Google’s John Mueller recently advised that links from non-English websites aren’t necessarily spam.
This was stated on Twitter in response to a site owner who was concerned about his backlink profile.
Here’s the question that was tweeted to him:
“I received some dofollow links from some non english websites. My sites priamary language is english. Have no idea how they got to find my stuff and link to it..😅😅 Should i be bothered about those links.. They have a neat link profile.”
In response, Mueller told him point blank that links aren’t inherently bad if they’re from sites in other languages.
Just because a website is not in English doesn't mean it's spam, or that links from it are bad.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) August 17, 2019
Apparently, this misconception is not uncommon. In some replies to Mueller’s tweet, one person said they thought the links were spammy, while another said they always disavow links from sites in other languages.
Disavowing all links from non-English sites might seem like a quick and easy way to remove irrelevant backlinks. But the problem with that is you could end up loosing some good links in the process.
There are plenty of high quality sites in languages other than English, including many that share the same niche as English websites.
A link from one of those sites can be every bit as valuable as as a link from a site where the primary language is English. You can find out by vetting the links, which is something that should always be done before submitting a disavow file.
For more guidance on which links to disavow and which ones to keep, see these resources:
