The Google Disavow Tool allows website owners to request that Google ignores specific backlinks when evaluating their site.
It is used to mitigate the impact of spammy or harmful links that could negatively affect search rankings. Proper usage ensures compliance with Google’s guidelines and protects SEO performance.
Bad links can negatively affect your website’s SEO.
The disavow tool lets you tell Google that you didn’t build a bad link and don’t want it to count in your backlink profile.
Website owners typically use the Google disavow tool for:
The truth is that Google is pretty good at detecting link spam and automatically preventing it from affecting your site.
But the disavow tool is available if you need to take matters into your own hands and protect your website.
What Will I Learn?
Google typically processes your disavowed links in a couple of days, and it can take up to three months to see the results.
The time it takes comes down to-
The key is to respond quickly. That’s why we recommend auditing your backlink profile regularly.
If you are facing a negative SEO attack or receive a link penalty, respond as quickly as possible.
Google says you should only use the disavow tool if:
“You have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, AND the links have caused a manual action or likely will cause a manual action on your site.”
They are essentially saying you don’t need to worry about the odd spammy links here and there.
It’s when you have a lot of potentially harmful links that have either triggered a manual penalty or could trigger a penalty that you should use the disavow tool.
It’s important to mention that we’ve conducted SEO audits in the past where disavowing links has made a big difference.
While there weren’t any manual penalties, it was obvious that the low-quality links were having an impact.
The key is keeping an eye on your backlink profile.
If you aren’t sure, get a professional SEO agency to help you!
Follow these steps to use the Google disavow tool correctly:
Start by conducting a complete backlink audit.
The goal of the backlink audit is to analyse your current backlink profile and evaluate each link to see how good it is.
My favourite tools for a backlink audit are:
Note that Semrush has a paid toxic backlink checker, which can be beneficial when conducting an audit.
Or you can use our free tool to check for blacklisted links:
Manually review each link to determine which ones are harmful. It’s important that you don’t just rely on the metrics from the tools above.
You must click on each link and evaluate the website for yourself. Use the tools as a guideline.
Harmful links come from:
If you need help with this process, follow my complete backlink audit guide.
It will show you how to do everything step by step.
List all the harmful links you identified in step 1 in a .txt file.
A disavow file is broken into three parts:
Write comments at the top with the prefix #. This signifies that the text is a note and Google will ignore it.
Use notes for yourself so that you can remember the decisions you made. I typically include when the file was created and the reason for disavowing links.
Next, add one URL or domain per line. URLs should be added as they are, and domains should be prefixed with “domain.”
For example:
Here’s an example of what your disavow file should look like:
Make sure you format it correctly. You must follow the guidelines so Google can read the disavow file properly.
Now for the easy part…
Head over to Google’s disavow tool and select the domain property you created the disavow file for.
Upload and submit your file.
Google will let you know if it was as successful with a confirmation message. Done!
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