Can we ask Google to ignore links? Pretty soon we can

[ozsubasi]

Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious, but if Google was only to negate links that it had already flagged, then surely all a webmaster would have to do is mark every link they weren't 100% sure of (or even all of them come to that), safe in the knowledge that whichever ones weren't flagged wouldn't be removed anyway?

[morestar]

Uh, no. Can't see that working. 'Cos that leads to build as many spammy links as you can, then when Google flags them go, ah sorry, and disavow the ones that they've flagged.

Well that seems exactly how it's going to be. When you build a link to your website and find it's spammy OR on a 'spammy site' etc. you can start some quality control - you'll have the option so you can negate it or try and fix the problem, whether the links are on your domains or another's...

[morestar]

I still think the idea has merit, but as Sentelligence said, Google should not leave it to the webmasters to try and guess which links Google may deem bad.

Another good call, but if we're SEOs we should know or be somewhat suspect of an obviously dangerous sites - sites we know (either through ranking changes/fluctuations) have negatively affected us.

Asking Google to ignore the links is much easier on every one than going back and asking the person who's linked to you to remove the links.

[murphypj]

While this may be the true motivation to adopt this, the idea was actually given to Matt Cutts by David Harry, a known SEO. I still think the idea has merit, but as Sentelligence said, Google should not leave it to the webmasters to try and guess which links google may deem bad.

Ok, I accept that William, but my points were (a) I believe Google are being disingenuous with the whole "oops, we've made an algo change, and, remember we said that we don't penalize dodgy links, just discount them, well, you won't believe this but....." and (b) After 13 years, there is a limit to the number of lemming impressions I can do.

[Clarrie]

The point is, when Google flags them, it doesn't tell you which links it flagged. This will have a very interesting psychological effect on SEO's, I think. They may begin disavowing the links Google did not flag, giving Google valuable hints.

Quite right. But only the white hat SEOs; black hat ones won't give a s***. From the perspective of cleaning up spam links, I want to be able to disavow links whether they've been flagged or not. In the case I cited earlier, WMT hasn't issued any warnings, but looking at the incoming links I can see several linking domains that are without question wholesale link spam. One is several thousand links from several thousand pages, all blog comment spam. Another is hundreds of links from hundreds of pages on an empty site - empty site? The links are being redirected through a link exchange and the content is being cloaked. Now I KNOW this is potentially damaging, whether Google has "flagged" them or not, and I want to be able to be able to distance our client's site from these as soon as I can.

Link spam comes in all shapes and sizes and may be very hard to identify, depending on a particular profile, especially if you were not the one who built it.

Sure, but again to use this particular example, this site is long established and has over 2000 thousand linking domains, but most of those are single links. Given the history of previous SEO, some of these will certainly be of very dubious quality, but sorting the wheat from the chaff in a field of that size is something that Google is more than capable of dealing with algorithmically, and my primary concern are the relatively few SERIOUSLY spammy linking domains that have the potential to have the most negative impact.

Well, then Google may be tempted to use disavowing as a signal, and this may lead to abuse. Besides, unsavvy webmasters could begin disavowing the links they don't understand, just to be on the safe side, and this will lead to less relevant SERPs. I don't think webmasters should be given that much power and be able to disavow everything in sight.

And what if they do? if white hat SEOs disavowing these links gives Google a valuable hint that these source domains are not to be trusted, then great, let's have more of it! I'm sure that Google can create a system that recognises the difference between the profile of domains that have the odd disavowed link, and disavowed domains that are major sources of link spam - and the more of these wholesale web spam generators are flagged up, the net result should be more relevant search results, not less.

[Clarrie]

Well that seems exactly how it's going to be. When you build a link to your website and find it's spammy OR on a 'spammy site' etc. you can start some quality control - you'll have the option so you can negate it or try and fix the problem, whether the links are on your domains or another's...

