Google's disavow tool is the Search Console feature you use to ask Google not to take into account certain links pointing to your site: you upload a .txt file with one URL or domain per line. Google recommends it for one specific case, when you have a considerable number of artificial links to your site and they have caused, or will likely cause, the manual action "Unnatural links to your site".
The problem is that the tool is nearly always used in the wrong case.
The mistakes we find most often in audits are three:
- a disavow file uploaded with no manual action at all, because a tool coloured a few hundred domains red;
- a file containing every exported backlink, including the ones that were bringing value;
- a reconsideration request sent after the disavow alone, without asking anyone to take a link down.
The pages that rank don't help much either. On 10 October 2026 we searched "unnatural links" on Google UK on mobile with DataForSEO: none of the 9 organic results is Google's own documentation, and three of them were published in 2013, 2014 and 2017. The rest are definitions and glossaries from SEO tool vendors and agencies, one of them Australian.
The work we do on our projects goes in the opposite direction to bought links. Macropix, a Milan-based maker of LED screens, went from position 88 to 2 in five years for "monitor pubblicitario" (advertising monitor), with one page for each product line and one for each major installation. Sunscape, which develops solar farms in Italy, took its organic impressions from 329 to 5,809 a month in six months with an architecture of pages by region.
And what has that got to do with a warning about links?
Whoever gets that warning has usually tried to squeeze those five years into a few months of paid links. The disavow is there to get you back within the rules. The rankings built on those links, on the other hand, don't come back: Google says so, and we look at it further down (the real timescales of a clean project are in our guide to how long SEO takes).
Here you'll find:
- the two versions of the warning and what each one asks of you;
- a table to decide whether you need the disavow, in three situations;
- the numbers from an audit of 14,080 domains and from the wave of link spam hitting visilay.com;
- the file format, including the syntax Google doesn't document;
- what to put in the reconsideration request.
Let's start.
What the unnatural links warning says (there are two versions, and one isn't fixed with a disavow)
The unnatural links warning is a manual action: a Google reviewer has found links built to manipulate rankings and flagged it in Search Console's Manual actions report. Google's spam policies call this link spam, and the examples they list include buying or selling links, excessive link exchanges, paid guest posts with keyword-rich anchor text, and links hidden in widgets and footers distributed across many sites.
In the Manual actions report there are two entries about links. The difference decides all the work that follows.
| Entry in the report | What Google found | What it asks you to do | Do you need the disavow? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unnatural links to your site | A pattern of artificial inbound links, bought or exchanged | Download the links, ask the sites to remove them or add nofollow, disavow only the ones you can't get removed, then request a review | Yes, for the links you can't get taken down |
| Unnatural links from your site | Paid outbound links or excessive exchanges published on your site | Remove the links or qualify them with nofollow or sponsored, then request a review | No, the disavow only works on inbound links |
The second entry hits those who sell space: blogs, publications and portals that publish sponsored articles without qualifying the links. For them a disavow file does nothing at all. What they need is the right attribute on the link, and how to write it is explained in our guide to nofollow.
How common is a manual action for links?
Google doesn't publish a separate figure. The last official number on manual actions is in the Webspam Report 2019: of more than 90 million messages sent to site owners, about 4.3 million were about manual actions. In the same report Google says that more than 90% of link spam was already being caught by its automated systems. These are worldwide figures, with no breakdown for the UK.
So the manual action for links is what's left over. Most link spam has been quietly discounted by the algorithm since September 2016, when Penguin became part of the core algorithm. If instead your site has disappeared from the results altogether, the action may be a different one: the five possible blocks are in our guide to a site banned by Google.
Do you need the disavow? The three situations (and in two the answer is no)
The disavow is only needed when two conditions hold together: a considerable number of artificial links to the site and a manual action that has arrived or is likely. That's the test in the official guide to the tool, which adds that most sites will not need it. The table applies it to the three cases that reach us most often.
| Situation | What you see in Search Console | Disavow | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual action "Unnatural links to your site" | Open entry in the Manual actions report | Yes, after asking for removal | Full link audit, contact the sites, build the file for the reconsideration request |
| Links bought in the past, no manual action, drop after a spam update | Manual actions report clear, drop coinciding with an update | Optional and targeted | Disavow only the links you have proof of buying, stop buying them |
| A wave of link spam you didn't create | Report clear, hundreds of unknown domains in the tools | No | Check Manual actions and Security issues, then ignore it |
The second case is the tricky one. Google says the disavow is for links that have caused or will likely cause a manual action, and anyone who has bought links for years falls into the second half of that sentence. There a disavow only makes sense for links you know were bought: there's an invoice, an email, a contract. Not for the ones a score has coloured red.
