What is Disavow?
Disavow refers to the process of telling search engines, primarily Google, to ignore certain backlinks when evaluating your website. Website owners or SEO professionals use the Google Disavow Tool to submit a list of URLs or domains that they believe are harmful or unnatural and do not want associated with their site’s backlink profile.
This tool is typically used as a last resort when toxic backlinks cannot be removed manually.
Why Disavow Matters
Low-quality or spammy backlinks can harm your site’s SEO performance or even result in manual penalties from Google. These harmful links might come from link farms, automated spam sites, or manipulative SEO schemes.
Disavowing such links helps:
- Protect your site from ranking penalties
- Clean up a poor-quality backlink profile
- Respond to manual actions for unnatural links
- Maintain trust with search engines
- Strengthen overall SEO efforts
Google’s algorithms are generally good at ignoring bad links, so disavowing is mainly necessary in extreme cases or after receiving a manual penalty.
Example in Use
An SEO audit reveals hundreds of backlinks pointing to your site from irrelevant and low-quality websites. After attempts to contact site owners fail, you compile a list of these URLs in a .txt file and upload it via Google Search Console’s Disavow Tool. This signals to Google that you don’t want these links influencing your rankings.
Disavow files must be formatted carefully and used cautiously, as removing good links by mistake can damage your SEO.
Related Terms
- Google Search Console
- Backlink Audit
- Manual Action
- Link Spam
- Penguin Algorithm