I think we may be reading the SENtelligence's post in slightly different way - the way I read his post is that you should only be able to disavow links already flagged by Google as spam. My feeling is that you should be able to flag links any link that you distrust, as you say, applying your own quality control.

My comment about only this leading to people building as many spammy links as possible is because I think that it would lead to lazy or dubious SEOs to try and acquire as many spam links as possible, and fool their clients that it's all OK as Google hasn't flagged them (yet). Not a door that Google should be leaving ajar if they are really trying to combat spam links.

[SteveGerencser]

Here is the issue Clarrie, if Google has already flagged the links as spam, why should I have to disavow them? Should Google automatically simply not count them to begin with?

[SENtelligence]

Here is the issue Clarrie, if Google has already flagged the links as spam, why should I have to disavow them? Should Google automatically simply not count them to begin with?

From what I understood after reading this interview, Google would like to move away from simply discounting links. Perhaps that's what Matt Cutts meant when he said they would like to be more rigorous about enforcing the guidelines.

Also, I think I should explain my point about disavowing "flagged" links more. Here is how I see this working. Google's algorithm identifies certain links as spam and flags them. It then sends a message to the webmaster, saying there are suspicious links to the site. Webmaster has no idea what links Google means. Webmaster has the option to check the links that he thinks are in violation in GWT and those links will be automatically, algorithmically, hands-freely discounted my Google. If webmaster also checks the links that Google did not flag, Google may use this data to better identify link spam sources in the future, or improve its algo, or in whichever way they normally use this data.

[kgun]

So it looks like Google is going to give webmasters a chance to negate links within Webmaster Tools, sooner or later. I'm assuming it's through Webmaster Tools that we'll be able to do the negating.

Is this a tool for webmasters to fight or do spam?

Great news? I think so. I'm not really one to worry about 'negative' links but I'm sure if I sift through the list of links for some of my websites I'm sure I'd like to get them ignored by Google.

So now what's going to happen? If a website is reported as a "bad link" from any one webmaster, what's the effect upon that website? In a way that's reporting a website as spam. Will Google discredit their rankings in the search results? Maybe if too many websites 'report' too many 'bad links' from certain websites, they'll start seeing the negative SEO effects on their websites too!

I'm thinking to some degree this is going to cause a stirring in the SEO world too - if I link to you and you don't "like" my site, what am I in for? This we need to know...

Great news?

Personally, I don't se anything new that was not covered in this

http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster...eally-hurt-you

monster thread.

Another good call, but if we're SEOs we should know or be somewhat suspect of an obviously dangerous sites - sites we know (either through ranking changes/fluctuations) have negatively affected us.

Asking Google to ignore the links is much easier on every one than going back and asking the person who's linked to you to remove the links.

I still have no serious proof of those words that I have marked in red. Please, give a serious proof of your statement.

Why should you bother about an inbound link if the worst that can happen is that it can not pass link juice, more precisely it is in my words zeroed out as I explain in the above thread? I have seen no proof of anything else so far, even after years of discussions on this forum.

http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster...With-Bad-Links

http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster...igher-Rankings

What is your conclusion after the above threads?

[chrisJumbo]

From what I understood after reading this interview, Google would like to move away from simply discounting links. Perhaps that's what Matt Cutts meant when he said they would like to be more rigorous about enforcing the guidelines.

Kgun,

There has been information posted elsewhere about Negative SEO. Google even changed their statement on whether or not a competitor can hurt from it would be really, really difficult to Google does everything it can to combat web spam. Seems like Google isn't so sure about how hard it is or isn't. In addition, Google sent out a notice to some that their link profile could contain improper links.

Google has been moving in a direction where they don't just discount the link, but they potentially apply a penalty to it. Some people believe it is all smoke and mirrors, maybe it is. Maybe this is just Google's way of getting us to do their job for them. But when a site points 30,000 links to my home page all with anchor text that happens to be one of our better ranking terms and the site drops in rankings, I wouldn't mind having an easy way to tell Google to go check them out. :O)