Talk of disavowing links has been around for many years, with rarely a week going by when the subject isn’t on some SEO blog. Meanwhile, Google has openly admitted that it is something it is thinking of allowing.
The search engine giant has been beaten to it though by Bing, which continues to overhaul its service, and attract more searches. In a blog post, the search engine said:
“Over the past few months we’ve being hearing from the industry that webmasters wanted more control and the ability to tell us they didn’t trust a link pointed at their content. While this is not a new conversation, our latest redesign work has enabled us to take action on this topic.”
Whilst it is little surprise Bing has stolen a march on its bigger rival, it is a surprise that it is bothering. Isn’t it?
Its own FAQ page says, a site’s Bing ranking is not adversely affected by low quality inbounds.
It does admit that such links are not beneficial but, if they are not damaging, it is hard to see the point in putting the effort in.
The situation is not quite that clear cut.
In another FAQ, Bing suggests that non-relevant link exchanges could be damaging after all. It certainly seems to be the case with the spurious white links on white backgrounds.
Paid links are open to debate with some. Links should be all about user relevance.
The tool is there though. Accessible through Bing Webmaster Tools, it is likely that many SEO marketers and site owners will trawl through their links over recent weeks, tidying them up.
Related posts:
- Google takes the lead in searches during 2012
- Google takes the lead for UK search
- Bing advances on Google’s personalised search
- The difference between link building and link buying
- Bing shares secrets with Quality Insights
