If you are reading this, I assume you’re experiencing the woes of the Bing Disavow Link Tool (provided by Bing Webmaster Tools). Or maybe you’re just interested in disavowing links. The tool’s functionality allows you to submit domain, page, or directory URLs containing links to your website that appear to be from low quality sites or spam.
The sorry state of disavowing Bing links…
Google allows a user to upload multiple links at one time, whereas Bing only allows the user to submit one link at a time. For anyone, this is a tedious and extremely time consuming task, especially if you have thousands of links to disavow at one time!
Adam Gent, our Senior Search Strategist, had been using a free tool created by Jim Munro from Dumb SEO Questions. This console tool works great, but essentially requires the user to follow instructions and do a bit of manual setup to get it up and running. For a non-technical minded person, it can be confusing and may not be set up correctly.
…and the promising solution!
I was given the task to create a bespoke tool with the same functionality, and to build it from scratch so we could add our own customisation and produce a more user-friendly user interface. I initially did a lot of research to find examples and approaches, but sadly there really wasn’t anything I could look at without paying. I then read all the API documentation provided by Bing Webmaster and finally found the information I needed to start building a prototype.
How to build a disavowing tool
I found the task extremely enjoyable. As a Junior .Net Developer, there’s nothing more satisfying than experimenting and building something from the bottom up. Just by reading the documentation, I learned a lot and would recommend to any level of developer to challenge yourself with all the things you can build to get the best out of Bing.
After a few meetings with the SEO team, I had the software requirements I needed to commence. I started small by getting my code to submit one link. Once I was successful, I created a method to upload multiple links and present the available sites registered to Branded3 in a dropdown, just by using Bing Webmaster API. This has saved various teams at Branded3 hours and hours of work – with just a few clicks, thousands of links can be submitted at once.
I’m sure every developer will agree that error handling is important when building any type of application. One of the main features of my tool includes a log file to show what date a link (or multiple links) had been submitted and to which domain, as well as how many links had been submitted in total.
The tool also sends an email to the user to let them know when the process has completed, and another email is sent to a support email inbox if there is an issue with the file upload or API Key. Currently, the tool disavows only domains, as we only disavow at a domain level. However, should the software requirements change, I will add features accordingly.
The image below provides an example of how simple the process of disavowing multiple links can be:
Built using MVC .Net Framework
To start building your own tool, read through the links provided below. Happy coding!
