Google Says Links Have To Be On Indexed Pages To Be Counted & Not All Indexed Links Are Counted

Google said it is okay to ignore toxic links that some tools are reporting but why? Well, we know that for a link to be counted by Google the page linking out needs to be indexed by Google in the first place. Plus, Google, since Penguin 4.0, doesn’t even count all links, even if they are on indexed pages. So it makes you wonder, why are so many SEOs buying links if it is hard to know if they really work?

This topic came up again when Ori Zilbershtein asked on Twitter about if a link that is toxic is counted if the page that link is on, is not in Google’s index. Here are those questions:

Quick question which I don’t recall seeing the answer to: If a URL isn’t indexed, but that page is linking to your site, and that URL is spam, meaning a “toxic link” (let’s say spinned content), would that link harm your site’s ranking or not?

— 𓂀 Ori Zilbershtein (@OriZilbershtein) January 10, 2022

Considering so many SEOs taking initiatives to put actively domains & URLs in their disavow file, might be important to consider if this has any impact.

— 𓂀 Ori Zilbershtein (@OriZilbershtein) January 10, 2022

John Mueller of Google replied, as you’d expect, “If they’re not indexed, I wouldn’t assume the links do anything.”

I thought that is the case, thank you for clarifying. Meaning if a URL is not indexed most likely shouldn’t be considered at all. Another reason those “toxic link tools” are pretty flaky. Many links in @ahrefs URLs google doesn’t index. (maybe added column in backlinks feature?:D

— 𓂀 Ori Zilbershtein (@OriZilbershtein) January 10, 2022

John then explained two important points:

(1) Links that are on indexed pages can be ignored by Google anyway.

(2) There is no API for testing if a page is indexed

John explained that there is no way for a tool to know if a page is indexed “without breaking our TOS.” Of course, most of the tools break the TOS anyway, and Google looks the other way.

Fwiw I was talking about the dreaded link-juice-cascade; links can still be useful to get users to visit :-). Of course also links that are on indexed pages can be ignored, and there’s no API for testing if a page is indexed, so SEO tools can’t do that without breaking our TOS.

— 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) January 10, 2022

Advertisement

But again, if you love using the disavow file, you can – if it makes you sleep better but sometimes disavowing too much can hurt.

Forum discussion at Twitter.