Google and Bing Are Lying! Disavow Links Cannot Save You

Meaning of the word “Disavow” is “Deny any responsibility or support for.” (via Google)

After denying the existence of Negative SEO, it seems Google and Bing have finally woken up to the reality thanks to the consistent pressured built by the webmasters. By promising to launch a new option in Google Webmaster Tools – Disavow Links, Google has made it clear that backlinks from bad sites can affect visibility of a website negatively and which is why you must “Disavow” links.

Bing has gone a bit step further by launching the option already. So, does this mean this new feature – “Disavow Links” is going to save you and your website from the onslaught of Negative SEO? You can take a leap of faith with the search engines as you are living in a democratic country but I will not. I have a doubt, a strong one indeed that, Link Disavow option is a just a gimmick, an attempt to make webmasters believe that the fate of their websites is in their hands. Now, if you are unable to see the reality, here are some pointers that you must take into consideration before coming under their coercion:

Bing Disavow Links

Dude They will not Change Their Algo: If you believe that Google or Bing will take cue their Disavow Links and will make changes in their algo just to safeguard the interest of your websites, you are living in a fool’s paradise. How come do you believe that they will take that pain to do that for you? Moreover, is it possible, humanly or non-humanly to make changes in a sophisticated algo developed by search engines in every now or then? Definitely, you cannot expect that Google and Bing will be doing extra work so that your website rank high in some competitive keywords. They are not running a search engine for charity; they are trying hard to keep their result page SPAM free just because it is the only way to beat the competitors.

They are Gathering Intelligence: You might be wondering if the search engines are not to use the signals from Disavow Links options, why the hell on earth they launched it? Valid question and the answer is they have launched it to gather intelligence. Search engines always try to solve things algorithmically but they are finding it tough to make their SERP neat and clean without human intervention. They have already realized that an algo, no matter how much sophisticated it is, is still lagging far behind from determining the quality of a web page. This is the reason why they are passing the torch to the webmasters. Webmasters, as we know, will do their best to safeguard the interest of their website and in doing so, they will start discounting those links are that adding zero value to their website.  Since webmasters are quite capable of determining the quality of websites, they can inform search engines straightaway which sites are good and which ones are bad. So, search engines, regardless of the fact whether they are to respect the signals of “Disavow Links or not”, are going to have detailed information about the quality of a website right from the horse mouth, I mean the webmasters.

You are not Safe: Yes, even after Disavowing Links that you have not built, there are still chances that Google and Bing may override them, as they do not trust you or any other webmasters. Disavow Links will be treated as a signal, not even a strong one, and that means, if your website gets penalized because of bad links, you cannot expect an overnight recovery. It will be a painfully slow recovery, if the recovery ever starts.

So, Disavow Links is the one stop solution of the bad neighborhood links. You need to act proactively and try your level best to get them down as far as possible if you are to see a speedy recovery. Couples with link unbuilding and Disavowing them via webmaster tools, you can expect a recovery.

This article is written by Michael Evans. He is a social media analyst and he is also associated with Webarts that offers Search Engine Optimization services.

10 thoughts on “Google and Bing Are Lying! Disavow Links Cannot Save You”

  1. This is so wrong. They are trying to filter the internet off the invalid links, but what if I use the same to blast off negative links pointing it to my competitor websites? Looks like search engines are on their way to make more money and make webmasters spend more time and money to filter their own backlinks.
    Very informative Michael. Thanks for the pointers.

    Reply
  2. Hi Mirchael,

    You have mentioned great points. But what if some one build bad back links (forum links, profile links, link farm etc) for a website. Let’s take an example, if someone is working with your team, somehow you fired him / her and he build 100s of back links via forum signature, profile and linked to your home page.   I personally don’t know how search engines will be able to identify it.

    Reply
    • humm . first thing first .. search engine believe that people would not waste time building bad backlinks for other website .. now it is you who have to deal with it .. hopefully they know how to treat these spammy links …

      Reply
  3. Why on earth is there a disavow option at all, it is just pointless. I can spam my sites to millions of xrume r blasts and if it works i’ll leave them as is, if get him by algo update for those links i will just disavow them and avoid penalty, simple as that. But Negative SEO can really be a disaster to your business

    Reply
    • @Gautham Nekkanti
      ha ha .. i can see a future where people are using xrume to knock off their competitors .. eye for an eye will make the world blind ..;) 

      Reply
  4. “Dude They will not Change Their Algo”
    Do u have any source confirming or is it your own assumption?
     

    Reply
    • @ raj – nope I do not have any resource to confirm that .. but if you go through the post carefully i believe that I have given enough reasons to confirm that…

      Reply

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