Disavow: what it is and how to use the Google tool to reject links
Not all links are equal and have the same weight and value, for Google and for our sites. In particular, if we think in terms of ranking, not all backlinks can really help our visibility, both in terms of attributes and in terms of the quality and reliability of the site from which this link originates. This is why Google’s disavow links tool was born, which was activated in 2012 to give webmasters a way to reject incoming links that are deemed unnatural, suspicious or contrary to Google’s quality standards. Although today’s algorithms have become much more adept at independently unearthing spam links, it can still be useful to know what disavow is and how it works and, therefore, how to perform this action that can benefit the site. But which should be used only as a “last resort,” as clarified by the search engine itself.
What is disavow and what it means
The term disavow literally means “to disown,” but it takes on a specific meaning in the context of SEO and digital marketing, where it has become a critical component in strategies for managing external links pointing to one’s site.
Basically, disavow is an action that allows webmasters to tell Google, or other search engines, to ignore specific inbound links to their website. It is a kind of “disclaimer” by which you ask the search engine to disregard certain backlinks when calculating your site’s ranking.
We can then report unwanted or toxic links to Google that we fear will damage the site’s reputation, and disavow is thus a method of protecting ourselves from low-quality backlinks.
Link removal via disavow has become necessary because of Google’s increasing emphasis on backlinks as an indicator of a website’s authority and popularity. In theory, in fact, Google assigns a quality score to backlinks, and those from suspect or penalized sites can lower the value of our domain.
Using the disavow tool is therefore a way to tell Google, “I don’t want to be associated with these links.”
What is the purpose of disavow
Doing disavow is a crucial technique to combat so-called toxic backlinks and protect one’s website from the negative effects of these unwanted links.
Under this definition fall all those links from low-quality, spam or Google-penalized sites that, instead of bringing benefits, risk damaging our site’s reputation in the eyes of the search engine.
These links can result from discriminatory actions such as negative SEO, where competitors try to lower a site’s ranking by tying it to damaging links, or more frequently from errors in strategy-for example, if you have bought links in the past or participated in unethical link building schemes that are now causing penalties.
Using disavow, we can “disavow” these toxic links, signaling Google to disregard them when calculating our site’s ranking, and then attempt to repair the damage and restore the search algorithm’s trust.
Bad links, toxic links, suspicious links and spam links: what they are and what they mean
Let’s quickly delve into terminology related to backlinks, which can be confusing. Often, in fact, adjectives such as “harmful,” “toxic,” “suspicious,” “manipulative,” and “spam” are used interchangeably, but they actually have important nuances, especially from the perspective of Google and the use of the disavow tool.
Clearly, there is no standard definition accepted everywhere, given also the fluidity of some types of content hosting links-for example, links in guest posts or in “hidden” affiliate marketing articles can potentially be considered spam or manipulative.
In detail, however, we recognize:
- Malicious link
A malicious link is a backlink that has a directly negative impact on a website’s ranking. These are links from sites that blatantly violate Google’s guidelines, such as spam sites, sites that spread malware, or sites created for the sole purpose of manipulating search results. Malicious links are those that have the highest probability of causing a manual penalization by Google and are usually easily detected even with special software.
- Toxic links
The term “toxic” is often used as a synonym for “harmful,” but it actually has a slightly different connotation. A toxic link is a backlink that has the potential to harm a website’s ranking, but it does not necessarily do so in an immediate or obvious way. For example, a link from a low-quality site or a site not relevant to our industry could be considered toxic, even if it does not directly violate Google’s guidelines.
- Suspicious links
A suspicious link is a backlink that raises concerns, but of which it is not yet clear whether or not it is actually harmful. These are links that exhibit some typical characteristics of toxic links, but require further analysis to determine their true nature. For example, a link from a site with a high number of outbound links or from a site that has suffered a sudden drop in ranking could be considered suspect.
- Spam links
Spam links are often automatically generated by special software and are characterized by unnatural anchor text, irrelevant URLs, and provenance from low-quality sites. It is usually not intentionally created to improve rankings, but is often found on most sites, such as in the case of links from nonsense random foreign language pages or from sites that link to almost every site on the Web.
