October saw Google release the controversial ‘Disavow Tool’ which can be used to clean up poor quality back-links to your website.
If Google sees links which do not comply with their quality guidelines, they are classed as spam, or of poor quality. There are over 200 signals which Google relies on to determine search engine rankings and the quality of a website. Back-links are one of the most well known signals used.
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By analysing links between pages, Google can understand which websites are of good reputation, importance and quality. Based on this practise, Google’s aim is to rank the best websites at the top so that search engine users can find the most relevant and useful information.
Google are suggesting that this new tool can be used to address the issue of unnatural links pointing to your website. The Disavow Tool allows you to inform Google which links to your site you would like to ignore.
As Google is getting better and better at assessing back-links, it is very important that companies only adopt quality link building strategies. If you have obtained poor quality links in the past, Google recommend you contact the webmasters and ask for the poor quality links to be taken down.
Google understand that it is not always possible to get in touch with all webmasters you have obtained links from. For this reason the Disavow Tool was created.
However, unless you have been notified by Google of manual spam action due to unnatural links pointing to your site, there is no need to use the Disavow Tool.