Submitting A Disavow File.

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Rick Eliason: Submitting A Disavow File
  
  Hi everyone, I hope you can help.
  
  I have more or less finished documenting my toxic link research & removal.
  
  I was wondering, should my file that I send to Google contain information about links I have had successfully removed or just the ones I have been unsuccessful with?
  
  Thanks very much.
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  Mike Stetzer: I would definitely include information about links that you've successfully removed. Ultimately, that's what they want and it demonstrates an effort to do things right on your end.
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  Rick Eliason: I thought as much +Mike Stetzer ;- I have seen conflicting information out there and just wanted to get another opinion. Thanks very much.
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  Mike Stetzer: No problem, +Rick Eliason. Hopefully you have better success than we (and a lot of other people I know) did!
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  Rick Eliason: Well we adopted this client only recently after a rogue SEO went to town with bad links for several years it looks like. I feel bad for them but they probably should have kept a better eye on what he was doing. We can only do so much but its been a good learning experience. I hope for their sake Google takes pity on them!
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  Mike Stetzer: I might mention some of that in your Disavow file. Maybe an attempt to be super transparent with them might help your cause? Or maybe I'm living in a fantasy world :). Nonetheless, good luck!
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  Rick Eliason: Thank +Mike Stetzer! ;
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  Ashish Ahuja: Google says that nobody reads the comments in disavow file it's handled algorithmically
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  Paul Lovell: Hi +Rick Eliason the more information that you send Google for reconsideration the better it will go for you I would even go as far to explain that they had another seo carrying out this bad work for years
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  Ashish Ahuja: If it's reconsideration request then I agree with +Paul Lovell
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  Mike Stetzer: Even if nobody reads the comments in the disavow file, there's no reason why you shouldn't roll the dice and include them anyway. What's the worst that can happen? Nobody reads them? Best case scenario, someone does and it could really help your cause. Ultimately, it's about demonstrating that you've gotten links removed. Comments are anecdotal at best, but I figure it doesn't hurt to try.
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  Rick Eliason: Awesome, thanks so much guys, I'll do just that!
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  Sitegains: Out of curiosity +Rick Eliason, are you dealing with a manual penalty, partial penalty or penguin effect? 
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  Noam Flint: Hi +Rick Eliason ; - ;
  If you are talking about including lines of links that you have successfully removed then I completely agree with +Mike Stetzer ;first comment - do include them but I think for another more technical reason - ;
  Just that you removed a link does not necessarily mean that Google already crawled that page and removed it from the list of links pointing to you - by adding it to the file they should immediately ignore it! (in fact these types of links are usually on crappy sites that probably don't get crawled that often). Another reason to do so is that these sites often point to you from more than one location (these are not well built sites with canonicalization etc. and have multiple listings and duplicated content pages). So even if you caught a link they might still point to you elsewhere so you should also make sure to disavow the domain: AND not only the link.
  
  P.S - I have successfully removed a manual penalization from a site I own with tens of thousands poor links due to three months worth f poor SEO (link building) someone did to me - my fault for lack of knowledge.
  
  P.P.S - This is me doing your recommendation #19 - Great List!
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  Rick Eliason: Cracking answer +Noam Flint! Thanks very much, makes loads of sense. And I'm glad you like the #googleplus50 series :-)
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  Perry Bernard: Does anyone at Google read a disavow file? I don't think they do. As far as I know, if you've listed the URLs for removal, any annotations you make there might be for your benefit alone. Certainly, disavow files I have set really need notes because it helps me take note or categorise how toxic various links were, then if I need to ease off (I am sometimes too aggressive on removal) I can add back the ones I felt were least toxic.