Disavow

What is disavow?

Disavow is a Google feature that lets you tell Google that certain backlinks should not be taken into account when it assesses your website. You upload a text file listing the domains or URLs of those links. According to Google, most websites do not need it, because Google often ignores harmful links on its own.

Why is disavow important?

• A safety net for a real problem: useful when you have many unnatural links you cannot get removed.
• Part of recovery: it is often used after a manual action for unnatural links.
• Risky when misused: you can accidentally exclude good links.

Examples of disavow

• domain:spamlinks-example.com excludes every link from a domain.
• https://example.com/links/page-1 excludes the links from a single page.
• A line starting with # is a comment, for example about who placed the links.

How do you use disavow?

First ask the site owner to remove the link. If that fails, create a text file and upload it in Google’s Disavow tool. Use it sparingly and have a specialist review the file. See also our link building work.