Is Being Reported Via Disavow A Threat to Take Seriously?

I receive emails from people demanding that I remove links that someone connected to their site has spammed all over my blogs (which is no-follow) in the comments section, they always end their emails by threatening to report me to Google via the Disavow tool.

I rarely remove these links for free, why should I? They paid someone to spam my blog's comment section so they can pay me to clear it up.

Now I'm no expert in this field, but as far as I am aware the Disavow tool is for people to ask Google to ignore links from my blog?

What I would like to know is can Google do anything to me if a certain amount of sites submit my blog to Disavow?

 

Dean,

People are adding links Disavow for send information to google for dont consider their links from particular site.

So even if there are more Disavow request from your site, you dont need to worry if your site is quality and with good content

Google will not penalized your site

Hiral

 

Hi Dean,

I haven't seen any studies on this and haven't dealt with it much myself, so I'm speaking purely in theory here. That said, I doubt you'd have a Google issue, especially since the links are nofollow. In fact, unless you are really hoping to get a decent bit of money from people, you could make the initial response you send to people a message that tells them the links are nofollow and Google doesn't care about them unless they've got tons of spammed nofollow links. The few they have on your site won't matter. You could even include a link to a recent Matt Cutts video where he says that clearly.



If they say they still want the links removed, then tell them to pay you.

On the other hand, if you've got tons of spam comments on your blog, you may want to consider how that affects visitors' opinions of your site. It might be worth going through your blog and removing those links just so your blog looks better and people feel like they can discuss things on the blog.

 

Thank you for your reply.

I used to politely tell them about how my blog is no-follow and they have nothing to fear and they would say they did not care and would again threaten me with the Disavow, so now I just issue the "I charge to remove links" email straight away. If the person politely emails me and asks me to remove them then I am normally more responsive.

The comments are not what me or you would consider real comment spam, the comments are actually about the post that they are being posted on, but they have names like "Peruvian beach resort".

I thought my initial assumption was correct and it looks like I might have been right.

 

I don't think the dis-allow tool is a complaint box... it is just a tool to say that you don't want a specific backlink to be counted towards your site.

There is no reason to fear it, as people have already started to miss-use it. Your competitors are reporting you anyway just to damage your rankings. It is quite easy really, all you have to do is - go to a competitor's blog, leave a backlink in the comments section and report by dis-allow tool.

If Google is going to count those against you... then god save Google!

 

My answer is this... Why would you even risk putting yourself on Googles radar... just remove the links...

If anyone here says that they can tell you for sure that it would or would not they are only guessing..

I don't think charging them to remove the links, a small fee, is unreasonable... They put the links there and now it is your time to remove them, and your time is worth something...

 

I'd suggest just removing the link. Better to be safe than sorry.

 

I'm happy to remove the links if they pay me to, one company posted nearly 200 links over a three year period and wanted me to remove them all for free, not happening.

 

If your links are already no-follow, there is nothing to be concerned about. Let them waste their time making a "disavow" report, those links do not pass PageRank anyway.

 

Totally agreed with @sunilmamo. If they are nofollow, you don't need to worry. But still if you remove them you'll be at no harm.

 

I think it's a great idea to penalize sites that have been disavowed regularly, I mean why not? Think about it from Google'es perspective. You've got a website with spam links, as you just openly admitted, and aren't willing to do anything about it. Any quality site wouldn't allow spam comments in the first place, and if they did they'd remove them upon being contacted and notified about them. Essentially by not being helpful, or removing/updating your commenting system altogether you are having people perform disavows on your domain.

If I were Google that'd be one factor I'd include in the upcoming Penguin algorithm. Sites that are being disavowed should be penalized. Why have sites that are spammed rank well? It's not beneficial for the search users.

 

I would just remove the links. It's more a matter of common courtesy than anything; if you were requesting they remove your links from their site and they refused, you'd be pissed.

 

Google have said that it won't hurt. I just email them back and tell them to get f.....d and enjoy the penalty.
If they asked nicely and did not threaten ... and I was in the mood I might remove the link; BUT, if they threaten ... well they can get f....d

If they have links on my site, then they got them by spamming us and staying under the radar. They going to have to pay for staff time if they want them removed. I don't work for free.

 

Awesome, just more reason for Google to shove it right back at you when they take into account sites that keep getting disavowed. I mean, why wouldn't they. Seems like a great way to filter out crap sites that allow spam links to be placed. Google's spoken many times on the responsibility of Webmasters to make sure that spammers aren't getting links from your own sites. There's even been manual penalties given for too many spam links from a domain. Logically the next step is to use that disavow data to filter out the sites that let spammers run rampant.

 

Yes, I find it ridiculous that these websites a few years ago were paying alleged SEO experts to spam comment sections and forums, well basically anywhere, leaving many webmasters with hours and hours of work trying to moderate or clean up the often massive mess that these spammers had made.

I remember at one point, one semi-well-known online news website was posting 50-100 posts EVERY DAY between two of my forums. I even wrote to them to complain about it and guess what, they ignored me. So about a year or so ago when they came asking me to remove the links that had slipped through the net and remained on the forums, guess what, I ignored them. The letters got more threatening after a while, but in the end they gave up, and I didn't notice any adverse effects.

 

A good thing that those type of people got finally what they deserved. The whole disavowed thing that is currently is going on is opening some peoples eyes so I guess it's a good thing.