What is the Google Disavow Tool? When and How to Use

In the early years of the Internet, every link (backlink) to a website was valuable and was a critical factor in increasing its ranking. But over time, this situation has changed. In the world of SEO Negative SEO (Negative SEO) With the proliferation of tactics and spam links, malicious links have begun to be used to lower your site's ranking or damage its reputation.

At this point, Google Disavow Tool (Link Denial Tool) comes into play. So, what is this tool, what is it for, and most importantly, when and how should you use it? In this comprehensive guide, you will find all the answers to these questions.

What is Disavow Tool and Why Is It Important?

Google Disavow Toolis a tool that allows you to notify Google of backlinks that come to your site that you consider to be spam, poor quality, or artificial. Through this tool, you ask Google not to take these links into account when evaluating your site's ranking.

The main reason for the emergence of this tool is that Google Penguin algorithmis. The Penguin update is designed to penalize sites with low-quality hookup profiles. If your site has a large number of spam, irrelevant, or artificially obtained links, Google may treat this as a penalty and your rankings may drop severely. Disavow Toolis used as a last resort to abolish such penalties or block potential penalties.

The Most Important Thing You Need to Know Before Using Disavow

Google will only use Disavow Tool “if you are sure that you are experiencing problems such as a manual operation or a drop in ranking as a result of spam, paid or low-quality links coming to your site” recommends using it. So this is not a tool to be used casually or in case of a small suspicion. Improper use can also lead to the rejection of links that are useful to your site and make your rankings worse.

When should the Disavow Tool be used?

The link denial tool is an option to consider when you encounter one of the following situations:

1. If you received a Manual Penalty from Google: If in the Google Search Console in the “Security and Manual Actions” section you received a notification that your site has received a penalty for “artificial links”, then it is mandatory to use Disavow Tool.
2. If you are under negative SEO attack: If you have found that your competitors are sending links to your site from thousands of irrelevant, spammy, or adult sites, and you feel that this is starting to negatively affect your rankings.
3. If You're Experiencing a Serious and Unexplained Drop in Rankings: Especially if you observe a sudden drop in your site's rankings, especially after a Google algorithm update, with the suspicion that your hookup profile has deteriorated.
4. If You Have Bad Links as a Legacy of Old SEO Work: Your site has been “hacky” by poor SEO firms in the past Backlink if you have acquired it and want to be free of these connections.

When Should You Not Use It?

• If you have a small site and the number of links from organic traffic is very small.
• If you have not yet seen a negative change in your rankings or traffic data.
• Do not panic by taking all the warnings of paid backlink analysis tools available on the market (Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz) seriously. These tools may not show every potential spam link as a definite problem.

How to Use the Disavow Tool Step by Step

The connection rejection process is delicate and needs to be done correctly. Here is the way you should follow step by step:

Step 1: Conduct a Comprehensive Backlink Analysis

First, you need to identify all backlinks that come to your site. To do this, you should use both the “Links” report in Google Search Console and professional SEO tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush or Moz.

1. Google Search Console: Download here the “External links” report in CSV or Google Sheets format.
2. SEO Tools: Use backlink reports from tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush or Moz for a comprehensive analysis. These tools also show the “spam score” or “domain authority” of the links, which helps determine which links are potentially harmful to you.
3. Combine all data into a single Excel or Google Sheets file.

Step 2: Identify Links to Reject

Review the links in your analysis file one by one. To determine which links are spam or poor quality, you can use the following criteria:

• Links from Unrelated Sites: Links that have nothing to do with the subject of your site (for example, from casino or adult sites to an e-commerce site).
• Hyper Keyword Connections: Excessive and unnaturally generated links with the keyword of your site (for example, thousands of links with the keyword “best shoes”).
• Links from Low Quality and Bot Sites: Links from sites with no content, created by bots, usually in Asian languages and leaving spam comments.
• Connection Diagrams: Links that violate Google's policies, such as paid link sales, link swapping, hidden links.

Step 3: Create a Rejection File (Disavow File)

Malicious links that you detect are .txt You need to list it in the file. The format of this file is quite strict:

• Each URL should be on a separate line.
• If you want to add comments, at the beginning of the line # You have to put the mark.
• If you want to reject all links in a domain name, Domain:alanadi.com You should use the format. This is very useful, especially when you consider that all connections from an area are harmful. Use this method carefully!

Step 4: Upload the File to Disavow Tool

1. In the Google Search Console To the Disavow Tool page go.
2. Make sure you choose the right site.
3. Prepared .txt Upload the file.

After sending the file, it may take some time for Google to process this request. This period can vary from several weeks to several months.

Errors When Using Disavow Tool

• Refusing everything in a panic: It is the most common mistake. Only reject links that you think are questionable, not those that might be useful.
• Rejecting the entire domain instead of the URL: If there are only a few bad links from a domain name, reject only those URLs instead of rejecting the entire domain. Rejecting the entire domain will also cause you to lose potential useful links that may come to your site.
• Preparing the file format incorrectly: .txt Uploading files in a format other than the extension or using incorrect commands prevents the operation of the tool.
• Not trying to remove links manually: Before using Disavow Tool, it is always a better first step to contact website owners and ask them to remove malicious links if possible.

Conclusion: Disavow Tool is a Recovery Tool, Not a Preventive

Google Disavow Toolis an important tool for the health of your site, but in order to use it, your site must already have received a penalty or be at serious risk. The best way to build a healthy backlink profile is to earn natural and valuable links by producing high-quality content.

Don't forget, Disavow Tool is not a “preventive” tool, but a “recovery” tool. Use this tool only when you are sure that the situation requires it and following the correct steps.

So what problems do you encounter most when analyzing your site's backlink profile?