Bing announced the release of a feature in it’s webmaster tools that will allow you to disavow links that you don’t want the search engine associating with your site, allowing you to essentially ‘turn-off’ the bad link juice that’s been hurting you’re SERP ranking. This will also help combat any ‘negative seo’ practiced against you.
I can already hear it. Half of you jokingly saying ‘what’s a Bing?’, while the other half yells “who cares?(it’s Bing!)”
Of course there is a small(tiny really, puny even) percentage of folks who are happy about and will use the new BWT feature, so a quick cheers for them.(YAY!)
The REAL story of course is the fact that they beat Google to the punch.
The penalties from Google have been piling up, rankings are dropping, sometimes to the point of no return, fortunes lost, businesses in ruin, and now, with someone finally releasing a tool to disavow bad links, webmasters are made to suffer once more by hearing, “that? No that’s just for Bing…”(cue the ‘sad tuba’ effect)
But wait, there’s more. This concept of letting Master Search Engine know which links you stand behind and which you would disavow is hardly a new one. Dave Harry talked about a tool like this in his recent post on reconsideration requests:
At some point one would have to believe that Google might want to just give webmasters the option to discount links. If it’s negative SEO or just some poor website owner who trusted an SEO that strayed to close to the edge, making people jump through hoops and expend resources, just doesn’t seem like the right answer.
Indeed, at some point they may. And that was far from the first time he or other’s had brought it up.
Anyway, the point is this: Google, you’re a (monumental)step behind a search engine so obscure that it’s almost novelty. I’m not bashing for the sake of it, but what do say to an over confident hare who’s losing a race to a tortise? Anyone remember how that story ends?
Needless to say, Google is working on a tool to disavow links, and if the pressure wasn’t enough before, you can bet it is now. Webmasters are in desperate need of a tool like this on a search engine that is sadly the only relevant one left out there. So, any time now…