- Manipulative links
It is a backlink created for the sole purpose of manipulating PageRank to improve ranking in search results, without any regard for the quality or relevance of the content. Examples include paid links, links in articles for SEO, and other schemes designed primarily to increase PageRank and subsequently rankings.
From a practical point of view, what we need to monitor and keep an eye on are dubious links, which can be the result of “negative SEO” (“destructive” campaigns created by competitors) or result from the use of old practices afferent to black hat SEO that, if detected by algorithms, can produce undesirable effects such as damaging a site’s rankings and worsening its ranking on Google.
Very trivially, in fact, disavow links do not serve against manipulative links, which are usually derived from manually applied techniques, and thus require a completely different approach to optimization.
What is Google disavow links
The Google disavow tool is a free tool made available within the Google Search Console to manually report backlinks that we prefer to exclude from our ranking calculation.
Often also referred to as the link disavow tool, it offers the ability to directly tell Google which inbound links to our site we wish to be ignored during the crawling and indexing process. In other words, through the disavow tool we can ask Google to disregard certain backlinks when calculating our site’s ranking.
Introduced in 2012 in the wake of pressure from the international SEO community, concerned about the effects of the Penguin algorithmic update (which was aimed at penalizing overtly spammy links and sites with clearly unnatural and manipulative backlink profiles ), the disavow links tool – Rifiuta link in Italian, also known as the Google disawov tool – allows precisely Web site owners to reject a backlink directed to their site.
Specifically, it allows us to upload a file containing the links they wish to disavow, activating a one-way communication channel with Google, which we ask to ignore those links to the site and disregard them in its ranking algorithms, so as to prevent possible penalties based on the link itself. Google will take this request into consideration, excluding these backlinks from the algorithm used to rank the site.
How to use the link disavow tool
The main goal of Google’s disavow tool is to avoid damage from toxic backlinks.
It is a powerful tool, which should be well known by every SEO specialist, but it should be used carefully: reporting quality links by mistake could harm more than it helps. That’s why even Google suggests using disavow only in critical cases, where links are clearly damaging and no other action can be taken.
By rejecting and removing spam, harmful, suspicious, or even negative links, in fact, we can avoid burdening the site or incurring manual action, but over time the scope of this tool is much reduced and Google has evolved its automatic recognition mechanisms for such problematic backlinks.
When to use disavow
As we said, bad links can result from several causes, such as unfair black-hat SEO practices (buying links or participating in reciprocal link schemes) or negative SEO actions by unscrupulous competitors. But not all negative backlinks necessarily need to be treated with disavow.
Before deciding to proceed with link disavowing, it is essential to correctly identify those that pose a threat. Suspicious links are usually those from sites not relevant to our industry, with low quality content, or from link networks clearly created only to manipulate rankings. It is useful to periodically run a backlink analysis to identify these elements: if after contacting the webmasters of the suspicious sites to request link removal there is no response, disavow becomes the next obligatory step.
In particular, Google recommends using the disavow tool only for harmful links that have a demonstrable negative impact on a website’s ranking: in such situations, the procedure gives us the opportunity to remove harmful links from algorithmic considerations, thus improving our overall SEO strategy.
Using disavow for only toxic or suspect links is discouraged unless we have concrete evidence that they are actually harming the site. In fact, disavowing an excessive number of links, even if they are suspicious, can have negative effects on ranking, as Google may interpret this action as an attempt to manipulate search results. Therefore, it is crucial to use the disavow tool with caution and only after a careful analysis of your backlink profile.
To recap, there are some typical situations in which rejecting links becomes an option to seriously consider:
- Manual penalization by Google. If our site has been manually penalized by Google due to unnatural backlinks, a disavow is often the only solution to restore the situation.
- Sharp drop in ranking for no apparent reason. If we notice a sudden drop in our site’s organic traffic and ranking, and analysis shows no other apparent cause, the presence of malicious backlinks could be the cause of the problem.
