Disavow Backlinks: When Google's Disavow Tool Is Worth It

What is disavow? What Google's disavow tool does

In SEO, disavow means telling Google you do not stand behind certain links to your site and asking it to leave them out when it weighs the site. The disavow tool takes a text file of pages and domains, one per line, for one Search Console property. Google's help page frames it as the step after removal: “If you can't remove those links yourself, or get them removed, then you should disavow the URLs of the questionable pages or domains that link to your website.” Google keeps the last word on what it does with the list; the post that launched the tool on 16 October 2012 says of a disavow that “this is a strong suggestion rather than a command”.

A disavow takes nothing off the web. The link stays on the other site and stays in your own reports: “Disavowed links will continue to be shown in the Links report.” SEO tools go on counting it too. Moz's help pages, asked whether its link index shows links you have disavowed, answer “No, we don't have a way to identify links you've disavowed.” So a backlink checker that still lists a disavowed link is not a sign the file failed.

Two limits catch people before they start. “The disavow links tool does not support Domain properties.” And each list belongs to one property: “So if you have both http and https properties, you should upload a list for each.” Google also puts the risk plainly at the top of the page: “If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google Search results.”

Is Google removing the disavow tool? Its status in 2026

Not as of 12 November 2026. The talk of removal goes back to an exchange on X. Asked in May 2024 whether removing the tool from Search Console was under discussion, Google's John Mueller replied, as Search Engine Roundtable reported: “At some point, I'm sure we'll remove it.” Neither the help page nor the Search Central blog has given a date since. On 12 November 2026 its help page for the tool was live, the tool's address in Search Console answered with Google's sign-in page rather than an error, and of the post titles in the Search Central blog's archive from 2005 to November 2026, one named the tool: its launch.

What has changed is how much the tool matters. Since 2021 Google has described link spam updates that discount spam links with no file from you, and the help page opens its first step with a no. The record, in Google's words:

Should I disavow backlinks? When to disavow and when not to

Step 0 on Google's help page is deciding whether you need the tool, and it starts with an answer for most readers: “In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most sites will not need to use this tool.” A yes needs two things to be true together. One: “You have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site,” Two: “The links have caused a manual action, or likely will cause a manual action, on your site.”

The second condition is the one a tool's warning never meets. A manual action is a person's decision, not a score: “Google issues a manual action against a site when a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google's spam policies.” It shows in the Manual actions report in Search Console, and its effect is not subtle: “If a site has a manual action, some or all of that site will not be shown in Google search results.” Run the situations that bring people to the disavow tool against those two conditions and three of the seven below come out as a plain no.

Manual actions for unnatural links: the case the tool was built for

The highlighted row is the reason the tool exists. Google's manual actions page describes the action called Unnatural links to your site in one line: “Google has detected a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to your site.” Its recommended actions put removal first and the file second, with two warnings about the file: “Blindly adding all backlinks to the disavow file is not considered a good-faith effort, and will not be enough to make your reconsideration request successful.” and “Make sure that you don't disavow organic links to your site.”

The 2012 launch post said the same from the first day: “If you haven't gotten this notification, this tool generally isn't something you need to worry about.” That is still, 14 years on, the shortest test of whether this guide applies to you.

How to disavow backlinks in Google Search Console, step by step

Google's help page sets the process out in three steps (decide, build the list, upload) and its manual actions page adds what comes around them. In order:

