The Disavow Tool that Google created has sparked nothing but debate since being released. Does it work? Should I use it? How do I use it?
But one question that had remained unanswered so far is should you be using this tool if Google hasn’t applied a penalty to your website.
You may think that someone has targeted you and created hundreds of spammy links to your site. This is negative SEO and designed to cost other people their rankings. You may also be prudent in your link management and have identified bad links before Google let you know about them. But would using the disavow tool make you look guilty?
People are still unclear about the Disavow tool, as evidenced by this question to Matt Cutts:
“Should webmasters use the disavow tool, even if it is believed that no penalty has been applied? For example. if we believe ‘Negative SEO’ has been attempted, or spammy sites we have contacted have not removed links.”
Googles head of Webspam Matt Cutts answer this question below:
As you can see Matt is encouraging a pro active approach to the disavow tool rather than a re active one. If you can identify bad links to your site then you should definitely disavow them at the first opportunity.
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
