[ozsubasi]

It is now nearly 3 months since Bing launched their own "links disavow" tool but although many (including myself) expected Google to follow quickly with something of their own, nothing has happened.
In fact there is very little mention of it anywhere now. What do you think Google is planning?
Have they dropped the idea, or are they still trying to decide the best way to operate a system like this?
Please note that I realize no-one has an actual answer to what Google may or may not be doing, I am just interested in opinions.

[shabbir]

I don't think Google would do something similar even if they had something like this in mind and so I don't expect anything inline with dasavow

[ozsubasi]

Google did have it mind because back in June Matt Cutts apparently said:

"Some have suggested that Google could disavow links. Even though we put in a lot of protection against negative SEO, there’s been so much talk about that that we’re talking about being able to enable that, maybe in a month or two or three.
http://searchengineland.com/live-blo...dvanced-123513

What I am questioning is what happened to that idea, and if it is still in their minds, if is not in line with what Bing have done, what format could it take?
What perhaps could Google do different?

[shabbir]

There are always 2 webmasters involved in a link. First the webmaster who places a link and second webmaster who is being linked and so another approach could be to tag links by webmaster who owns the site or else whatever you name it, it would be similar to disavow

[ozsubasi]

Sorry but I don't agree that there are always two webmasters involved. I have links from sites that I have never heard of and I have not placed any link with. Trying to contact the webmasters of those sites is often impossible.
If it were possible to tag such links, how would we let Google know? And how would that be different from disavowing?

[shabbir]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ozsubasi

Sorry but I don't agree that there are always two webmasters involved. I have links from sites that I have never heard of and I have not placed any link with. Trying to contact the webmasters of those sites is often impossible.
If it were possible to tag such links, how would we let Google know? And how would that be different from disavowing?

By two webmasters I did not mean they mutually discuss about the links or do an exchange and at times natural links also include two webmasters. One is being linked and the other is linking and if Google shows those links as bad you have very little things to do.Google has guidelines for webmasters impossible to contact. See http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...und-links.html especially the para that starts with In a few situations, we have heard about directories or blog networks that won't take links down.

Tagging links is good option but spam report is already in place.

[ozsubasi]

I have tried the spam report but although I received acknowledgements they do not report back on any action taken and in my cases the links remained in place.
Also Google have acknowledged that they only act on a certain percentage of reports.
I have tried blocking linking sites using .htaccess but again this does not help when Google does not visit the site in question to crawl it.

[shabbir]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ozsubasi

I have tried the spam report but although I received acknowledgements they do not report back on any action taken and in my cases the links remained in place.

The link will always remain in place but possibly Google will not give anything (good or bad) for that link.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ozsubasi

Also Google have acknowledged that they only act on a certain percentage of reports.

Even with Bing you see things in webmaster tools but how actually Bing takes them is still unknown. Google only needs to make sure that spam report reflects in Webmaster tools but Google has always lagged integration of different tools and reports. The biggest example is Feedburner stats are not part of Google Analytics.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ozsubasi

I have tried blocking linking sites using .htaccess but again this does not help when Google does not visit the site in question to crawl it.

How can you block sites linking to you in .htaccess?

[ozsubasi]

by setting it so that any link from a particular site to mine returns a 403 error.

[shabbir]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ozsubasi

by setting it so that any link from a particular site to mine returns a 403 error.

User would see 403 but not Google. That is what I assume.