And John Mueller at Google said, probably eventually we'll just bin it. Well, I'm paraphrasing again. He didn't speak with such a rich, richly led Suffolk accent as I do. But he said,
00:06:23
Speaker
And I'm now quoting, if you've had a manual action for link spam, or if you're certain you'll get one, if somebody looks, then disavowing can make sense. But most spammy, paid, placed, swapped links are just ignored now. There you go. Google is always evolving.
Best SEO Practices for Backlinking
00:06:46
Speaker
There was a quote, I think it was from John Mueller just a few weeks ago, saying, if you get to the point that you're gonna disavow your links, then you should stop and go and find something more useful to do. So there you go, there's a little bit of background on disavowing, how it came about, how it was used. Now, at this point in any YouTube video or podcast or LinkedIn video or whatever, we're supposed to say, now here's the alternative. In this case, I think the alternative is well established.
00:07:16
Speaker
Don't buy crappy spammy links. There's the alternative. Build good links. Earn links. Don't buy them. There you go. Hope this has been entertaining. Please let us know if you violently disagree with anything I've said today. Let me know in the comments. I also want your perspectives. Everyone's had a quite different experience with the Disavow tool, and I want your experience if you have one. If not, and you're still watching this video, what do we...
00:07:45
Speaker
eight minutes into it, wondering what I'm talking about, then well, I celebrate your curious spirit. Please subscribe. Thanks for watching. Give me your comments. And remember, tell your mum.