Negative SEO has always been the main concern for webmasters as they constantly face this problem but can’t do anything about it. Search engines are also constantly changing their algorithms and making new systems only to resolve the problem of Negative SEO.
Negative SEO happens when any website intentionally tries to harm its competitor’s website by making it look as if it is of low quality. And this is done by pointing unwanted links or spam links from spam websites at the website one is trying to hurt and make it look bad. As a result, to Google bots, attacked site appears as it is of low quality, which then diminishes the chances for a high SERP ranking for that website.
Unfortunately, webmasters never had a good deal of control to fix these unwanted links. Bad links are actually very irritating and situation becomes more annoying when you can’t do anything to fix these bad links that is hurting your website’s ranking. So what’s the solution?
The answer is Bing Disavow Links Tool. Bing has launched a disavow links tool that provide webmasters a little bit more control over negative SEO and bad links. Google and other search engines also talked about bringing a tool like this in the past but Bing beats all search engines and grabs hype by firstly launching Disavow Links Tool to their Webmaster Tools.
How the Bing Disavow Links Tool Works?
Website owners need to go into the Bing Webmaster Tools “Configure Your Site” section to find the Disavow Tool. After opening the tool submit page, directory, or domain URLs that may contain links to your site that seem “unnatural” or appear to be from spam or low quality sites. After entering the URLs hit “disavow.” Here is a screenshot of the tool shown on the Bing Blog:
Image Credit : Bing
There are no limits to the links you can disavow and the tool also provides a record on the page in case you want to export the list in future. Bing Disavow Tool also notes the type of location (page, directory or domain) as well as the date that the website owner disavowed the link. In case you want to undo the action you just executed just click “delete.”
But there are some more things that webmasters should know about this tool:
First, this tool is just a way to alert Bing about the links you don’t trust. It’s important to understand that using disavow links tool won’t immediately un-count disavowed links. Bing will first analyze these requests and then decide if the link is actually a spam or not.
Second, Bing’s Duane Forrester made it clear that webmasters should not expect a dramatic change in their rankings after using disavow links tool. The main purpose of this tool is to help Bing comprehend webmaster’s true intention. Backlinks are just one aspect that Bing uses to determine a ranking system on their SERPs.