1. Confirm you need it. Open the Manual actions report. If it is empty and you know of no links that break Google's spam policies, stop here.
2. Export your links. “Download a list of links to your site from Search Console.” The Links report has an export button. Google's tip for a long list: “If the list is large, start by looking at the sites that link to you the most, or links that were created recently (in the last few months).”
3. Ask for removal first. For each link that breaks Google's policy, the manual actions page says to “contact the owner of that site and ask that they either remove the links or prevent them from passing PageRank”. Note who you wrote to and when: the review request asks for it.
4. Write the disavow file. List the pages, or whole domains, that are still up after your requests. Never paste in the whole export: Google says disavowing everything is not a good-faith effort.
5. Upload it. Open the disavow links tool, choose the property and upload the file. “If the file has any errors, you will see a list of errors immediately. Your old list will not be replaced.” “You must be a property owner to upload a disavow list.”
6. Request a review, if a manual action started this. Use Request Review in the Manual actions report. Google's page adds: “Include documentation about the links you've had removed and an explanation of any links you were unable to remove, to help us process your request.”
7. Wait. “If the upload is successful, it can take a few weeks for Google to incorporate your list into the index as Google recrawls the web and reprocess the pages that we see.” A reconsideration review runs on its own clock: “Most reconsideration reviews can take several days or weeks, although in some cases, such as link-related reconsideration requests, it may take longer than usual to review your request.”

The disavow file: format and an example

A disavow file is a plain list. Each line is one URL, one domain written with a domain: prefix, or a comment that starts with #. Google's rules for it fit in one table, and the numbers in it are the ones most guides leave out.

Use a domain: line when every link from a site is the problem and single URLs when a few pages are. Comments cost nothing and help you later: a line saying whom you asked and when is the record a review request wants. Keep the file next to your export, since the next upload replaces this one and has to carry everything still worth disavowing.

How to remove backlinks before you disavow

You cannot delete a link on a page you do not control; its owner can. That is how to remove bad backlinks in practice: a short message to each site asking for the link to come down, or to stop passing PageRank by marking it nofollow (the rel values are set out in the dofollow vs nofollow guide). Where the page is yours to edit, such as a profile or a comment you posted, delete the link yourself. Whatever stays up after that is what the disavow file is for.

Undoing a disavow

A disavow is reversible. To change it, upload a new file: it replaces the old one. To drop it altogether, open the tool, choose the property and use Cancel Disavowals; Google says that change also takes a few weeks to show, as it recrawls the web.

Spammy backlinks: what Google does with them without a file

Google's position is that it discounts spam backlinks on its own. Its manual actions page says “Our algorithms are extremely good at detecting spam, and in most cases we automatically discover it and remove it from our search results.” The link spam update of July 2021, in the words of its announcement, “is even more effective at identifying and nullifying link spam more broadly, across multiple languages.” The December 2022 update put SpamBrain, Google's AI-based spam-prevention system, to work on links: “we're leveraging the power of SpamBrain to neutralize the impact of unnatural links on search results.”

That cuts both ways, and Google's page on spam updates says so: “In the case of a link spam update (an update that specifically deals with link spam), making changes might not generate an improvement.” “This is because when our systems remove the effects spammy links may have, any ranking benefit the links may have previously generated for your site is lost.” For a site that never went looking for spam links, that leaves nothing to file: discounting the ones that turned up anyway is, by Google's account, the systems' job. For a site that did build them, a disavow file does not bring back what those links once gave.

Toxic is not Google's word; it comes from SEO tools, and what the toxic backlinks label covers is set out in our post on link quality. John Mueller put his view of those reports bluntly in the same thread Search Engine Roundtable quoted: “I'd consider it a big red flag if any SEO tool reported on "toxic links" and suggested you need to clean it up regularly - that's been wrong for many years now.”

Negative SEO: can someone else's spam links hurt your site?

Negative SEO means trying to push another site down in search, and the method people fear is pointing spam links at it by the thousand. Google took up the question the day the tool launched, in the 2012 post's questions and answers: “In general, Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking.” The same answer left a door open: “However, if you're worried that some backlinks might be affecting your site's reputation, you can use the Disavow Links tool to indicate to Google that those links should be ignored.” And it ended: “we build our algorithms with an eye to preventing negative SEO, so the vast majority of webmasters don't need to worry about negative SEO at all.”

The help page, read on 12 November 2026, is stricter about that door, since worry alone meets neither of its conditions, and it words the risk more carefully: “Google works very hard to make sure that actions on third-party sites do not negatively affect a website.” “In some circumstances, incoming links can affect Google’s opinion of a page or site.” Its second condition is where the room lies: it counts a manual action that is likely to come, not just one already issued.