- Presence of numerous suspicious links. If during the analysis of our backlink profile we identify a large number of links from low-quality, spammy or irrelevant sites to our industry, disavow can help us prevent possible penalties.
Before proceeding with the disavow, however, it is crucial to carefully analyze our backlink profile, pinpointing suspicious links precisely.
And always remember that disavow should be used with caution and only as a last resort, when attempts to remove links manually have proven unsuccessful.
Link removal: how the procedure works
Turning to the practical aspects, how the Google disavow tool works is relatively simple: it involves uploading a text file (.txt) containing the list of URLs we want to disavow. Once the file is processed, Google will stop considering those specific links as ranking signals, either positive or negative.
It is important to note that the disavow does not physically remove links from the web, but simply negates their effect on our site’s ranking.
The procedure of using the Google disavow link tool correctly is very precise. First of all, we need to collect all suspicious links in a text file: this file should contain only the links that we have identified as malicious and follow some formatting rules. In particular, each URL should be on a separate line, and we can use comment preceded by a hash mark (#) to keep relevant notes. Once we have created the disavow file (let’s reiterate, in .txt text format only), we need to upload it via Google Search Console: the platform will guide us through the upload process and give us confirmation once it is complete. It is important to monitor our link profile regularly to update the disavow file if necessary.
Repeating in schematic form, increating the disavow file for the Google tool we have to follow a specific syntax, which requires us as rules:
- Save the file in .txt format, the only one that can be interpreted correctly by Google. follow:
- One URL per line. Each line of the file must contain only one URL or domain that you wish to disallow.
- Prefix “domain:” to disallow an entire domain. If we want to disallow all links from a given domain, we must prefix the URL with “domain:”.
- Use of the “#” character for comments. We can insert comments in the file using the “#” character. Comments are useful for noting why we are disallowing a particular link.
- UTF-8 encoding. The file must be encoded in UTF-8 to avoid problems with interpretation of special characters.
Common mistakes with disavow
When using the disavow tool to remove links, it is easy to run into mistakes that could make the situation worse. One of the most common is inserting high-quality links due to misinterpretation of the data. To avoid this, we should always double-check before adding a URL to the disavow file and, if possible, try other avenues, such as contacting the sites’ webmasters directly. Also, we should not consider disavow as a quick fix to ranking problems: it is a process that may take time, even several weeks before we see its eventual effects on our site’s ranking.
And so, while seemingly simple, using the disavow tool hides some pitfalls that could have a negative impact on our SEO, such as:
- Use disavow as a shortcut. The disavow should not be seen as a way to quickly “clean up” a low-quality backlink profile. The priority should always be to get natural links from authoritative sites.
- Disavow quality links. Accidentally disallowing links from authoritative sites can hurt our site’s ranking. It is essential to carefully analyze each link before placing it in the disavow file.
- Expect immediate results. As mentioned earlier, disavow is not an instantaneous operation. It can take weeks or even months before you see its effects – but then again, SEO is also a long-term activity!
- Do not constantly monitor the backlink profile. Using the disavow tool should not be an isolated event: it is important to monitor your backlink profile regularly for any new suspicious links.
Google’s explanations of how to use the disavow link tool
The use cases of the disavow links tool are described by an official Google page, which also reports what it considers the right way to approach the tool.
To be precise, we read in this guide that rejecting backlinks is recommended for sites on which a manual action hangs due to unnatural links or which are at risk of incurring a penalty due to paid links or other link schemes that violate the search engine’s quality standards. In reality, however, Google does not push the tool’s use very hard, both because of the potential negative consequences if a link is improperly removed, as we shall see, and because in most its systems are “able to determine which links are trustworthy without further guidance.”
Indeed, the paper urges people to try another route before using the tool, namely to try to remove such links from the other site, either independently or by contacting the operators of the site from which these questionable links originate, perhaps asking them to modify the link by adding a nofollow attribute. Only if this attempt does not bring positive results can we resort to the disawov links tool, but only if:
- We believe that there is a considerable number of spam containing, artificial, or low-quality links that direct to our site
and at the same time,
- Links have caused manual action on the site or are likely to cause it.
