Receiving bad backlinks—whether they are paid links or originate from untrustworthy websites—can negatively impact your website’s SEO performance.
Unfortunately, you don’t have complete control over which websites link to yours. This means your website could be affected by harmful backlinks you didn’t solicit.
Fortunately, Google Search Console offers a specific feature called the ‘Disavow Links’ tool. This allows you to inform Google which links should be disregarded, helping to mitigate the negative effects on your website.
This article will provide a straightforward guide on how to use the Disavow Links tool through Google Search Console and when it’s necessary to do so.
Why is Disavowing Links Necessary?
Generally, earning backlinks can be seen as a testament to the quality of your website’s content. It suggests that other websites are willing to share your content with their audience.
However, this isn’t always the case. Not all backlinks are valued equally by search engines like Google.
High-quality backlinks, obtained organically, reflect the credibility of your web content and can significantly boost your website’s SEO performance.
On the other hand, backlinks acquired through inorganic or manipulative methods, such as buying backlinks or engaging in Private Blog Networks (PBNs), can be detrimental to your website’s SEO.
This is where the Google Disavow Links tool becomes essential. If your website is affected by link building activities that violate Google’s guidelines, the most practical way to address this is to submit these links to Google for them to be ignored.
Without the Disavow Links tool, you would need to manually remove each suspected harmful link pointing to your website from every source website. Imagine if you were receiving thousands of spam links; this approach would become nearly impossible to implement.
When Should You Use the Disavow Links Tool?
According to Google’s official guide, you should consider using the Disavow Links tool when your website has a large number of unnatural links—links that appear spammy or manipulative—that are causing, or could potentially cause, your website to receive a manual penalty from Google.
For instance, if an SEO agency managing your website previously purchased backlinks or engaged in PBN practices, and your website received a manual action from Google as a result.
Concurrently, you might notice an unusual and significant drop in your website’s ranking performance in SERPs.
In such cases, it’s highly likely that the decline in your website’s SEO performance is due to a manual penalty from Google detecting unnatural links to your site.
To mitigate the negative impact of this manual penalty, you can attempt to disavow these links through Google Search Console.
How to Disavow Links Using Google Search Console
1. Identifying Links to Disavow
The first step is to determine which links you need to submit to Google for disavowal.
Several methods can help you gather data about the links pointing to your website. Firstly, you can obtain this data through the Links Report in your Google Search Console account.
You can download the external links data your website has received as a spreadsheet by clicking the ‘EXPORT EXTERNAL LINKS‘ option at the top right of the link report dashboard.
Alternatively, you can use SEO tools with backlink checker features, such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz.
Using a backlink checker tool allows you to get more comprehensive backlink data, making analysis easier. However, these tools are often not free.
For example, Ahrefs’ backlink report feature allows you to see which web pages are linking to your website, their Domain Rating, the pages being linked to, and the anchor text used.
Once you have obtained backlink data for your website, the next step is to analyze it to identify links from untrustworthy or suspicious sources. Look for patterns like:
- Spammy Websites: Links from websites with low-quality content, irrelevant topics, or excessive advertising.
- Link Farms: Websites created solely for link building, often with thin content and unnatural link profiles.
- Foreign Language or Irrelevant Websites: Links from websites in languages or niches completely unrelated to your website’s topic.
- Exact Match Anchor Text Overuse: A high volume of backlinks using the same exact match keywords as anchor text, which can appear unnatural.
- Low Domain Authority (DA) or Domain Rating (DR) Websites: Links from domains with very low authority scores, especially if they are also spammy in other aspects.
2. Compiling Links into a .txt File
The next step is to compile the identified links into a single text file (.txt) for uploading to Google.
In this file, you can include the URLs of specific web pages or entire website domains that you want to disavow.
To target a specific web page, simply enter the complete URL of that page. To target an entire domain, you need to add the prefix domain: before entering the domain address.
Here is an example of the content of a text file for disavowing links:
domain:exampledomain1.com
domain:exampledomain2.com
https://websitedomain1.com/blog/article1.html
https://websitedomain2.com/blog/article2.htmlIn this example file, there are 2 domains and 2 specific web page URLs that are being submitted to Google for disavowal.
When creating the text file, it’s important to note the following guidelines to ensure it is processed correctly by Google:
- The file name must end with .txt.
- Each line in the file can only contain one URL or domain.
- The file must be a text file encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII format.
- URLs cannot exceed 2,048 characters.
- The file can contain up to 100,000 lines, meaning 100,000 links.
It’s recommended to keep your disavow file clean and only include links that are genuinely harmful. Regularly review and update your disavow file as needed.
3. Uploading the Link File via Google Search Console
Finally, you just need to upload the text file containing the links you want to disavow to Google through this page.
On this page, select your website (property) from the dropdown option available, as shown in the image above.
If there has been no previous disavow link submission for this property, simply click the Upload disavow list button to upload a new file. However, if you have previously submitted a disavow list for this property, Google will display a summary of your previously submitted disavow list.
It’s crucial to remember that submitting a new disavow list will replace the old disavow list file. Google does not merge disavow files. Each time you upload, it’s a complete replacement. Therefore, keep a master list and update and re-upload the complete list whenever you need to make changes.
This concludes a brief guide on using the Google Disavow Links tool and when to use it. If you still have questions about disavowing links, feel free to ask in the comments below!
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