A negative SEO attack: what to check and what to keep

Open the Manual actions report first. If it shows no manual action, Google's pages ask nothing more of you. Then export the Links report and keep the file with the date in its name, so that if a manual action ever does arrive you can show when the links appeared and that you asked for none of them. If one arrives, the steps above apply in full: removal requests where an owner can be reached, a disavow file for the rest and a review request that explains what happened.

Moz Spam Score: what it measures and what it does not

Spam Score is Moz's number, not Google's. Moz's help page defines it: “Within Link Explorer, Spam Score represents the percentage of sites with similar features to the site you’re researching which we've found to be penalized or banned by Google.” “Spam Score is based on our machine learning model which identified 27 common features among the millions of banned or penalized sites in the data we fed it.” It bands the percentage as 1%-30% low, 31%-60% medium and 61%-100% high, and it describes a site, not the links that point at it. Moz's own FAQ asks “Is Spam Score a calculation of the Spam Score of sites linking to me?” and answers “No, it's not.”

What is spam score good for, then? A pointer to pages worth opening. Moz is careful about it: “A high Spam Score for your site, or a site you're looking at, doesn't mean this site is necessarily spammy.” On links with a high score it adds “the solution isn't necessarily to disregard sites or disavow links with higher Spam Scores.” Some of its 27 signals are ones a young product's site can trip with no spam in sight, among them “Phone Number Present”, “Links to LinkedIn” and “Browser Icon” (each counted against a site that lacks it), and the score refreshes on Moz's schedule: “Spam Score updates quarterly”.

Spam score checker: where Moz's own is

Moz's Spam Score sits in Link Explorer. “Create a Moz account to access Link Explorer.” “Get 10 free queries per month.” Spam Score is on Moz's list of the data that comes free. Other spam score checkers in Google's results come from other companies, and several of them check email, scoring how likely a message is to land in junk, which is a different measurement under the same name. For a site's strength rather than its resemblance to spam, our free Domain Rating checker shows a domain's Ahrefs DR.

Directory links, and where Submitator fits

Should you disavow directory links?

Not on the strength of a label. Google's help page applies the same two-part test to a directory listing as to any other link, and both parts have to hold: the spam links have to be many, and a manual action has to have followed or be likely to. Google's spam policies do mention low-quality directories, and that line gets its quote and its answer in the web directories post. Whether a given listing counts as a backlink at all comes down to the four checks a directory listing must pass: a followed link to your domain, a listing page that is indexed, a directory real sites link to and a listing that stays up. Those are questions to ask before you submit, which is a better time than after.

With Submitator the choosing comes first, and it is yours: you pick from the 189 we submit to (launch platforms and startup directories: 76; SaaS and software: 59; AI tools: 54) in the dashboard, where each one's Domain Rating shows while you choose. Nothing is added to that list until we have carried a submission to it through every step. After checkout the forms are ours to fill: every directory receives a description we wrote for that site and no other, and CAPTCHAs on those forms never reach you.

Badge directories are covered by a single component on your site, installed once, that shows each badge your picks call for. We keep every one of those badges live after that, and no directory asks you for a commit. Each listing we file goes through IndexMachine, the free indexing ($25 value) bundled with Starter, Growth and Scale, and you connect nothing; what Google indexes stays its decision.

30 directories cost $29 on Starter, 60 cost $49 on Growth and 100 cost $79 on Scale, each paid once; All Directories, at $149, spans the full catalog, later additions included. Most directories are delivered in 24 to 48 hours, every directory within 21 days at most. A rejection earns you, by default, a replacement directory of your choice; All Directories is the exception, as it already holds every directory. A refund can be requested within 30 days of purchase, on the conditions in our terms. 580+ startups have been through Submitator so far, and our submission statistics follow what happened to everything we filed between July and November.

We buy no ads and do no outreach. Make.rs, a maker community on our list, sells a single sponsored slot each month: one post pinned at the top of its feed for $100. We post customers there on its free route, as one of the 30 picks in a $29 order.