A few months ago BING added a feature to BING Webmaster Tools which allows site owners to tell BING that they either didn’t want a link from a website or no longer want to be associated with a website that is linking to them.
At last Google has done the same which is great news for any website that has been hit by any of the Google Penguin updates. If you have noticed a substantial drop in rankings on the same day as a Penguin update or you have had a message from Google stating that they have noticed Unnatural Links then this is the tool you need to get your website back on track.
The obvious starting point before using this tool is to run through all of the links that you want removing and try removing them from the different websites, by either logging in or contacting the webmaster of the website and requesting that they remove the link you your website.
When the above doesn’t work you can then use the new Google Disavow Tool to request that Google takes no notice of these links.
How to Disavow a Link
This is quite a simple procedure.
First you need to create a file full of links that you want to Disavow. You need to include a Domain command then the URLs that you would like to disavow:
domain:spamdomain1.com
http://www.spamdomain2.com/contentA.html
http://www.spamdomain2.com/contentB.html
http://www.spamdomain2.com/contentC.html
If you want you can also add comments but these will be ignored by Google:
# Contacted owner of spamdomain1.com on 7/1/2012 to
# ask for link removal but got no response
domain:spamdomain1.com
# Owner of spamdomain2.com removed most links, but missed these
http://www.spamdomain2.com/contentA.html
http://www.spamdomain2.com/contentB.html
http://www.spamdomain2.com/contentC.html
Now you need to login to your Google Webmaster Tools account. If you haven’t got one then here is how you do it: Setting Up Google Webmaster Tools (however this is quite an old tutorial published in 2009 so if you have any problems call Jon Seymour on 01492 460 460).
Once you are logged in visit: Disavow Links
You’ll then be prompted to upload a file containing the links you want to disavow.
Here is a video about the new tool:
