How to disavow backlinks (and when not to)

Start with the conclusion, because it saves most readers a lot of worry: almost nobody should be using the disavow tool. Google ignores spam links. Its own documentation says that in most cases Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most sites will never need to disavow anything, and John Mueller has spent years repeating the same message. The links that make owners nervous, the scraper copies, the junk directories, the odd foreign-language forum mention, are already being discounted automatically. Filing a disavow for them gains you nothing and can quietly strip out links that were helping you. This guide still explains the mechanics in full, because there is one narrow case that justifies them: an unnatural-links manual action in Search Console. If you do not have one, read this for context and then leave your links alone.

What disavowing a backlink actually does

When another website links to you, Google generally treats that link as a vote of confidence and may use it as one of many signals when deciding how to rank your pages. The disavow tool lets you hand Google a list of links you want it to disregard. You are effectively saying, do not count these towards your assessment of my site, good or bad.

Two things are worth understanding straight away. First, a disavow request is a strong suggestion rather than a strict command, and Google reserves judgment on how it applies the list. Second, disavowing does not remove the link from the web. The page still links to you, and the link will still appear in your Search Console links report. You have simply asked Google to stop factoring it into how it sees you.

This matters because backlinks are foundational to how search works. If you are still getting to grips with the basics, our explainer on how backlinks work is a useful starting point, and our link building from scratch sets the wider context. Disavowing is the opposite end of that discipline: instead of earning signals, you are switching some off. That is why it should never be a casual act.

Why almost nobody should disavow

Google’s guidance is not ambiguous. Google Search Central states that in most cases Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most sites will not need to use the disavow tool at all. That single sentence is the whole story for the overwhelming majority of websites, and almost certainly for yours.

The one genuine exception is an unnatural-links manual action, which appears under Security and Manual Actions in Search Console. Those are uncommon, Google notifies you when you have one, and that is the situation the tool was actually built for. Without that notice in your account, there is no problem to solve. The links people worry about are, in practice, links Google has already set aside.

This is not a fine judgment call you need to agonise over either. A scrapy directory, an odd forum mention, a low-authority blog that copied your content, a sudden trickle of links you never asked for: this is the everyday texture of a normal backlink profile, and Google’s systems are built to ignore it. Penguin has been part of the core algorithm since 2016, where it devalues spam links in real time rather than punishing the site they point at, and SpamBrain neutralises link spam so that it simply does not count. Mueller’s position has been consistent for years: links a spammer drops are links Google should just ignore, and its systems are very good at ignoring them.

The tool is still there in Search Console, but it is worth noticing how little faith Google places in it. Gary Illyes has said that “if it were up to me, I would do away with the disavow link tool because, often enough, it hurts more than it helps many sites.” Bing retired its own equivalent in 2023. The people closest to the algorithm keep landing on the same conclusion: the spam is already handled, and for most sites a disavow file is more likely to cost you than to help you.

How to audit your links and build a candidate list

You cannot make a sensible disavow decision without first understanding your link profile, so the work begins with an audit, not a text file. The goal is to separate links that clearly break Google’s rules from links that merely look unfamiliar. Our walkthrough on reviewing your profile covers the full process; what follows is the disavow-specific lens.

Start in Search Console’s links report, which shows the domains and pages Google actually associates with you, and export it. Supplement it with a backlink tool if you have one, then look for genuine red flags rather than low scores. The patterns that warrant attention are a sudden, unexplained spike in referring domains, a cluster of links with identical commercial anchor text, and obvious manufactured or networked footprints. Understanding how anchors should read helps here, because an over-optimized, money-keyword anchor profile is a far stronger signal of manipulation than a low domain rating.

Be ruthless about what you exclude from the list. A high toxicity score from a third-party tool is an opinion, not a verdict, and many flagged links are harmless. Links from real sites that happen to be small, plain or off-topic are not candidates. The bar is whether a link clearly violates Google’s link spam policies or was demonstrably manufactured or manipulated. If you cannot articulate why a specific link breaks the rules, it does not belong on the list. It also helps to know the difference between dofollow vs nofollow, since nofollow and similar links already pass no ranking signal and rarely need disavowing at all.

How to format the disavow .txt file correctly

Google is precise about the file format, and small errors can make the whole file fail or behave unexpectedly. The rules below come directly from Google’s disavow documentation.

• File type. The file must be a plain text file whose name ends in .txt, encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII.
• One entry per line. You list one URL or domain per line. To disavow a single page, paste the full URL.
• Whole domains. To disavow an entire domain or subdomain, prefix it with domain:, for example domain:shadyseo.com. You cannot disavow a partial path such as a single folder.
• Size limits. Maximum URL length is 2,048 characters, and the file can hold up to 100,000 lines and 2MB in total.
• Comments. Any line beginning with a hash symbol is treated as a comment and ignored by Google, which is useful for noting dates and reasons for your own records.

