• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
          Moz Local

          Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        4. Can I dissavow links on a 301'd website?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Can I dissavow links on a 301'd website?

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        3
        7
        1988
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • SEOdub
          SEOdub last edited by

          So we are performing link removal for a client on his old website (A), which is being 301 redirected to his new website (B).  We have identified toxic links on site A and are removing, once complete we will undo the current 301, confirm a new GWT account for website A, and then submit the disavow report.

          We would then like to reapply the 301 redirect to site B while we are waiting for Google to process the disavow report, the logic being we can retain some current rankings on site B while waiting for the disavow to process on site A.

          Has anyone had experience with this method?  I foresee some potential issues here but am interested to here from others on this.  Thanks!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Dr-Pete
            Dr-Pete Staff @FedeEinhorn last edited by

            I tend to agree with Federico's concerns. If the 301 transfers a penalty, the impact could be long-term, and it could be harder to rescue site B. The short-term ranking gains may not be worth it.

            Google hasn't been clear on how this operates with 301 redirects. John's suggestion to disavow on both sites seems safe. Worst case, it's wasted effort, but it's not much effort (once you've built one file, building two is easy). Still, you've got to wait for that to process, and if the algorithmic penalty is something like Penguin, then you'd have to wait for a data refresh. This could take months, so I'd be really hesitant to risk site B until you've cleaned up the mess.

            Once you disavow to site A, the 301-redirect should be fairly safe, but it does depend on the extent of the penalty. The risk/reward trade-off is definitely a "devil is in the details" sort of situation.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • FedeEinhorn
              FedeEinhorn @SEOdub last edited by

              Well, you are right, manual are easier to fix, although most likely, sites with manual penalties usually fall into an algorithmic penalty too.

              Steps I'd suggest:

              • Don't reinstate the redirect.
              • Do some cleaning, extensive cleaning.
              • Use it just as a redirection for users, but not for crawlers, rankings (using robots.txt disallow site A and 302 redirect the domain to site B).

              Hope that helps!

              Dr-Pete 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • SEOdub
                SEOdub @FedeEinhorn last edited by

                No, this is an algorithmic penalty.  Wish it was manual, would be easier to figure out.

                FedeEinhorn 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • FedeEinhorn
                  FedeEinhorn @SEOdub last edited by

                  But did you get any MANUAL penalty on A or B?

                  SEOdub 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • SEOdub
                    SEOdub last edited by

                    The problem is that despite the algorithmic penalty site A appears to be pushing heavy authority to site B and keeping decent rankings for some very competitive terms that we otherwise would not rank for with site B.  If I remove the 301 I fully expect all current rankings to drop, I am trying to avoid this.

                    Were doing link removal now, but plan on having to use the disavow tool once we have a few removal requests out to webmasters.  I actually got an answer on this from John Mueller at Google in the technical SEO community on G+.

                    John Mueller
                    "I would think about the final state you want to be in and just do that. If you want to do a domain move, then 301 and keep them. If you do a domain move + disavow links, then submit the file for both domains. This process will take quite some time (maybe even a year), so you don't want to play with it incrementally: just find out what you want in the end and set that up."

                    FedeEinhorn 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • FedeEinhorn
                      FedeEinhorn last edited by

                      Hey Chris,

                      Did site A or B receive a manual penalty?

                      As any penalty on A, which is 301'd to B, will ultimately pass the penalty to B. I would suggest removing the 301 ASAP. Then cleanup the A domain until it's clean (if a manual action, until it's revoked) and then you can think of putting the 301 back.

                      Removing a manual penalty could be a long process, it took 1 year for us and 4 reconsideration requests to get the penalty revoked. We had to use the disavow as a machete as disavowed almost our entire link profile leaving aside the domains that we knew were good links, all others were disavowed using the "Domain:" to avoid any missed link.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Browse Questions

                      Explore more categories

                      • Moz Tools

                        Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                      • SEO Tactics

                        Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                      • Community

                        Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                      • Digital Marketing

                        Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                      • Research & Trends

                        Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                      • Support

                        Connect on product support and feature requests.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • Wana-Ryd

                        Readd/Reindex a page that was 410'd

                        A script of ours had an error that caused some pages we didn't wish 410'd to be 410'd, we caught it in about 12 hours but for some pages it was too late. My question is, will those pages be reindexed again and how will that affect their page ranking will they eventually be back where they were?  Would submitting a site map with them help, or what would be the best way to correct this error (submit the links to google indexer maybe?).

