Oh look, game theory, it must be interesting
I put this comic together for a post I just published about Google’s disavow link tool. Expert guides to using this tool started to appear on the internet within an hour of it’s annoucement, and there is sure to be lively discussion about the ethics of submitting links from domains other SEO’s may be using.
In my other post I drew parallels between disclosing spammy link resources to Google and the Prisoners Dilemma, and where these diverge. The TL;DR is, websites which have a penalty and a lot of links that their competitors do not share have no reason not to use the Disavow link tool. Hard. Those that share a lot of link resources with other sites and have comparably few unique to themeselves might not benefit from this.
Oh, and bonus points if you can shaft your competitors who are sharing some link resources with you, that you ar less reliant on then them.