Competitor's Links Hurt Their Search Rankings?

"The Missing Link" could be a computer programme Watch exclusive reader-driven Q&A column with

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veteran content publiciser Eric Ward. you'll be able to raise questions about all aspects of links and link building and Eric can give his knowledgeable answers. Submit your queries here, and you'll be featured in an exceedingly future installment!

 I run alittle SEO agency. we've got a consumer for whom we have a tendency to square measure near to transfer a deny file to Google. The file contains solely the URLs we have a tendency to square measure sad
with. The consumer asked Maine what would happen if we have a tendency to conjointly enclosed URLs containing backlinks to at least one of his competitor's sites therein deny file. Would this have the result of inflicting his competitor's website to come by the rankings, as a result of the URLs inform to his website had been disavowed? And if this is often true, what is to stay any website from doing this as a part of a negative SEO campaign against their competitors?

    Nervous regarding Negative SEO

You mention a good purpose, and there are cases wherever negative SEO has been shown to figure.

However, there's associate assumption in your question we must always clarify. The question may well be rephrased like this: "Do disavowed URLs lose all negative (or positive) impact for all sites they could be linking to?"

I received the subsequent feedback from Google:

    "When a computer address is disavowed, it's done thus only if a website owner is logged into Google Webmaster Tools, and on behalf of a website that the logged-in user has verified they own/control. thus any deny file that's uploaded is associated solely with the positioning that user controls, and no alternative sites are affected."

I take this to mean that after you deny a computer address that is linking to your own website, it will notdisavow that computer address for all alternative sites that very same computer address could also be linking to. None folks are often one hundred pc bound that URLs Google has known as being spam or of no price.

What you think to be a legitimate link, i'll believe to be spam and deny, and Google could have a very totally different perception supported no matter recursive signals they're victimization.

Here's associate example. Some folks still believe a link from DMOZ is extremely valuable from a ranking signal posture (I'm not one in every of them, despite the fact that i used to be a DMOZ editor for eight years).

Now imagine you are one in every of the thousands of websites that haven't been able to get listed (linked) from DMOZ over the years. Why not transfer a deny file for the complete dmoz.org domain, despite the fact that it's not linking to you, in hopes that it'll devalue DMOZ links for others.