This Is The Real Reason Why Google Designed The Disavow Tool
- 13 May, 2020
- Jason Ferry
- Search Engine Optimisation
On Twitter, John Mueller of Google has revealed that negative SEO is not the reason why they designed the disavow tool. According to him, "Not to put more fuel on the fire, but negative SEO is not a reason we have this tool -- and I honestly can't recall a situation where a site ever needed to do a disavow for that".
Back in 2012, Google released the disavow link tool. It was clarified in the original blog post by Google that such tool was not created particularly for negative SEO. Google explained that they created it "to help clean up if you've hired a bad SEO or made mistakes in your own link-building". Plus, Google mentioned that some of their algorithms are designed to not be affected by negative SEO.
Google's statement reads, "In general, Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking. However, if you're worried that some backlinks might be affecting your site's reputation, you can use the Disavow Links tool to indicate to Google that those links should be ignored. Again, we build our algorithms with an eye to preventing negative SEO, so the vast majority of webmasters don't need to worry about negative SEO at all".
This is Mueller's tweet:
As for those who worry that they might be badly affected by negative SEO, Google recommends utilising the disavow tool. However, generally, they advise that you should just disregard negative SEO.
Things To Know Regarding The May 2020 Google Algorithm Update
On Monday, the May 2020 Google algorithm update was silently rolled out. In fact, data companies that have been monitoring search results have described this as one of the biggest updates that Google has rolled out for the past few years.
The said core update rolled out Monday mid-afternoon. From the looks of it, it is not impacting or targeting a particular region or category of sites. However, it is said to cater to the requirements of a standard broad core update by Google, as is launched every few months or so.
A prior Google algorithm update was released last January. And before that particular update, there was also some debate on a supposed secret algorithm update in November, which was then revealed to be particular to local rankings alone. Google has released several updates since the one they rolled out in January. Some updates hugely affected many online businesses, while others were just small. As for the recent update that is still rolling out, many are assuming that it will greatly affect ranking positions and search results.
This update is also expected to make your results more mixed up than before. The SEO UK community has also observed traffic drops, and some even said they have already lost almost 90% of organic traffic on Google. On the other hand, there are others who claim the update has had a positive impact on them.
As usual, Google has already been providing recommendations for websites that are badly impacted by the core algorithm updates, but nothing much can really be done to recover from the negative impact. Instead, you can take advantage of this to thoroughly review the sites, carry out a website audit, and determine what areas should be improved on.
Details in this blog first appeared in https://www.seroundtable.com/negative-seo-google-disavow-link-tool-29437.html and https://www.seoblog.com/seo-news-you-can-use-may-the-force-be-with-you-navigating-googles-new-update/. Click the links to learn more.
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