Google’s John Mueller once again blasted the “concept of toxic links,” he wrote on Reddit, “The concept of toxic links is made up by SEO tools so that you pay them regularly.” As you know, John is not a fan of link selling, buying and removal services – including tools that tell you what to remove.
This new thread is on Reddit and asked if they should disavow links or not, even without manual actions. Saying a ton of the links are “toxic.” The question posted was:
Hey, I know previously people have said don’t disavow until you get a manual penalty. But we have a site that’s about a year old 6-8DR depending where you look.
It has a ton of toxic backlinks. 25% Toxic, 50% Potentially Toxic according to Semrush. They also almost all link to images, which seems odd.
We’re in quite a competitive space, so a little worried it’s a competitor that ordered a load of spam links but don’t want to disavow half of the domains linking to us (if google has no issues) and damage our site’s authority.
Overall, looking for any advice, preferably with the long term in mind… Thanks in advance.
John replied, “The concept of toxic links is made up by SEO tools so that you pay them regularly.” Update, John later edited this response to say, “Nothing has really changed here – you can continue to save yourself the effort.”
Now, this is not anything new from John – he has not been a fan of these tools or services. Back in February he blasted agencies that sell disavow services. Also in February he said disavowing these links won’t get you any rankings back. Earlier this month, Google’s John Mueller said in strong language that at some point Google will remove the disavow link tool.
In fact, Google has many many times told SEOs to not use the disavow link tool. Saying many times not to disavow, that it hurts more than helps in some cases. Google even blasted some agencies selling disavow services. Not too long ago, Google also said to ignore toxic link reports, also saying disavowing based on third-party metrics is not a good idea.
