Don’t Disavow Strange Links Flagged by Random Tools
In May 2012, thousands of websites dropped rankings as the period of openly buying and selling links sputtered after the introduction of Google’s Penguin algorithm update. This update resulted in an immense increase of link removal requests to get paid links removed, which caused the owners of these sites to begin charging to remove the links. After a bevy of complaints, Google released the Link Disavow Tool in order to assist in disavowing spam links that site owners were responsible for.
The Proper Use of the Link Disavow Tool
The Link Disavow Tool is intended to be used in situations where a person paid for links and is unable to get them removed. This instrument should not be used to disavow links that other tools have flagged or links that look odd. Using this tool may be a waste of time because it only changes something if revisions are actually necessary.
Other Tools
There are multiple third-party tools that provide companies with scores that rank the site based on the number of toxic and other links. However, these scores are not official and are typically just the opinions of the platform being utilized. When auditing your links for spammy practices using these tools, companies should only disavow links they know are either part of a link scheme or paid for.
Reasons for Losing Rankings
The most obvious reason a company loses rankings is often the easiest to blame, but it is not always the actual reason for drops on result pages. Other rationales for companies losing rankings include site owners being unable to review their own content objectively or having low-quality content. Although a website owner may feel Google changes and updates are negatively impacting their site, it is important to remember that Google focuses on delivering the right content to searchers, and low-quality content may not rank well.
Different tools can flag random links, but that does not mean one should disavow them simply because they were flagged. The Google Disavow Tool is a lifesaver to many, but it is vital only to disavow the links needed in order to avoid wasting your time. However, disavowing random links or ones that appear strange will not change anything and will lead to wrongly appropriating time trying to fix them.