If you have a manual action against your site for unnatural links to your site, or if you think you’re about to get such a manual action (because of paid links or other link schemes that violate our spam policies), you should try to remove the links from the other site to your site.
If you’re unable to remove those links yourself or have them removed, then you should disavow the URLs of the suspicious pages or domains that link building to your site.
You should only use disavow links on sites that have spam manual actions. This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google search engine results.
Decide if this is necessary
Overall, Google can make informed decisions on the links it trusts and therefore most sites don’t have to worry about using this tool.
You should only disavow backlinks if:
- You have a large number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site.
- The links have created a manual action or are likely to create a manual action on your site.
Google works very hard to ensure that actions on third-party sites do not negatively affect a website. There are some situations where your incoming links can impact how Google perceives your page or site. You, or an SEO expert that you’ve hired, might have created bad links to your site via paid links or other manipulative tactics cross the line into spam. First, it’s good that you remove all or nearly most of the existing low-spam-quality backlinks off the internet, as best as one could.
Step 1: Identify Bad Links
Go to Google Search Console → Links → External Links
- Identify spammy, irrelevant, or low-quality links.
- Copy those bad links into a Notepad or Excel sheet.
Step 2: Create a Disavow File
- Open Notepad or any other text editor.
- Type each bad link in a new line, as shown below:
- makefile
- domain:spamwebsite.com
- domain:badlink.com
- domain:irrelevantwebsite.net
- Save the file as disavow.txt
Step 3: Upload to Google
- Go to Google’s Disavow Tool (Click Here)
- Select your website
- Click Upload File and add your disavow.txt file
- Submit & Done!
Signs of Toxic or Spammy Backlinks
- Links from unrelated or low-quality sites, for example, gambling, adult, or foreign language spam sites.
- PBNs: Links from networks created only to manipulate rankings.
- Over-optimization of anchor text: When too many links have the same keyword-rich anchor text, it seems unnatural.
- Sitewide Links: Links that appear on every page of a site, say in the footer, can be spammy.
- Spammy Forum or Blog Comments: Links from auto-generated or irrelevant comments.
- Paid or Link Exchange Links: If a link was obviously bought or part of a “you link to me, I link to you” deal.
- Links from Deindexed or Penalized Sites: A link originating from a site that has been deindexed by Google is toxic.
Google Penalties (Manual Actions & Algorithmic Impact)
With toxic backlinks, Google punishes sites in two ways:
1. Manual Actions
- Google will manually go through your website and apply a penalty if they find unnatural links. Check it in Google Search Console → Manual Actions.
- Common reasons: link schemes, unnatural outbound and inbound links.
- Effect: partial or full removal from Google search.
2.Algorithm
The algorithm at Google named Penguin automatically picks and devalues bad links, reducing your ranking.Common indications: sudden rank drops without any manual action. When NOT to Use the Disavow Tool Google is smart at ignoring bad links. Use the Disavow Tool only if: You have many spammy or unnatural backlinks. You got a manual action for unnatural links.
Do NOT use the Disavow Tool if:
- You only have a few bad links; Google likely ignores them.
- X Your rankings dropped, but no evidence shows toxic links. X You are not sure if a link is bad-you might remove good links, and that hurts SEO.
- If not sure, audit backlinks first before using the tool.
How to Find Toxic Backlinks?
1. Backlinks Analysis with the Use of Google Search Console
- Go into Google Search Console and click Links.
- Export the external links report to get all of the backlinks to your website.
- Find suspect patterns—like low-quality or irrelevant domain links.
2. Third-Party Tools: Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, etc.
- Ahrefs: Use the Backlink Profile section to analyze Domain Rating (DR) and Spam Score.
- SEMrush: The Backlink Audit Tool automatically categorizes links as toxic, suspicious, or healthy.
- Moz: Check the Spam Score metric to assess the quality of linking domains.
3. Manual Analysis: Anchor Text, Domain Quality, and Relevance
- Anchor Text: Excessive exact-match anchor text from spammy sites can be a red flag.
- Domain Quality: If the domain has low authority, many outbound links, and no real content, chances are it is toxic.
- Relevance: If your website is about project management, yet you have backlinks from websites involved in gambling or adult things, they might be toxic.
How Long Does It Take for Google to Process Disavow Requests?
1. Expected Timeline
- It takes a few weeks to process disavow files at Google. Changes start showing up when Google re-crawls those links.
- In some cases, it can take up to 3 months to see any visible improvement in ranking.
2. How to Monitor Changes in Rankings?
- Google Search Console: Check the Manual Actions to see if a penalty is lifted.
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Check the variation in organic traffic trend.
- SEO Tool Ahrefs SEMrush: Check how DA has gone up and backlink toxicity score has come down:.
Try these prior to going with the Disavow Tool:
1. Reaching out to Webmasters to have Links Removed
- Locate the contact information of the linking website through a WHOIS lookup or Contact page.
- Request a link removal via email in a nice, professional tone.
- Document the responses and follow up if needed.
2. Using the “nofollow” Attribute
- If you have ownership of the linking website, add rel=”nofollow” in order to not pass link equity.
- Google might still crawl the link, but it won’t affect rankings.
3. Monthly/Quarterly Link Audits and Maintenance
- Run periodic audits monthly or quarterly for your backlinks to detect toxic links early.
- Monitor the negative SEO attack—where competitors create spammy backlinks to your website to harm ranking.