Poll: Most SEOs Would Ignore Spammy Links But Many Would Disavow Them

Dec 2, 2020 - 7:31 am 2 by
Filed Under Link Building

Google Ignore

Lily Ray ran a poll (I am kicking myself for not seeing it to retweet it but it has over 500 results). The poll asked how would you handle a lot of really spammy links pointing to your clients sites. The response was most would ignore the links but many will disavow them.

The poll is on Twitter and asks "When you see hundreds (or even thousands) of low-quality, highly targeted .blogspot URLs in your client's backlink profile, how do you choose to handle?"

  • 42% said they would Ignore the links because they are spam
  • 29% said they would disavow some of the URLs
  • 17.5% said they would disavow all the blogpost URLs
  • 11% said they would keep the links because they probably are good and helping

Here is the poll:

Now, if you add up the two disavows, that is about 46% say they would disavow, which is more than the 42% that would ignore them. But add the 11% that would keep them and the 42% that would ignore them (which is keeping them) and you got 53%.

Interesting distribution.

Of course Google says you can ignore spammy links unless there is a manual action.

Oh, then Lily shared this chart in this tweet:

And a timely tweet from John Mueller of Google:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: October 17, 2025

Oct 17, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Deceptive Hide Ads Interface, Google Goldmine, Bing data-nosnippet & More

Oct 17, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google

Watch Google's Liz Reid Interviewed By WSJ On AI Search, Ad Clicks, Publishers

Oct 17, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Maps

Google Business Profiles Quick Google Posts Across Multiple Profiles

Oct 17, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Sending Push Notifications That Go To AI Mode Searches

Oct 17, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Updates Medicines Policy Regarding Prescription Drug Terms

Oct 17, 2025 - 7:21 am
 
Previous Story: Google Discover Ads Has A New Format Option