With lots of buzzwords like Google Panda updates (aimed at low quality content) and Google Penguin updates (aimed at aggressive link building or low quality poor linkscapes, same anchor text etc).
The latest wave of hysteria culminated in negative SEO, ie wiping out your competition with a barrage of low quality spammy links and gettting them a google penalty.
People are now paranoid about their link building past, and that really cheap SEO person you found on fiverr.com has now done far more harm than good!
So Google has released a "Disavow Tool". ie if you know you have a dodgy link from an unscrupulous site and the site owner refuses to take it down, you can now us a Google tool to break the link.
Good news? I think it's a recipe for disaster!!!
I think the average site owner doesn't really understand the repercussions, and may launch into a panic fuelled scatter gun approach doing far more harm than good, and undoing genuinely good SEO work.
We have seen it already on our business directory. We give outbound clean links, have a long standing reputation with the Google god and weathered the ongoing Panda/Penguin etc updates by steering a centre path when it comes to SEO.
But we have had a few panicky emails from business owners claiming that their site had been penalised and they needed to remove all of their backlinks??
Here's one that came through this morning:
Dear webmaster
We are contacting you to request the removal of backlinks to our website, in compliance with Google's search engine policies.
Our domain is <removed>
We understand this is a time consuming process - you should give this your immediate attention for the following reason:
Our domain is currently penalised by Google. If you link to our domain, your are penalising your own website as well.
My website is featured on the following page: <removed>
Please confirm removal.
A standard email from a terrified business owner. Now in reality, this is a standard email that is blasted out. In this case, the business had a free listing, so there was no back link. But this business has now lost out on potential exposure. Maybe not much of an SEO impact, but certainly a marketing one. No doubt every directory they have a free listing with (and no web link!) will also have removed them. Then it will be forums, blogs etc.
This business in a fit of panic is now self destructing any of their online marketing.
A bit of research would probably lead them to the cause of the issue and in that case, the disavow tool could prove useful if the rogue links can't be removed.
First place to regularly check is your webmaster tools. If you get a message from the Google God that you have had a slap on the head or have some bad links, draw breath and don't panic.
If you don't understand, then get advice. Don't ignore it, as Google doesn't issue messages lightly, so if there is an issue it needs resolving. Just don't go too far and undo years of good work, just to remove a short period of bad work
If you want to learn more about the disavow tool and hear from a genuine expert, then there is a great blog post on SEOmoz:
Google's Disavow Tool - Take a Deep Breath | SEOmoz
