It was just last week, Matt Cutts was spotted discussing about the disavow tool in a thread and now he has come up with the Webmasters Video.
On a question raised, "What are common mistakes you see from people using the ‘disavow links’ tool?", Cutts decided to chart down a few things and mention some of the mistakes that Google sees.
Here are the extracts:
- The file that you upload should be a regular text file. So, expect something like either a domain with domain colon or a URL, everything else is weird, syntax, or theory that can cause the parser to reject the file. Cutts said that parser is not built to handle docs, excel spreadsheet. And if you upload something like that, parser will throw it out and the reconsideration request will not get through.
- Instead of looking for individual links on individuals pages, you should disavow the entire domain. It will depend on how bad your link profile is appearing. A domain disavow is suggested in these cases.
- Do not include http:// or www prefixes for domain: disavows. Instead, list the domain itself "disavow: example.com" and Google will interpret it.
- If there are any comments or justifications, these need to be included in the reconsideration request instead of the disavow file. It is even advised that you should not include lot of comments in the .txt file of disavow links.
- Disavow tool will not cure all the SEO problems. So, webmasters should try cleaning up the spammy links first and remove them from the Internet. And if you can remove the links yourself, use the disavow tool.
