Disavowing bad links: when it is needed

A disavow file asks search engines to ignore certain links to your site.

When to consider it

• You bought links or used link schemes in the past.
• You received a manual action for unnatural links.
• A large, obvious wave of spam links appears and you are worried.

When not to

Random low-quality links happen to every site and are usually ignored by search engines already. Disavowing good links by mistake can hurt you.

File format

# Spam links found in November
domain:spammy-links.demo.pepploweb.com
https://pepploweb.com/bad-page.html

Use domain: to disavow every link from a site, or a full URL for a single page.

Be careful

Disavowing is powerful. A mistake can remove the value of good links. Only disavow when you are confident the links are harmful, and keep a copy of every version of the file.

Better than disavowing

Where possible, ask the site owner to remove links you paid for or placed yourself. Removed links are cleaner than disavowed ones.

Review periodically

Check your backlink profile a few times a year. If nothing worrying appears, leave the disavow file alone.

How

1. Export your backlinks and review the referring domains.
2. List the clearly harmful domains.
3. Create the file with the disavow file generator.
4. Upload it in the search engine's webmaster tools.

Keep a copy and review it once a year.