How to Disavow Backlinks Without Killing Your Rankings

You did a backlink check and discovered that some questionable links point to your site. Your first instinct might be to disavow those backlinks. I get it – I’ve felt that same panic, too.

But here’s the thing: you shouldn’t disavow backlinks just because they look suspicious. This directive tells Google to disregard specific backlinks when assessing your site. It is simple in theory, but it can also hurt your site’s performance if not done correctly.

Google’s disavow tool is one of the most misinterpreted tools. Many people treat it like a quick fix. The truth is, you don’t likely need it unless you’re hit with a manual action or if you got a bunch of spammy links from some nefarious negative SEO attack.

In this guide, I will teach site owners, SEOs, and digital agencies how to properly disavow toxic backlinks without further damaging search engine rankings.

Let’s explore when you actually need this tool.

What Is the Google Disavow Tool?

The Google disavow tool lets you tell Google to ignore specific backlinks when evaluating your site. Use it when you’ve found spammy or low-quality links that point to your site and may be affecting its performance.

Here’s a quick breakdown:

• What it does: It lets you upload a disavow file – a plain text file containing the URLs or domains you want Google to ignore.
  
  
• Where to find it: It’s in a weird spot in the regular Google Search Console menu. To get to it quickly, just type “disavow links tool” into a Google search.
  
  
• How it works: When you submit the file, it enters Google’s systems. They look at the list and decide which of the disavowed links should be removed from their consideration of your site.
  
  
• Important note: Google views disavows as advice, not commands. Just because you upload a disavow file doesn’t mean anything will be disregarded. Google determines whether those links violate its guidelines.

While it might seem like a cure-all, it’s really a specialized tool for specific situations. Misusing it could remove good links that actually help your rankings.

What Are Toxic or Bad Backlinks?

Before you consider adding a disavow file, it’s important to know which links are actually worth disavowing. According to Google, unnatural links are any links that are intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in the search engine results. These are commonly known as toxic backlinks, spammy links, or just bad backlinks.

Here are the most common sources of toxic backlinks:

• Paid links that pass ranking signals
  
  
• PBNs (Private Blog Networks) are used to game the system.
  
  
• Comment spam with backlinks in forums or blogs.
  
  
• Link farms are designed to generate backlinks en masse.
  
  
• Low-quality directories created solely for link building
  
  
• Negative SEO attacks are when someone intentionally builds spammy backlinks to your site.
  
  
• Links from penalized domains or websites that Google has deindexed

Still, not all sketchy-looking backlinks are bad. Indeed, most spammy or irrelevant links to your site are instead a nuisance, and Google is intelligent enough to deal with most of them on its own. Before jumping to disavow, you can run a spam audit to spot patterns and reduce your spam score so minor issues don’t snowball into bigger problems.

The bottom line? Bad backlinks don’t need to be disavowed all the time. Intervene only when there is a trend of bad links or when you find your site affected by a manual action or a noticeable drop in search engine rankings.

When Should You Disavow Backlinks

You don’t have to panic whenever a weird link appears in your backlinks report. However, there are some very real cases where deploying the disavow tool is 100% justified.

Here is when you know it’s time to act:

1. Google slapped you with a manual action

You check Google Search Console, and there it is: that unfortunate message informing you that your site has received a manual action based on unnatural links to your site.

That’s your cue. If you want to stay in the game, now is not the time to play coy – you will have to generate a disavow file and upload it via the disavow links tool. It’s one of the only times when Google sort of assumes you’re going to take the wheel and fix it.

2. You’ve inherited a mess of manipulative SEO

Perhaps you’ve inherited a client site – or your own older site – that once thrived on paid links, link schemes, or PBNs.

If you find the backlink profile mainly consisting of these, it’s time to clean it up. If you can’t physically dismantle those links, then anything goes – you can disavow the biggest offenders. For online stores in particular, this is a good time to pivot toward ethical ecommerce link building to restore trust and relevance.

3. Someone’s targeting you with a negative SEO attack

Yes, it happens. You get a competitor (or someone with a bot) pointing 100s of spammy backlinks at your site. You didn’t request them, but now you’re stuck with them.

If so, a nicely constructed disavow list could go some way to offset the damage by ensuring the harmful backlinks don’t impact your site’s measurements before it’s too late.

4. You tried link removal and hit a wall

This time, you did the right thing. You located bad backlinks, contacted webmasters, and pleaded for removal… but nothing changed.

If that doesn’t work, your next step is to use the Google disavow tool. It tells Google that you did the right thing, but that they should disregard those links that are still there.

These are not NORMie (Normalizing Offensive Requests Made In Excited-transit) events, but if one feels familiar, you should probably disavow them.

When Should You NOT Disavow Backlinks

So here’s a fundamental misunderstanding: suspect or low-quality links to your site are not necessarily a problem. In truth, Google already knows what to do with spam links most of the time, and its systems just ignore them.

And that’s why if you stir that pot with disavowing without a good reason, you’re just likely to hurt them, not to penalize anyone. Rather than over-disavowing, you could focus your energy on earning more relevant citations and partnerships through local link-building strategies that strengthen your authority.