A correctly formatted file looks like this in principle: a comment line explaining the entry, then either a full URL for a single bad page, or a domain: line for a whole site you want excluded. Most submission errors come from leaving the http or https prefix on a domain line, or from including a subfolder. As a rule of thumb, disavow at domain level when an entire site looks manipulative, and at URL level only when a single problematic link sits on an otherwise legitimate site. This is the same discipline that defines genuinely editorial links: precision about what each link is and why it is there.

How to submit the file through Search Console

Once your file is ready, submission itself takes under a minute. Note one important limitation first: according to Google, the disavow tool does not support Domain properties. If your site is verified only as a Domain property in Search Console, this tool does not apply to you, and you would need a URL-prefix property to use it.

To submit, go to the disavow links tool, select the property the list should apply to, then upload your .txt file. If the file contains formatting errors, Google shows them immediately and your previous list is left untouched, so you can correct and re-upload. If it uploads cleanly, the new list takes effect for that property.

Three details catch people out. Uploading a new list completely replaces any existing list for that property, so if you need to add links later, download the current file first, add to it, and resubmit the whole thing. A list applies only to the property you upload it to plus its child properties, so separate http and https or www and non-www properties may each need their own list. And you must be a verified property owner to upload at all. There is no benefit to attaching pleading notes for Google in the comments; the comment lines exist purely for your own bookkeeping.

What to expect after you disavow

The single most important expectation to manage is this: disavowing is not a recovery button. It does not, on its own, lift rankings. At best it neutralises a specific source of harm so that other, legitimate work can take effect.

Expected timeline

Processing is gradual. Google says it can take a few weeks for a disavow list to be incorporated, because Google has to recrawl and reprocess the relevant pages before the instruction takes hold. There is no notification when this completes, so you will need to watch your own performance data over the following weeks rather than wait for a confirmation message. The disavowed links will also continue to appear in your links report, which is expected and not a sign that something has failed.

Likely outcomes

Set realistic goals. If you disavowed because of genuine, self-inflicted link spam, the upside is the removal of a liability, not a sudden surge in traffic. If you disavowed healthy links by mistake, you may see the opposite, a soft decline, and reversing it is slow and uncertain. This is why disavowing should sit low in any priority list and why the metrics you track around it matter; our note on which KPIs to track can help you measure the right things instead of reacting to noise.

Reconsideration requests when you have a manual action

If your reason for disavowing is a manual action, the disavow file is only half the job. Disavowing the offending links does not clear the penalty by itself. You also have to tell Google you have cleaned things up by filing a reconsideration request through Search Console.

The expected sequence is straightforward. First, try to actually remove the bad links by contacting the linking sites and asking them to take the links down or mark them nofollow. Google’s stated preference is genuine removal, not just disavowal, and a reconsideration request that shows real removal effort is far more credible. Second, disavow whatever links you could not get removed. Third, submit the reconsideration request, describing honestly what the problem was, what you did about it, and the evidence of your attempts to remove links.

Reconsideration requests are reviewed by people, not algorithms, so brevity and honesty work better than spin. Document your outreach, keep your disavow file tidy and commented, and be specific. Without this step, a manual action for unnatural links will simply remain in place no matter how thorough your disavow file is.

Common mistakes, especially over-disavowing

The most damaging mistake is over-disavowing: treating the tool as routine hygiene and stripping out links out of caution. Because Google already discounts most low-quality links, the realistic outcome of an aggressive disavow is that you remove some genuinely helpful links and gain nothing in return. Reversing a disavow is also slow, and the restored links may not regain their full weight quickly, so the asymmetry of risk runs against you.

Other frequent errors compound the problem.

• Blanket domain disavows. Disavowing a whole reputable domain because of one odd-looking link throws away every good link from that site.
• Third-party toxicity scores. Trusting a third-party toxicity score as if it were a Google verdict leads to mass disavows of harmless links.
• Overwriting your previous file. Forgetting that a new file overwrites the old one wipes out a previous, carefully built list.
• Disavowing with no manual action. Disavowing without a manual action, simply because traffic dipped, mistakes correlation for cause when the real explanation is usually an algorithm update, a technical issue or seasonality.

Keep perspective on scale, too. Ahrefs has found that 66.31% of pages have no backlinks at all, a reminder that most of the web competes with very thin profiles and that a few unusual links are not your real ranking problem. So the honest summary of everything above is short. Unless Search Console is showing you an unnatural-links manual action, you do not need to disavow anything, because Google is already ignoring the spam for you. The constructive move is to earn better links through link building and to understand what makes a link strong in the first place.