: Backlinks - Should I Disavow SEO, Keyword, Performance, Stats, Domain, and Other Similar Sites? So it's obvious in the new era that we should disavow poor quality backlinks. What about links

@Turnbaugh106

Low quality is not always considered thin content or non-relevant

Google's algorithm for determining low quality links is extremely complex than just assuming the link is not relevant or thin on content, of course the majority of the time a link from a site that is not relevant and thin will be considered low quality but this isn't necessary always the case.

Google uses link profiling

While we don't know Google's secret sauce when it comes to working out how quality a link is what we do know and repeatably Google have said both linking in and linking out can help rankings, it has also been said that often quality sites will often have a similar link profile to that of their competition, so with this said we should assume or believe lightly that having a similar link profile to that of the top ranking site within the same niche will benefit our rankings.

With that said... link profiles and natural link diversity is important

Now with that said the likes of many top websites do not need to actively remove auto generated links from woorank, pingdom and so on, in fact these should be expected and its likely that most other websites have these type of links, removing these links can change your link diversity.. for example you removing no follow links from alexa, woorank will increase your dofollow links, anchor texts and so on... therefor changing your link profile.

What disavow was designed for...

It's important to know why disavow came about, basically as you most likely know Google invented evil panda and penguin that punished millions of websites for low quality pages and backlinks, Google released disavow for webmasters for those users affected by penguin and not those trying who believed they were infected, in fact removing links could actually damage your rankings even through you consider the link low quality.

Disavow is for punished websites not for shaping your link profile

So disavow is designed for websites that at some point have feeled Google's wrath, its not designed for webmasters to gain better rankings by removing links they believe might not be helping. In fact most auto generated links such as the ones you listed could be considered 'natural' because its likely that 99% of websites have links from those sites therefor removing it becomes unnatural... not to say your get punished but a good saying is if something ain't broke, don't fix it.

When to use the disavow tool


If you site has engaged in Blog Comment Spam
If you site has engaged in Forum Siganture Spam
If you site has engaged in Forum Field Spam
If you site has engaged in Forum Profile Spam
If you site has engaged in Apache Access Log Spam
If you site has engaged in PDF Spam
If you site has engaged in Guest Blog Spam
If you site has engaged in Mass Directory Spam
If you site has engaged in Social Media Spam
If you site has engaged in Article Spam
If you site has engaged in Link Exchanges
If you site has engaged in Web2.0 Spam
If you site has engaged in Linking Pyramid Schemes
If you site has engaged in anything on a big scale that Google will believe you or someone else has attempted to manipulate your search results using black hat linking schemas

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