Bing Disavow Links, and the Ifs and Buts

They have been listening silently to us and secretively, they did it. Yes, you got me, I am talking about Bing, who seemed to be impervious to the upheavals caused by its archrival Google with its Penguin update whose sole objective is to shoot down sites with unnatural links. Since webmasters were crying foul and quick to pass the blame to their competitors by citing Negative SEO, Matt Cutts, the poster boy of Google, announced that Google is planning to launch a new feature named as Disavow links. Now, as it appears, Bing blatantly stole thunder from Google by proactively launching Disavow function its Webmaster tools. It has put a big question on whether Google will go ahead and launch its much touted disavow link feature or not. Forget about this big corporate battle. Let’s see what this disavow link feature means for guys like you and me who build links for a living:

Disavow Links Is More of A Myth: I know I may get lynched by mob for saying something sacrilegious like this. Just give me a chance to defend myself. Just cool down and think this way. Do you really believe that search engines will ever be able to launch a cool algo that would be powerful enough to make changes in the SERP by taking cues from the Disavow Links feature? I can appreciate it as a cool idea but the idea is still farfetched. It is simply a tool to make the webmasters and web sites owners believe that they are in a position to decide the fate of their websites. So you, like the rest of the other webmasters being to believe that you are safe from your competitors negative SEO.

Double Edged Sword: Bing Disavow Links is a make-believe tool that gives webmaster a false sense of power that from now on they will be able to determine which links are great for them and which links are not. Now, this is going to give a signal to those SEO companies who were engaged in nuking a website with loads of junks links that they would not be able to harm a website since website owners now have this cool tool.

But the reality is different. However, Bing is quite upfront but this tool. They made it clear that this tool is not going to help you see dramatic change in the existing ranking of a website:

You should not expect a dramatic change in your rankings as a result of using this tool

This Disavow Link feature will just provide a signal to search engines. It will act like the following way. Say, you have got links from a crap website and you have Disavowed it and the same thing is done by 50 other webmasters. So, search engines will a hint that probably the site that is linking back is not great in quality and therefore, links coming from those websites will be not valued anymore.

Does It Makes Link Building Irrelevant: Yes to some extent. If you are submitting your website in directories, submitting articles in article directories or exchanging links with other webmasters, there is no way, you can claim your innocence if you do not Disavow them now. But the big question is who is going to determine which link is good to a website or bad. Yes, I know, you do not like links coming from sites that also offer links to Viagra, poker etc, but what about those sites that look and feel good. This is a million dollar question and there is not straightforward answer. Now think of millions of webmasters who are not so well informed and that means, there is greater possibility of labeling a good website as Spam. I hope Google and Bing are well aware of this fact, and therefore, they are not going take it a major signal to determine the quality of a website. This will one of 200 signals that Google uses to determine the quality of a website.

A Necessary Evil: Having said that I must confess that Disavow links has been long overdue, as there are some cases where websites get penalized for incoming links that they have nothing to do with. So, this tool will hopefully give them a fair chance to defend themselves.

Overall, motive behind Disavow link is good but it is up to search engines how to treat the signals. So, good luck with it.

Author Bio
Michael Evans is a passionate writer and a social media addict. He is associated with WebArts that offers SEO services in Cyprus.