Google Webmaster Tools needs inbound link opt out like Yahoo!

Category: Google, Link Building, Yahoo

I recently discovered (shame on me!) that Yahoo Site Explorer allows a webmaster to actually tag an inbound link to their site as ’spam’ and reject it as being counted as inbound link weight. Well, I checked to see if Google allowed this same feature within their Google webmaster tool and fair enough they did not. Then I did some research and it turns out that this is one of the most requested features that webmasters are asking for to be added to the Google webmaster tools.

Would it not be great to have control over accepting/denying links being created to your website!? Yahoo has done it and  I am impressed. I hope Google will soon implement such a feature.

If Google is going to penalize you for ‘poor quality’ or ‘inappropriate’ inbound links, is it not fair to the webmaster community that they first allow webmasters to audit the links being created and deny them if they are not up to standard. Think about paid links which Google openly admins is ‘bad’ and can/do penalize you for it. What is to stop your business competitor ordering 100 paid links to your website from dodgy paid link sources in the hope that Google will detect this and penalize your business?

Google should give webmasters a feature to opt out links from counting in Webmaster Tools if they feel they are not of the appropriate quality. Yahoo Site Explorer has it, so maybe Google should follow suit.

Here is how Yahoo Site Explorer works.

1. Login to Yahoo Site Explorer
2. Click on your inlinks link
3. Mouse over a link and notice the “report spam” button: