by samThe introduction of a ‘disavow links’ tool has been announced by Google’s Matt Cutts during a presentation at Pubcon. Beta-tested by a selected few SEO practitioners, it was formally announced on the Google Webmaster Central blog.
The use of the tool comes with a warning – take precaution before using. If you’re attempting to remove inbound links, first contact and deal with the link host or company. The tool can be utilised by formatting as such:
domain: [domain name].com
Alternatively, you are also able to list URLs in a text file.
Lines beginning with a # are identified as comments by Google and are therefore ignored. The domain:____shows that you’d like to disavow links from all pages from that domain. You’re also able to disavow links from specified page URLs.
When this file has been created, you can then use the disavow link tool on Google Webmaster Central. Select your site, navigate through warnings, select the file and submit it.
The effects won’t be immediate, and Google reserves the right to not perform the disavowment if they do not trust it for some reason or another. Typically, however, Google maintain that they will follow your suggestions.
Once this has been submitted, you will be able to download the file if you need to resubmit with changes, with a limited size of 2MB. You really shouldn’t have more than 2MB of links that require disavowing… and if you do, it’s probably more time effective to start an entirely new website! Be cautious when you send off the file, as the time involved in bringing these changes to fruition means that if you notice a mistake in your original send-off, it will take even longer to have those changes take place.
Matt Cutts comments that the tool is similar to using the “nofollow” attribute, allowing sites to link elsewhere without contributing to search ranking.
The tool has been developed in response to those whose online marketing campaign was affected by the recent Penguin Update from Google – namely sites that have purchased links or gained spam links.