What is the Disavow Tool in Google Search Console?

The Disavow Tool lets you upload a list of pages or whole domains whose links to your site Google should ignore. It is meant for one situation: a considerable number of spammy, paid or artificial links that you could not get removed, which have caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action. Google says it can work out which links to trust in most cases, so most sites never need it, and using it wrongly can harm your rankings.

When Google says to use it

Both conditions should be true:

1. You have a considerable number of spammy, artificial or low-quality links pointing at your site.
2. Those links have caused a manual action against your site, or are likely to, for example because links were bought or part of a link scheme.

Try to get the links removed first, by asking the sites that host them. Disavowing is for what is left.

When to leave it alone

• Random low-quality links, such as scraper sites and junk directories, which every site collects. Google says it can usually work out which links to trust without your help.
• A traffic drop with no manual action. Check Security & Manual actions first. Without a manual action for unnatural links, and without a history of buying links, Google's guidance points away from the tool.
• Links you simply do not like from legitimate sites. Disavowing good links removes value you had.

What the file looks like

# Paid links from a past campaign; removal requests went unanswered
domain:cheap-links.example
https://blog.example.net/sponsored-review/

• One URL or one domain: entry per line. A whole folder of a site, such as example.com/en/, cannot be disavowed.
• A plain-text .txt file in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII.
• At most 100,000 lines, comments and blank lines included, and 2 MB; each URL at most 2,048 characters.
• Lines starting with # are comments, ignored by Google, and useful for recording why each entry is there.

How the tool behaves

• URL-prefix properties only. The tool does not support Domain properties. A list applies to its property and the properties inside it, so a list for example.com also covers m.example.com, but http and https properties each need their own.
• Owners only, one list per property. Uploading a new file replaces the old one; a file with errors is rejected on the spot and the previous list stays.
• It takes weeks. Google needs to recrawl and reprocess the linking pages, which can take a few weeks. Removing the list with Cancel disavowals takes as long.
• The Links report does not change. Disavowed links keep appearing there.

The tool lives at search.google.com/search-console/disavow-links, not in the main menu. For a hands-on walkthrough of building and uploading the file, see how to disavow links.

How AutoPSEO helps

Search Console's Links report cannot tell you which links look spammy. AutoPSEO's Backlinks research, in the app, lists your backlinks with a spam score, follow status and the dates they were first seen or lost, filterable by referring domain, and exports to CSV, which makes building an accurate domain: list far quicker. Add an annotation on the day you upload a disavow file and it is marked on your dashboard's performance chart, so you can judge the before and after weeks later.

Sources: Google's Disavow links help and Links report help.