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wana-Ryd
                        0
                      • seoaustin

                        Old URL that has been 301'd for months appearing in SERPs

                        We created a more keyword friendly url with dashes instead of underscores in December.  That new URL is in Google's Index and has a few links to it naturally.  The previous version of the URL (with underscores) continues to rear it's ugly head in the SERPs, though when you click on it you are 301'd to the new url.  The 301 is implemented correctly and checked out on sites such as http://www.redirect-checker.org/index.php. Has anyone else experienced such a thing? I understand that Google can use it's discretion on pages, title tags, canonicals, etc.... But I've never witnessed them continue to show an old url that has been 301'd to a new for months after discovery or randomly.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoaustin
                        0
                      • 94501

                        How can I get a list of every url of a site in Google's index?

                        I work on a site that has almost 20,000 urls in its site map. Google WMT claims 28,000 indexed and a search on Google shows 33,000. I'd like to find what the difference is. Is there a way to get an excel sheet with every url Google has indexed for a site? Thanks... Mike

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 94501
                        0
                      • NaescentAdam

                        Link Research Tools - Detox Links

                        Hi, I was doing a little research on my link profile and came across a tool called "LinkRessearchTools.com". I bought a subscription and tried them out. Doing the report they advised a low risk but identified 78 Very High Risk to Deadly (are they venomous?) links, around 5% of total and advised removing them. They also advised of many suspicious and low risk links but these seem to be because they have no knowledge of them so default to a negative it seems. So before I do anything rash and start removing my Deadly links, I was wondering if anyone had a). used them and recommend them b). recommend detoxing removing the deadly links c). would there be any cases in which so called Deadly links being removed cause more problems than solve. Such as maintaining a normal looking profile as everyone would be likely to have bad links etc... (although my thinking may be out on that one...). What do you think? Adam

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NaescentAdam
                        0
                      • simon_realbuzz

                        Should I 'nofollow' links between my own sites?

                        We have five sites which are largely unrelated but for cross-promotional purpose our company wishes to cross link between all our sites, possibly in the footer. I have warned about potential consequences of cross-linking in this way and certainly don't want our sites to be viewed as some sort of 'link ring' if they all link to one another. Just wondering if linking between sites you own really is that much of an issue and whether we should  'nofollow' the links in order to prevent being slapped with any sort of penalty for cross-linking.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simon_realbuzz
                        0
                      • Brocberry

                        301 doesn't redirect a page that ends in %20, and others being appended with ?q=

                        I have a product page that ends /product-name**%20** that I'm trying to redirect in this way: Redirect 301 /products/product-name%20 http://www.site.com/products/product-name And it doesn't redirect at all. The others, those with %20, are being redirected to a url hybrid of old and new: http://www.site.com/products/product-name**?q=old-url** I'm using Drupal CMS, and it may be creating rules that counter my entries.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brocberry
                        0
                      • MTalhaImtiaz

                        How to check a website's architecture?

                        Hello everyone, I am an SEO analyst - a good one - but I am weak in technical aspects. I do not know any programming and only a little HTML. I know this is a major weakness for an SEO so my first request to you all is to guide me how to learn HTML and some basic PHP programming. Secondly... about the topic of this particular question - I know that a website should have a flat architecture... but I do not know how to find out if a website's architecture is flat or not, good or bad. Please help me out on this... I would be obliged. Eagerly awaiting your responses, BEst Regards, Talha

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz
                        0
                      • CommercePundit

                        Can I Improve Organic Ranking by Restrict Website Access to Specific IP Address or Geo Location?

                        I am targeting my website in US so need to get high organic ranking in US web search. One of my competitor is restricting website access to specific IP address or Geo location. I have checked multiple categories to know more. What's going on with this restriction and why they make it happen? One of SEO forum is also restricting website access to specific location. I can understand that, it may help them to stop thread spamming with unnecessary Sign Up or Q & A. But, why Lamps Plus have set this? Is there any specific reason? Can I improve my organic ranking? Restriction may help me to save and maintain user statistic in terms of bounce rate, average page views per visit, etc...

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit
                        1

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      • Digital Marketers
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.