Should I be disavowing the spammy nofollow image scraper sites?

[Jasper68]

I got a really dumb question :-)

Been looking at the backlinks for my new site, I picked up a limited version of SerpStat a couple of weeks ago.

I have 82 referring domains, and several hundred referring pages.

I looked through the list and it's obvious I have picked up a load of very low value do-follow backlinks to images on my site, likely found on G Images or whatever.

All the links go back to .../wpcontent/uploads/2017/blah blah.jpg

So what does that do for my site? Anything, nothing? Is there any way to direct any 'juice' from such links to anywhere else on one's site?

told you it was dumb :-)

 

[Future State]

You don't want those links. You want to disavow them. Some will say "but Google knows how to ignore them." Risk it if you want and are desperate enough like those people to take spam links and hope for a benefit. Disavow them in your Google Search Console account. They are scraper sites and automated PBN's. I've seen a site receive a penalty from those links in the past.

 

[Jasper68]

You don't want those links. You want to disavow them. Some will say "but Google knows how to ignore them." Risk it if you want and are desperate enough like those people to take spam links and hope for a benefit. Disavow them in your Google Search Console account. They are scraper sites and automated PBN's. I've seen a site receive a penalty from those links in the past.

I'm certainly not desperate for links, and yeah, deffo scraper sites. It's just is it worth the hassle to disavow, especially after it's suggested they will just be discounted? Does anyone disavow as a regular practice for those type of links?

 

[Cash Builder]

I'm certainly not desperate for links, and yeah, deffo scraper sites. It's just is it worth the hassle to disavow, especially after it's suggested they will just be discounted? Does anyone disavow as a regular practice for those type of links?

I disavow these types of sites. They won't provide any benefit to you and it's likely that G will just ignore them, but I like to be on the safe side.

If you make a note to update your disavow file on a monthly basis, it should take you about 10 minutes each time. Plus it will help in the future if you suffer from a negative SEO attack, if you have an updated disavow file it will be quicker and easier to sort.

 

[Ryuzaki]

It's just is it worth the hassle to disavow, especially after it's suggested they will just be discounted? Does anyone disavow as a regular practice for those type of links?

I do preemptive disavowing monthly and preach it on here frequently. You can't take anything Google says at face value. Nothing is said off the cuff. Everything is a puzzle piece, meaning it's never the full picture. Sometimes they blatantly lie too.

For instance, recently Gary Illyes of Google said at Pubcon that you don't need to disavow unless you have a manual action. Okay... but what leads to a manual action? You see what I'm saying? That's a misleading statement. The conclusion states the exact opposite of the meaning. The meaning says you DO need to disavow preemptively because that's what leads to a manual action and the need to disavow anyways.

What it also means is that if you wait till you have a manual action, then you'll have to go through the circus of emailing people and proving you made a good effort at getting links removed. Or you can skip all of that by taking care of business before it's a problem.

Of course, I'm not the only one reading between the lines, since we've put up with this for almost 20 years now. So then John Mueller of Google speaks up on the Google Webmaster Central webcam chat yesterday and says the same. "You don't need to disavow for algorithms, only manual penalties [paraphrased]".

But he continues to say that the manual action team will take the disavow file into consideration... which is what I've been saying. If you want to show good faith, there's nothing easier than monthly updating a disavow file with all the scraper sites and PBNs that link to your site. It takes 30 minutes a month and will likely save your ass down the line at some point.

He also states that you can use the disavow file to preemptively make sure you don't get a manual action in the future. It doesn't get any more blatant than that. He stepped up and corrected and filled in the blanks. That's the entire puzzle in one sentence, but of course he tried to deconstruct the puzzle to confuse you more by insinuating you're stupid or paranoid or something if you think Google's algorithms aren't smart enough to handle it for you.

Again, there's some more propaganda and psychological warfare. If it's smart enough then why is there a disavow file? If it's smart enough then why do manual actions still exist? If it's smart enough then why should we preemptively do anything?

What you need to do is not be skeptical of paranoia and hard work. Be skeptical of everything Google says. They're trying to ride the thin line between saving face for the public while misleading SEO's.

 

[illmasterj]

Should I be disavowing the spammy nofollow image scraper sites?

 

[Samwise89]

Should I be disavowing the spammy nofollow image scraper sites?

You only need to disavow dofollow spam. And even then, with it being complete and obvious auto-generated trash, Google claims they can ignore it.