In case you didn’t know, Google released a new tool a few weeks ago which allows you to block spam links pointing to your website. If you’ve noticed that you receive visitors from spam pages or websites that are irrelevant to your industry, this tool is for you. Back-linking is an important part of gaining search engine traffic and Google orders results by considering the links to your content. As well as the popularity of links, they also consider the authenticity of the websites which direct visitors to your content. This is why you don’t want unnatural links; they will negatively impact your reputation and may reduce your search engine ranking. Google often punishes websites which have spam links and you may receive a message like this: If this message is ignored, Google will punish you by reducing your website’s page rank drastically or perhaps even remove it from their search engine. As you can see in the message above, they have a strict policy when it comes to paying for spam links or engaging in link farming schemes. To disavow links, visit this Google page while logged in to your account. You will then be asked to upload a plain text file with one URL per line. For more information, read Google’s helpful article, read the FAQs and watch the following video: There are also some interesting issues this tool brings to the table. While punishing spam and helping websites to maintain their credibility, how does Google react when someone disavows a link from a legitimate website? For example, if one organization links to another and the link is disavowed because of personal issues or because the owner simply doesn’t like the other site, does that mean they will be punished? Many popular blogs also auto-approve comments because they can’t check every single reply, which allows people to link to whatever they like. Does this mean the website could face negative consequences for something they weren’t in control of? Google will probably only take action after the website has been blocked multiple times. However, online directories or content aggregators have a larger chance of being disavowed several times, despite being legitimate. Also, some people have complained that the burden shouldn’t be on the website owner to spend time looking for these links. A lot of good site owners also don’t use Google Webmaster Tools so they could suffer negative consequences for something they didn’t know they could prevent. What are your thoughts on Google’s new tool? Share your opinions in the comments section below.
