Getting an organic listing on google

Google has officially released the new Disavow Links Tools to webmasters around the world. It was first mentioned at SMX in July and Matt Cutts has now officially announced the tool at PubCon.

What Is Google Disavow?

Essentially you upload a list of backlinks and tell Google to ignore them when it is ranking your site.

Here is the official explanation-
?If you believe your site?s ranking is being harmed by low-quality links you do not control, you can ask Google not to take them into account when assessing your site.?
If you read that and think that is the holy grail solution to fix all of your current ranking issues ? stop right now and think about this properly.

Fixing A Problem Google Created

First of all the only reason we need the Disavow tool is solve a problem that Google created. Historically Google just used to ignore what the algorithm considered to be a low quality link. In fact in 2009 Google even went as far to say not to worry about low quality links.

Since then they have changed their mind on low quality links and instead of ignoring them like they used to, they now use them as negative votes against a sites ranking.

Negative SEO Is Born

This shift in the algorithm is what has allowed negative SEO to be so successful and easy to do. Negative SEO has caused Google a huge problem as they gave SEO?s the ability to destroy competitors businesses.

In less than 10 minutes and a few clicks of a mouse an experienced SEO can cause lasting wide reaching damage to practically any site they choose.

This is what led Google to create the Disavow tool.

Crowd Sourced Web Spam Team

Essentially the Google Disavow tool is nothing more than a glorified crowd sourcing project. Why try to identify low quality links via algorithmic signals when you can get an army of millions of webmasters around the world to do it for you?

And what better way to motivate that army than by telling them if they do all this work it will help them?

Why It Is Bad For SEO

This is nothing more than a bulk snitching tool dressed up as a solution to a problem it doesn?t actually solve. Google will be using the data it collects from this tool to clean up the web, discount bad links and hand out penalties left, right & centre.

The problem is there are so many SEO?s that don?t really know what they are doing. They are not really sure what is wrong or why they have being penalised. It?s these kind of webmasters that will flock to the Disavow tool in the thousands reporting every link they ever bought or built to Google even when it?s not a low quality link.

It could be they are facing an onsite penalty such as Panda or the recent low quality EMD update ? but they actually end up reporting a bunch of links that are actually helping them. Google will suddenly have huge volumes of data on what real people consider to be low quality links ? it would be naive to think they wouldn?t take action with that amount of data in hand.

A Real Example

Let?s say you used a link building service that delivered great results ? you diversified the anchor text well and saw positive movement in the SERPS, fantastic.

Another customer of that service did the same thing but didn?t diversify anchor text correctly and then got a Penguin based penalty. That customer will then go and report all of the links they got from the service provider as low quality links and to ignore them.

But you also have the same ?low quality? links pointing at your site?

See the problem here?

It?s also likely that they would report links they have built/ordered from other services during that period as well in an attempt to undo the damage putting even more webmasters at risk.

Grass En Masse

The data Google collects from this tool only serves to hurt SEO?s.





You might find some of your most valuable backlinks have being discounted because someone else has incorrectly reported them as low quality.

You only have to spend 5 minutes on DP to realise how scary giving other people that kind of power actually is. Didn?t Google learn anything from the negative SEO mess they created?

Does It Solve The Problem?

The whole point of the Disavow tool is to help protect against negative SEO attacks etc

But does it actually solve the problem?

No is the answer

Legitimate websites owners now have the added responsibility of monitoring and cleaning up their link profile ? something that used to be done at the algorithm level.

The Disavow tool won?t protect people against penalties ? most webmasters don?t anticipate a penalty and are only aware of problems when they are penalised. By that point it?s too late, the site has already tanked out of the rankings and the damage is done.

You then have to spend the next few months cleaning things up, often due to no fault of your own. So does the tool protect against negative SEO attacks? Not even a little bit ? all it does is help in cleaning up the aftermath of an attack.

Food For Thought

I can create millions of low quality link per day at the click of a button ? Do you think a webmaster with the Disavow tool could keep up with that volume?

I doubt it.

They would have to spend all day every day going through the links and by the time they?ve done that?. I?ve built a million more while I was asleep.

So what is the point?

Reading Between The Lines

What all of this actually tells me is that Google are having a hard time keeping up with modern day link spam. It has got to the point now where some link building tactics are so advanced that Google just cannot identify the spam via an algorithm anymore and need to crowd source the discovery and identification of link spam.

It?s ironic because Google put a lot of effort into fear mongering and claiming their algorithms are more sophisticated than they actually are. Then in the next breath they drop their pants & wave the white flag by releasing the Disavow tool.



Credit Where It Is Due

Google created this tool to solve a problem they created that they cannot solve algorithmically.

They clearly lack the ability to identify and discount ?low quality? links at the algorithm level so have dressed up the disavow tool in a way that enslaves an army of unknowing grasses.

Credit where it is due! That is a superb piece of marketing right there, there is one problem though?

The New Age of Negative SEO

What provides additional comical value is that you can use Disavow tool ? you know the one to protect against negative SEO attacks, to launch negative SEO attacks against your competitors. What happens if a site gets multiple reports against it via the Disavow tool? Does Google downgrade that sites authority? What?s stopping me from logging multiple complaints against the same site?

It wouldn?t be that difficult to do.

You could use trackback spam to get your link onto the competitor?s site and then report it as a low quality link.

Do that 100 times with 100 different webmaster tool accounts & sites and you?re laughing! Heck I could even automate the entire process end to end with a series of web 2.0 sites, Scrapebox and Webmaster Tools accounts.

Not that the Disavow tool even protects against the initial attack anyway, you can still take a site out with negative SEO just as easily now as you could before. Now we just have another tool in the negative SEO arsenal, thanks Google!

Welcome to the new age of Negative SEO.

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On Thursday, warning signs began popping up when users tried to access the pages of some businesses with five-star ratings. To read on, users must click a button that says, "Show me the reviews."

"We caught someone red-handed trying to buy reviews for this business," the red-bordered alert box says. "We weren"t fooled, but wanted you to know because buying reviews not only hurts consumers, but also honest businesses who play by the rules. Check out the evidence here."

The alert will be removed after three months, Yelp said, unless there"s any indication the business continues to trawl for reviews. More alerts will be posted as the company continues its investigations.

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