Google: Don't Worry About Spammy Links From Content Going Viral

Jul 7, 2021 - 7:51 am 3 by

Google Viral Links

Imagine that one day I would write a story here and it would go viral, and get an insane amount of attention. Okay, I wrote a few stories that have done that. But should you be worried about the spammy links viral stories attract? The answer is no, according to Google.

John Mueller of Google was asked on Twitter if one should disavow the spammy links that you see from an article going viral. John said "no need" to do that. The question was "My company recently went viral with a news article, and naturally, that gave us a lot of links from large newspapers around the globe. However, tons of spam sites with no traffic or backlinks also started linking to us. Should we disavow?" John responded "no need."

Here are those tweets:

Google has been saying for a long time now that it can handle these spammy links in a way that does not demote your site but it just ignores the links. The whole Penguin devaluing vs demoting aspect. Well, here is one case of this.

Also, if someone on the manual actions team saw these spammy links to an article that got tons of natural links, it is also natural to see spammy links to a popular page. So that all should be fine.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Search Engine Optimization

New (But Old) Google Search Console Achievements

Sep 16, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

What Is Google Question Fringe Score

Sep 16, 2025 - 7:41 am
Bing Ads

Bing Image Search With Ads Mixed Into The Organic Results

Sep 16, 2025 - 7:31 am
Bing Search

Bing Testing Sticky Search Bar Header

Sep 16, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google News

Rolling Stone Publisher (Penske) Sued Google Over AI Overviews

Sep 16, 2025 - 7:11 am
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 15, 2025

Sep 15, 2025 - 10:00 am
 
Previous Story: Google On Third Party PageRank-Like Metrics