TRAFFIC
DEBUNKING DISAVOW
If you do Disavow, you’re wasting your time and money. Even worse, you’re likely to kill off links that
could be giving you page rank. But don’t take Nick Garner’s word for it — it’s what Google itself says
WITH 2017 DRAWING TO A CLOSE,
I thought you might like some information
that will save you time, money and
rankings. I’m talking about debunking
Google’s Disavow Tool.
If you’ve done Disavow this year, and
you plan to do it next year, work out how
much it costs you in time or resources. And
with that money buy yourself something
nice to celebrate the holidays!
Why am I so sure about debunking
Disavow? Because Google’s Gary Illyes
says don’t bother with Disavow. Before
hearing what this Google employee said
about it at BrightonSEO 2017, let’s go over
what we know about it.
Machine learning and Disavow
Let’s start with Disavow files and why
Google played us all to get data for their
machine learning algorithms.
As you may know, machine learning
is software that has to be trained and
once it understands what ‘correct’ looks
like, it will then accumulate knowledge
and understanding.
Think of a child: if a child learns the
basic rules of ‘right/wrong’ and ‘correct/
incorrect’, over time he or she will
accumulate knowledge based on foundation
learning. Same with machine learning.
What is a Disavow file? It is our
judgment of bad links. We gave Google
huge lists of links we thought were
untrustworthy, the perfect training set
for a machine learning algorithm.
This beautiful piece of social
engineering from Google came when
there was such a thing as a toxic link.
Disavow was the perfect way to build
a huge training data set for Google’s
machine learning algorithms.
And we willingly gave Google vast
amounts of training data. As a result
Penguin has become more refined
and understands what a ‘good’ link
looks like.
(eg individuals within the company,
not necessarily an algorithm) might have
a negative opinion of a page or site
because of its backlinks. Duh! Of course,
a ‘spam cop’ might not like the backlinks
going into a page, but that doesn’t mean
the algorithm cares. My main point: never
take what Google says at face value.
At Brighton SEO 2017, Gary Illyes,
a Google analyst, was interviewed:
Interviewer: Should site owners still be
disavowing links or should they be trusting
“Disavow was the perfect way to build a huge training
data set for Google’s machine learning algorithms.
And we willingly gave Google vast amounts of
training data”
Google misinformation
If you, like me, have studied Google for
many years, you’ll know it never lies... it
just doesn’t tell the whole truth. Google
says on its Disavow page:
“In some circumstances, incoming links
can affect Google’s opinion of a page or
site. For example, you or a search engine
optimiser you’ve hired may have built bad
links to your site via paid links or other link
schemes that violate our quality guidelines.
First and foremost, we recommend that
you remove as many spammy or low-quality
links from the web as possible.”
In this very carefully worded statement,
it’s saying that sometimes Google
that Google can handle it for the majority
of situations (unless they’ve obviously been
going out and doing bad things)?
Gary Illyes: If it makes you feel better,
then sure. [inaudible] of the Disavow
Tool is that the Disavow Tool is extremely
powerful. Basically, I was looking at people
who Disavowed links from CNN and from
the Telegraph and whatever because they
just didn’t know why they got that link.
That was bat shit stupid.
[Author comment: Disavow Tool totally
works. You submit links for Disavow
and Google will turn off page rank/page
authority to your site from those Disavow
pages and domains.]
iGB Affiliate Issue 66 DEC 2017/JAN 2018
25