Here’s when it is best to suppress the urge to upload that disavow file:

You didn’t get a manual action, but some links just “look bad.”

Of course, not every crappy bad link. Now, if you see a small number of odd domains when you’re looking at the backlink audit, don’t freak out. You will get some random external links, and chances are, Google isn’t counting these against you.

A tool flagged them  –  and nothing else.

Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz… they’re all excellent tools. But submitting one flag on a few toxic backlinks doesn’t mean that they are actually hurting your overall search standings. These tools don’t see everything Google sees, and they prefer to err on the side of caution.

You’re “cleaning” your backlink profile preemptively.

I understand  –  there is something about spring cleaning that feels good. But simply uploading a disavow list to clean things up isn’t the way. Unless they are actually problematic (like a penalty or huge volume of spammy links), you’re better off leaving those bad backlinks alone.

An SEO agency told you to – without a clear explanation

Always ask why. If you receive a recommendation from an agency to disavow without any evidence of a manual action, negative SEO attack, or confirmed toxic links, then you’re potentially paying the price of uncertainty.

You noticed a rankings drop and assumed it’s link-related

There’s no doubt that losing rankings can be stressful, but don’t instantly assume that it’s your backlink profile. Ensure it’s not content issues, technical problems, an algo update, or the competition moving before anything else. You should disavow backlinks only if there’s a strong reason to believe that the links are causing harm.

Pro Tip: Google’s algorithms are designed to take no notice of spammy backlinks and other harmful links that contravene Google’s guidelines. That’s why you should save disavowing for a last resort, not your first response.

Dangers of Misusing the Disavow Tool

If you use the disavow tool without a strong case, you can do more harm than good in removing backlinks. It’s not only what you submit  –  it’s what happens because of it.

Let’s dissect the risks, step by step, in an easy cause-and-effect flow.

You disavow good links by accident → You lose valuable ranking signals.

Link from an obscure site? It’s easy to miss something like that as spam. But no doubt some of those are quality links that are quietly helping your search engine rankings. By disavowing them, you’re essentially begging Google to discount a link that was helping to build your authority.

You try to reverse it → The damage takes time to fix.

Even if you spot the error, Google will not reprocess your disavow file overnight. Links must be recrawled and re-evaluated, which can delay the process by weeks or more. In the meantime, it may harm your site’s performance.

You send the wrong message → Google might see it as a cleanup job.

If they submitted a massive or frequent disavow file with no sign of manual action or poison attack, they risk drawing our attention. You might look like you’re attempting to remove link schemes or other underhanded tactics when nothing of the sort is actually taking place.

You cut too deep → Your rankings drop – and may not recover.

If you disavow complete domains without analyzing them carefully, you risk cutting off some backlinks that may help your authority. This means that you can lose a lot of visibility very quickly across Google search results and have a long climb to get back to where you once were.

The lesson? The disavow tool is not a maintenance tool – it’s a recovery tool. “Preferably, save it for when there are clear high stakes and the situation really warrants it.

Step-by-Step: How to Safely Disavow Backlinks

So, now that you’ve reached this point and have determined which backlinks are likely to be hurting your site’s overall performance… what are the safest next steps when you take action to disavow them without nuking your current rankings?

Let’s walk through it together.

1. Audit Your Backlinks

Begin by gathering the data for all the low-quality links pointing to your site.

• Leverage tools such as Google Search Console, Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz.
  
  
• Check for spammy backlinks and toxic link patterns, and look for sketchy anchor text on domains, too.
  
  
• Study the domain authority, the relevance of the link, and whether the referring domains are part of a link scheme.

Now is the time to disavow and report bad, low-quality links and anything that might be negative SEO.

2. Verify the Risk

Don’t trust the tools blindly. Any links that are marked as toxic or spammy should be manually checked.

• Open up the domains and look at the pages.
  
  
• Ask yourself: Would I want this site to link to mine?
  
  
• Apply Google’s test: Is this link here solely to manipulate rankings?
  
  
• If so, attempt to have the connection removed by contacting and emailing the site owner directly.

If they either refuse to grant your request or don’t provide contact information, you can use the disavow tool.

3. Create a Disavow File

Now it’s precisely the right time to set up your disavow list – a plain text file that tells Google which URLs or domains you’d like them to ignore.

Here’s the proper format:

• Use .txt format, encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII
  
  
• Include one entry per line:
  • To block an entire domain:
    domain:spammydomain.com
  • To disavow a specific page:
    https://example.com/bad-page.html
    
    
• Add context with # comment lines if needed.
  # These links appear to violate Google’s guidelines

Some rules to follow:

• Max file size: 2MB
  
  
• Max number of lines: 100,000
  
  
• Avoid disavowing quality links or using this as a cleanup shortcut

4. Submit to Google

When your disavow file is prepared:

• Go to Google Disavow Tool (you’ll need to hunt for this as it’s not in the main GSC dashboard)
  
  
• Select the correct domain property.
  
  
• Upload the file to Google.
  
