Google Disavow Link Tool

A New Google Webmaster Tool

Google is now giving us all the power to report on links that we do not want to have pointing to websites or blogs. Google calls this a power-user tool. However, since it is available via Google’s Webmaster Tools then it can be used by anyone. I suspect that there will be some misuse or even abuse.

Now, what does this mean for the most legitimate, trustworthy and proper website? What does this mean to you?

If you have been getting links from quality non-spammy websites then this will make the links that you now have even more valuable as the links from spammy sites will be identified and the influence of these sites will diminish. If your competitors have spammy links then you can rise up above them with your high-quality links. If a competitor had links only of low quality sites that now are black listed then these sites should drop like a rock.

With Google giving webmasters (or anyone with a Webmaster Tools Account) the power to “report” bad links they have essentially “crowd-sourced” link-spam detection. For anyone with quality links from quality website have no fear as these quality websites will never get on to a “bad link” list.

Think about it…

Millions of webmasters will be submitting lists of low-quality or spammy sites, which Google can then use in its algorithm to penalize the sites that are providing these low quality links.

This spells disaster for any site that makes it too easy to get a link back to your site. For example, popular “easy” sources of links have traditionally been:

Blog comments
Forums
Article Directories
Web Site Directories
Poor quality, automated Blog Networks with no human-approval “citation” process
Social Bookmarking Accounts

The “low hanging fruit” sites that promiscuously give out too many links, too easily will most likely see their low quality pages (or even their entire domain) get penalized.

Again, I repeat that if you have links from quality sites that provide links from relevant pages and embedded within relevant content then these sites will never appear on a “bad link” list.

Google has never had this kind of information before. If you think about it they needed to have a mechanism for disavowing links as this is an issue that website owners and webmasters have had difficulty with up to this point in time. Also, just like a link can be thought of as a vote in favor a link from a site that is on a bad link list can work against you. Up until this time you could do very little to remove the influence of the bad link. Now you can!

If a site shows up on a bad link list with Google then all of its links are devalued – perhaps significantly.

Good links therefore rise in value!

Google is free to incorporate these kinds of “tweaks” into its ranking algorithm. This is data that they’ve never had at this kind of scale, ever before.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? If Google identified a website as being ripe for link-exploitation, and a lot of websites are using it to build easy links, then it may infer that anyone also using that site for links is a candidate for penalty.