Confused about the disavow file?
So the first thing this morning I was asked about was the correct format of a disavow file, as there are many views on this. Nothing new had come out of Google since the last Penguin Update but a few people have said that “They had just got out of a Partial Penalty only to be wiped out in the last Penguin Update” , we even wrote about this here.
And I can see where the confusion can start in this blog post : http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.html
The last 2 points made me scratch my head a little :

So if I had a Link on uk.example.com/articles/seo-is-dead-because-google-made-it-to easy.html
would my disavow file just have :
uk.example.com/articles/seo-is-dead-because-google-made-it-to easy.html
My gut feeling is that this should be enough, if I know that it’s the only article that was ever put on that site. But I bet Google will find another way to index the link, what if the link was the first thing in the article and uk.example.com is a badly set up wordpress blog with urls like
uk.example.com/articles/ ( the snippet had the link )
uk.example.com/2013/ ( the snippet had the link )
uk.example.com/articles/seo-is-dead-because-google-made-it-to easy.html?replytocom=7062 ( seen these appear all the time)
So would it be better to :
domain:uk.example.com ( but in the article Google said “But if you list a subdomain, most of the time we will be able to ignore links only from that subdomain” ) MOST of the time !!!, what if you had a link on www.example.com and you actually wanted to keep that link but adding uk.example.com may or may not discount that link so I guess it’s better to just block :
domain:example.com or maybe your disavow file should just read :
# link we don’t want because we paid uk.example.com for this article
uk.example.com/articles/seo-is-dead-because-google-made-it-to easy.html
# actually belts and braces I noticed that they have dupe content
domain:uk.example.com
# actually I have 100,000’s of links to look at and why am I wasting my time on just one
domain:example.com
maybe Uli knows the answer : https://plus.google.com/u/0/100370036835775851472
and while we are asking him maybe we should ask about the upcoming NIC.UK changes that will allow domains like example.uk to live alongside the domain example.co.uk. Will Google see example.co.uk as a subdomain of co.uk and what about www.co.uk so many questions and only one disavow file, maybe the disavow file should read :
# I don’t like links from russia or china
domain:.ru
domain:.cn
or Maybe Google should just give us a disavow testing tool
3 Comments
Uli
Hi Dave,
Interesting example! domain:uk.example.com would work to disavow all links from this subdomain.
However, something like domain:example.com/folder/ wouldn’t work, and domain:ru wouldn’t work either:-)
Uli
David Naylor
cheers Uli, I’m Glad the domain:.ru won’t work
Morgan - http://www.marwickmoss.co.uk/
Hi David,
I had to use the disavow tool as a last resort just a couple of days ago. I had contacted the relevant webmaster asking to either have the backlink removed or simply “no-follow” I contacted them three times over a two week period but never heard anything back from them. I mentioned this in the text file that Google ask for, so here’s keeping my fingers crossed.
Thanks for sharing the post.
Morgan