  
• Confirm your submission

Just know: changes will not come overnight. To process your submitted file, Google has to recrawl those external links and then decide whether to act on your suggestions. You will not see any change in your search engine results for a few weeks.

How to Undo a Disavow

So maybe you got carried away with your disavow file. Perhaps you took down a domain that was, in fact, aiding your rankings, or you moved too fast because of a toxic score in a tool. The good news? You can undo it.

Here are the steps on how to repair a disavow file without making things worse:

Step 1: Download your current disavow file

Now go back to the Google Disavow Tool and download your uploaded file. This will give you the complete list of URLs and domains you asked Google to forget about.

Step 2: Edit the file carefully

Open it using a text editor like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac). Take out any lines you don’t want to disavow. Perhaps you found a great backlink or an authoritative website that needs to be on the list – now’s your time to add it in.

Keep the formatting clean:

• One domain or URL per line
  
  
• Don’t remove any essential comment lines unless necessary.
  
  
• Leave # notes for clarity if you’re editing manually.

Step 3: Re-upload the updated file

Save your work, then return to the disavow links tool and upload the version using the correct format. Make sure you choose the proper property in Google Search Console and verify that the new file has your changes.

Step 4: Be patient – really patient

You then re-upload a clean disavow file, and voila, your site is back in action, quicker than a nest of shivering nipples. Google needs to recrawl the links to your site, reprocess those links, and determine whether they now contribute to your authority. This could take weeks, sometimes months.

Sometimes, if Google has already devalued those links, your reversal may not have a big impact.

Although you can reverse a disavow, the best course of action is to never over-disavow in the first place. Make sure you know for sure if a link is toxic before rolling it into your list.

Tools That Make Disavowing Easier

I mean, let’s be honest; nobody likes to sift through hundreds (or even thousands) of backlinks by hand. There are some sturdy weapons that you can use to smell out toxic backlinks, prioritize your cleanup, and upload for disavow and disavow file types.

Here are some tools I recommend if you want to make this process smoother:

Semrush

If you’re looking for automation and ease of use, Semrush is your best friend here.

• It scans your entire backlink profile and assigns each link a toxicity score.
  
  
• You can review flagged links, mark them for removal, or generate a disavow file with one click.
  
  
• It even helps track outreach if you’re contacting site owners directly.

This is particularly helpful if you’ve dealt with spammy links resulting from a negative SEO attack or legacy bad backlinks.

Ahrefs, Moz, and Majestic

These tools are going to provide you with robust backlink audit features and spam signals:

• Ahrefs makes it easier to visualize your link profile, identify strange anchor text patterns, and review referring domains.
  
  
• Moz offers a Spam Score system to help flag potential toxic links.
  
  
• Majestic focuses on Trust Flow and Citation Flow to gauge link quality

None of these submits a disavow file directly to Google, but they do make the research a lot easier and more reliable.

Google Search Console

Still, the gold standard for seeing what links Google is actually tracking to your site is Google Search Console itself:

• You can download your backlinks directly from Search Console
  
  
• It doesn’t flag spammy links automatically, but provides a complete list for manual review
  
  
• Best used as your source of truth when verifying what Google actually sees

Even if you use third-party tools, always cross-reference against Google Search Console before submitting any disavow file.

The bottom line: Disavowing can backfire spectacularly when done incorrectly, but with the right tools and careful analysis, you can ensure your site ranks for the queries that drive your business.

Best Practices & Pro Tips

You don’t want to take disavowing backlinks lightly. An exact move can ensure your site’s performance. The wrong disavow strategy can devastate your search engine rankings. Agencies that manage multiple client sites – especially those following an SEO for resellers model – need to be particularly cautious.

One overly aggressive disavow file could affect numerous properties at once. The wrong disavow strategy can devastate your search engine rankings. Here’s what you need to do – and avoid – when handling disavows.

Do

Disavow only when there’s a clear threat.
If you have been hit with a manual action or have found some toxic backlinks that are breaking Google’s guidelines, and you can’t get the links you need removed manually, then it’s the disavow tool.

Try manual removal first.
You should always contact site owners personally to have bad links removed. This is cleaner, more persistent, and doesn’t involve bothering Google.

Keep copies of every file.
Keep every edition of your disavow file, along with notes about what you removed and why. This will allow you to track your actions and eventually undo them.

Review your file periodically.
Review your disavow file every few months – or if you notice significant performance drops. Domains evolve, and what was once poisonous is no longer dangerous.

Don’t

Don’t disavow links just because they look unfamiliar.
Just because a link is unusual-looking or from an odd domain doesn’t mean it is bad. Google already ignores most low-quality or irrelevant links.

Don’t disavow entire domains unless absolutely necessary.
Disavow entire domains only if you’re sure they’re toxic. Other than that, only disavow specific URLs; otherwise, you’re just throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Don’t rely solely on tool-based toxicity scores.
Semrush, Ahrefs, and other tools can identify potential issues, but they are not capable of diagnosing them. Always manually check any suspicious links before clicking on them.

If you use them and follow these guides, you’ll never screw up a disavow and have to wait months for Google to re-crawl to see if it worked or not.