The use of the disavow links tool is very simple, but it requires a previous phase of analysis and research of the links to be reported to Google; to understand if actually there are suspicious links are of low quality and risky for the site we can use SEOZoom ‘s backlink analysis tools , which provide a complete picture of the incoming links on our project and also allow us to trace the authority and relevance of the sites from which these references depart.
If we actually notice negative situations or believe that we have run into some kind of penalization (also) due to spam links, the next step is precisely the removal of links through the Google Disavow Links Tool, which is completed in a few simple steps.
First, we need to prepare a complete text file of all the pages or domains to be rejected, complying with some simple technical formatting requirements:
- Specify one URL or domain to reject per line; you cannot reject an entire subpath, e.g. example.com/en/
- To reject a domain (or subdomain), add the prefix “domain:” as in domain:example.com
- The file must be a text file with UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII encoding
- The file name must end with .txt
- The maximum length of the URL is 2048 characters
- The maximum file size is 100,000 lines (including blank lines and comment lines) and 2 MB
- We can include comments by adding # to the beginning of a line, knowing that lines starting with # will be ignored by Google
Next, we need to connect to Search Console and upload this text file, which tells Google which domains or URLs we intend to flag as “to be disregarded” for ranking.
The backlink disavow tool does not work instantly; in fact, we have to wait a few weeks after a successful upload before Google starts considering the information in its rankings.
What is the point of rejecting suspicious links
There is frequent discussion in the international SEO community about the usefulness of Google’s disavow links tool and the practice of rejecting backlinks that may be unnatural or in conflict with Google’s quality standards.
This should come as no surprise, given the weight we know backlinks have (even today) as a ranking factor on Google, which is why, however, the tool can also become a possible double-edged sword, not least because in general it may be best to avoid manually intervening (or letting Google understand that we are intervening) in building our site’s backlink profile.
As mentioned, the introduction of the disavow links tool was urged by the SEO community after the release of Penguin and the subsequent penalties caused by the inordinate use of tactics that did not comply with the search engine’s guidelines, with the fear that negative SEO techniques could have affected the ranking without any possibility of intervention for the victim site.
In principle, then, from the outset Disavow Links is useful for alerting Google’s algorithms to disregard certain links when evaluating our site because they are unnatural, compromised, or incorrect. Used in this way, disapproving or removing bad or erroneous links from our site “can help Google’s algorithms trust other links to the site,” as also said by the search engine’s public voices in various circumstances.
The origins of the disavow: a response to the evolution of SEO and its pitfalls
To fully understand the meaning of the disavow, however, we need to step back in time and analyze the evolution of the SEO landscape in the early 2000s. At that time, Google was still in the early days of its unchallenged dominance, and ranking factors were much simpler and more manipulable than they are today.
Link building had established itself as one of the most effective SEO strategies, and webmasters were battling it out to grab as many inbound links as possible, often without much regard for the quality or relevance of the sources. This approach led to the proliferation of manipulative techniques such as link buying, wild link exchange, and the creation of fake site networks (PBNs) for the sole purpose of artificially inflating a website’s popularity.
In this context, Google was faced with a crucial challenge: how to distinguish genuine links, obtained through quality content and an authentic online reputation, from artificial links, created for the sole purpose of manipulating search results?
The answer came with a series of algorithmic updates aimed at penalizing black-hat SEO practices and rewarding websites that were committed to providing a valuable user experience. Among these updates, the aforementioned Google Penguin of 2012 had a seismic impact on the SEO world because it was specifically designed to detect and downgrade websites that used manipulative link building techniques.
However, the introduction of Penguin, while necessary to restore order to the chaos of SEO, created a new problem: websites affected by penalizations, even unintentionally, found themselves at a standstill, unable to recover lost positions due to toxic links they often ignored.
It was in this scenario that Google decided to introduce the disavow tool, offering webmasters a tool to “defend” themselves from malicious links and prove their good faith. Through the disavow, website owners could finally report incoming links they considered suspicious to Google, asking it to disregard them in the ranking calculation.
