Search Console, Spammy Porn Links

[Top Hat]

I noticed that one of our pages has lots of spammy porn links to it (500, 46 domains) 90% of the inward links to that page.

So my questions are:
Is this a form of referrer spam?
Do I need to disavow the links or does google already know/has already disavowed them?

More generally, I've never bothered to disavow links, is it something I need to do? how do you decide if it need disavowing?

Thanks

 

[justinaldridge]

@Joel Huang you've just copied that entire text from the Bruce Clay blog post! https://www.bruceclay.com/blog/complete-guide-bing-and-google-disavowing-links/

Anyway, in answer to the OP, they probably aren't harming your website as Google should ignore them, but you can disavow them for peace of mind.

 

[estwig]

Depends on the quality of the links, if it's midget jello wrestling you might want to disavow, if it's Stormy Daniels, she is hot property at the moment.

 

[Top Hat]

Thanks all for the replys.

However, are you asking the question because you have been tracking your search phrases over the past few months / years and have noticed a significant drop?
Or it is that you have simply just noticed them in GSC (or another tool) and have asked the question out of concern?

Our traffic has been dropping for years

Historically I've not been one to check ranking and traffic.

We did just relaunch our site, and its 1. Much faster, 2. https 3. works on mobile.

I was hoping for a boost and hence checking traffic etc, but have seen absolutely no change.

Since asking the Q I've got SEO PowerSuite and have been digging around.

I also have no end of links from pages that are clearly scraped content as they point to things like my postage policy or terms.

Anyway I did a disavow from the porn pages, hope it has positive effect.

To go through my backlinks and disavow the poor quality and scraped links would be a massive task and I don't want to do it unless I have to. So the question is do I need to!

 

[justinaldridge]

Our traffic has been dropping for years

There are many things that can cause a drop in traffic.

• Content quality
• Content freshness
• Content relevancy
• Competition
• Lack of quality links
• Lack of new quality links
• Poor engagement
• Poor user experience
• Poor link structure
• Etc.

It seems you are focused on the links side of things but that's not necessarily the issue.

Is everything else as good as it could possibly be compared to the competition?

 

[websensejim]

Most sites' traffic has been "dropping for years". (organic search traffic). The main culprit is Google - they're your main competitor, not other businesses. The organic search real estate is shrinking.

 

[Paul Carmen]

I'm with Justin on this, I'd disavow them all for peace of mind, as even if they cause no problem at present there is nothing to say that a future algorithm change wont change that.

You will also get a picture of whether this is impacting your site if the rankings then improve going forward.

On the subject of rankings dropping, has this got worse post website change? As adding https & rebuilding the site needs 301 redirects & close attention to old URLs, new URLs etc. It's also a good opportunity to review rankings, keywords, services, usability & improve the copy/content/UX of the site for your customers.

 

[StevePoster]

Yes, I already specify about Bruce Clay in the content. This is not about copy and pastes the content. I just want to solve the query with any source.

You didn't even credit the original source before your posted the copy paste content. If you want to solve the query make your own solution according to your knowledge and experience in the field.