Being Disavowed Won't Hurt Your Rankings

Scammers have been contacting Web site owners threatening to jeopardize their search rankings by using Google's Disavow tool to disavow their site. One Webmaster posted the email they received with the subject line: Link Removal Request. The email read:

"We recently received a notice from Google stating that they have levied a penalty on our Web site as they "detected unnatural links" redirecting to our Web site. The only way we can remove this penalty and help Google reconsider putting our Web site back in their index is by removing these links and we need your help for the same. We request you to consider this request on high priority.

Following are the details of the links: [A list of Links of my website with majority comments links .]

We would like to bring your notice that failure to remove these links would require us to file a "Disavow Links" report with Google. Once we submit this report to Google, they may "flag" your site as "spammy" or otherwise if anything is not in compliance with their guidelines. The last thing we want is to have another Webmaster go through this grief!"

Sounds legitimate doesn't it. Well, Google's Webmaster Trends Analyst, John Mueller responded,

"They are wrong. Having URLs from your website submitted in their disavow file will not cause any problems for your website. One might assume that they are just trying to pressure you. If the comment links they pointed to you are comment-spam that was left by them (or by someone working in their name) on your website, perhaps they are willing to help cover the work involved in cleaning their spam up?"