Being Disavowed will Hurt the Reputation of Your Website?

Well, I guess many blog or website owners are concerned about this question these days: being disavowed by a website is going to hurt the reputation of my website or not?

Those who are not aware about this term Google Disavow; they might read about them in this post of mine: How to Deal with Negative SEO & use Disavow Links Tool!

Recently one gentlemen send an email to me, asking me to remove one link from my website, which was actually a spam (link attached with a comment) made either by him or someone on his behalf. Normally what I do is when I receive such emails; I usually delete the same from my website, after all that spammy comment is actually bad for my website as well.

This time, just for curiosity I replied him, that sorry I won’t be able to delete the comment from my site. The next mail which I received next day was a surprise for me. Here is a part of that mail:

I’m gonna add your domain on my disavow list, and also I want to explain one other thing: that link is our property and you can only use it with our approval. I want to make sure you understand keeping the link without our approval is illegal, and if I don’t have your support and your implication on it and you will remain rigid, this might escalade.

Being Disavowed will Hurt the Reputation of Your Website?

This is not the first instance that I came through such emails. Although it was the first such emails which I received, but many of my webmaster friends are getting more or less similar types of emails in which the person claims that he/she is the website owner of a site, which has a link from my friends site, and they wanted them to remove the same. The emails also have a threat to the owner of that particular website, that they will disavow their website and thus Google will penalize your website.

One common line which you might find in all those emails is that once we submit this (Disavow) report to Google, they may “flag” your site as “spammy”.

Is it really true that being disavowed will hurt the reputation of my own website?

Many of my webmaster friends are asking the same to me.

If you too are worried about the same then please don’t worry, as in fact Google won’t going to hurt your website’s ranking or position, just because someone disavowed your website.

My instance on the above question is that being disavowed in the Google Disavow list of some other website is not going to harm you anyway.

Frankly speaking, if a website has a link from a comment on your website, no matter if it is posted by him, or someone authorized by him to do so, or no matter if it is a spammy comment, or looks spam, ultimately it is their responsibility to clean that particular link, and if to do so they placed their website on Google Disavow list, then it doesn’t means that Google consider your website as a spam website.

It might be possible that Google might scrutinize your website based on some other factors, but just because your website is disavowed, they won’t initiate the process of putting penalty on your website.

You might also check this thread at Google Webmaster help, in which John Mueller from Google responded the similar thing.

You might also be interested in reading the blog post of mine on 20 Reasons Which Might Penalize Your Website by Google!

Do let us know your opinion about Being Disavowed will Hurt the Reputation of Your Website? Share your thought in the form of comment.