Not All Backlinks Count but Will Google Tell You Which Ones Do?

Not All Backlinks Count but Will Google Tell You Which Ones Do?
With all the recent SERP’s volatility (January Update and February Update), Google Webmaster Trends Analyst was asked on Twitter whether they ever intend to reveal which links in the Search Console are disavowed and which are just ignored, i.e. Penguin.

Twitter user @_RGraph specifically wanted to be able to filter the “Links to your site” section in the Search console to show \ remove those that are disavowed or ignored, presumably to gain greater insight on whether their backlink strategy was effective. Here is the twitter conversation:

In response to the question, Gary Illyes confirmed “absolutely not,” as it would give black hat SEO’s and link spammers everything they would need to circumvent the algorithms.

This makes perfect sense as Google has been waging war against link spammers that saw the introduction of Penguin on April 24, 2012, which was recently made to update in real-time. If spammers had information on what type of links are counted by Google, or what domains may be blacklisted by some algorithm, then they would be able to configure their automated back linking tools or general strategy to mitigate them.

For those who undertake white hat SEO, while frustrating at times, the lack of transparency by Google is essential to stop these spammers ranking low-quality websites above your high-quality pages that may have taken many many months or years to craft.