The birth of the disavow marked a turning point in the relationship between Google and webmasters. On the one hand, Google reaffirmed its commitment to fighting spam and SEO manipulation; on the other hand, it provided users with a tool to remedy unpleasant situations and demonstrate their willingness to operate within the rules.
Is the disavow tool still as important today as it was in the past?
That is the story. But today the importance of the disavow tool has diminished over the years, first of all, because Google has invested heavily in the development of increasingly sophisticated algorithms that can autonomously recognize and neutralize most malicious links. In particular, Google Penguin, which as we mentioned is the algorithm specifically dedicated to backlink analysis, has been integrated into the core algorithm and operates in real time, constantly analyzing incoming links to a website and automatically downgrading and ignoring those considered spam or manipulative.
In some ways, we might then think that disavow has become obsolete, but although it is no longer as common a practice as it once was, it continues to play a useful role for specific use cases and, more importantly, remains the only method of having control-at least potential control over inbound links.
For most websites, at any rate, an effective disavow strategy involves not only the use of the tool, but also proactive and ongoing management of one’s site profile, with regular audits and, above all, a proactive approach to link building, based on acquiring high-quality links from authoritative sources. This work should be sufficient to achieve good organic results.
Google’s official position on the disavow
“I’m sure we will remove it sooner or later,“ John Mueller recently said on X speaking about the disavow tool in Search Console.
And this brief statement gives us an understanding of what Google’s current position is on this tool, which is definitely not considered among the main and most necessary ones. It is worth noting, then, that right at the beginning of 2024 Bing actually removed its link disavow tool from the Bing Webmaster Tools platform because “ Bing Search’s algorithms are excellent at figuring out which links to count and which to ignore,” as told by Microsoft’s leadership.
In short, times have changed since 2012, and more importantly, search engine technology has changed and evolved.
Long ago, Google’s official guidelines specified that disavow is essentially a tool designed for experienced webmasters and that it should not be the first line of defense, but the last resort after trying conventional options. In practice, the invitation was to use the disavow tool only in extreme situations, where attempts to remove links through other methods were unsuccessful.
Since at least 2016, in fact, Google’s algorithms have become quite robust in automatically dealing with natural and artificial links, and in fact have begun to directly ignore or devalue links containing spam, rather than algorithmically penalizing a site for this problem.
It is also for this reason that Google suggests not performing a link disavow except in extreme cases, considering also that misuse of the tool can lead to serious problems for a site’s rankings: if used carelessly or incorrectly, in fact, link removal can lead to a worsening of the site’s performance in Google’s search results, which is paradoxically the opposite effect of the desired one, especially if we end up rejecting good links that Google has relied on positively.
John Mueller himself, in this regard, had goà revealed that using the disavow links tool to reject backlinks is not a practice encouraged by Google, which indeed intentionally hides the tool in the Search Console precisely to limit its use.
In Google’s view, it is not important for most sites to focus on disavow links, because the algorithm also evaluates other factors and can rank a site even if it has spam traits, and so it is reiterated that the disavow links tool should be used if a site has stumbled (and intends to fix it) manually or if it is really concerned about the impact that disavow links may have, even if they were published in years past.
On a broader level, what Mueller and the official documents seem to suggest is Google is capable of understanding and considering the presence of old “bad” links and more natural links obtained later as normal, interpreting it as a progressive adaptation to the search engine’s guidelines. Translated into other words, the context and evolution of the backlink profile help Google to trust a site, and having followed “ill-advised” link building practices in the past is not penalizing in the present, if the strategy then adapted to Google’s guidelines.
Ultimately, then, given Google’s official guidance as well, we can say that the Disavow Links Tool may still be useful in attempting to clean up cases of widespread attempts at PageRank manipulation, but it should not bring particular advantages in using it to clean up spam or “toxic” links. Both because such links are unlikely to have a negative impact on a site’s ability to rank, and because Google’s algorithms are already good at identifying which links can be ignored.