If the drop matches a specific date, check it first against the history of algorithm updates. If the Manual actions report is clear and the cause isn't there, the diagnosis is a different one, and you'll find it in our guide to a drop in website traffic. How to read the report, and why "penalty" is the wrong word nine times out of ten, is explained in our guide to Google penalties.
How to audit your links (Search Console only shows you a sample)
A link audit is the list of the site's backlinks, sorted one by one into natural or built. Google tells you to start from Search Console's Links report, which has limits written into its own documentation: tables stop at 1,000 rows, the export of the latest links at 100,000, and the report is in any case a sample, not a complete list.
For a large site that isn't enough. You cross-check the Search Console data with at least one external index (Ahrefs, Semrush, Majestic or Moz), remove duplicates and keep only the links that are still live. Which tools to use and their limits are covered in our guide to checking backlinks, while what to read in the Search Console report is in our guide to Google Search Console.
How big can the job get?
In 2022 we audited the backlinks of a large Italian brand, which stays anonymous here because the data isn't public. From Majestic's historic index we downloaded about 5 million backlinks, too many even for Excel, which stops at just over a million rows. After the first clean-up we were left with a dataset of about 600,000 links from 14,080 domains.
| Domain category | Domains | Share |
|---|---|---|
| No longer registered (no DNS) | 8,001 | 56.8% |
| News and other sites | 3,481 | 24.7% |
| Unreachable at the time of the analysis | 1,717 | 12.2% |
| Scrapers and spam | 597 | 4.2% |
| Coupons and deals | 174 | 1.2% |
| Directories | 82 | 0.6% |
| Brands, partners and company sites | 17 | 0.1% |
| Online games | 11 | 0.1% |
More than half the domains no longer existed. Those links pass nothing, neither value nor risk: putting them in a disavow file is wasted work.
For the rest we had built a risk score per domain. One point for each signal: more than 10 links from the same domain, more than 70% follow links, commercial anchors on a spam domain, Trust Flow or Citation Flow below 10, a ratio between the two below 0.8, a server outside Italy (the brand's market). Five points for scraper or spam sites, two fewer for domains with no DNS. Result: 794 high-risk domains, 5.6% of the total.
And here we should own up to something. At the time our recommendation was to disavow those 794 domains, with no manual action open. Today, on the same profile, we wouldn't repeat it: with the December 2022 link spam update Google said it was using SpamBrain to neutralise the impact of unnatural links, and a preventive disavow on a healthy profile takes away more than it protects.
The method is still useful when there is a manual action, because it tells you where to start: with the domains sending lots of links, the ones that appeared recently and the ones with commercial anchor text. How to read the anchor distribution is explained in our guide to anchor text.
Do you have a manual action open on links?
You've just seen that in a profile of 14,080 domains, the ones worth touching were under 6%, and more than half didn't even exist. Disavowing the rest means throwing away links that are working. Let's go through the Manual actions report and your profile together, before you upload any file.
Book a strategy consultationAsk for removal first, then disavow (Google rejects disavow-only requests)
In Google's procedure for a manual action on inbound links, the disavow is the fourth step, not the first. First you download the links, identify the ones that break the policies and write to the site owners asking them to remove them or add nofollow. The disavow comes afterwards, only for the links you can't get removed.
The sentence to remember is on the same page: simply disavowing all backlinks without attempting to remove them "might lead to rejection of your request".
It's been that way from day one. When it launched the tool on 16 October 2012, Google recommended removing as many links from the web as possible and using the disavow only for those left, adding that without an unnatural links warning the tool is generally not something you need to worry about.
And if the site linking to you doesn't reply?
You write it down. Every attempt has to be documented, because a reconsideration request is evidence, not a letter of apology. Some American guides go into great detail on this: Single Grain's, for example, organises the file into seven sheets, from the good links to the screenshots of the outreach. We boil it down to a single table.
| Column | What it contains | Why it's needed |
|---|---|---|
| Source URL | The page that contains the link | Google works by URL and by domain |
| Anchor text and attribute | Clickable text, follow or nofollow | Shows the pattern you found |
| Classification | Natural, bought, exchanged, directory, spam | Makes the criterion explicit |
| Contact | Address used, date of first and second email | Proves the removal attempt |
| Outcome | Removed, nofollow added, no reply, refused | Separates links taken down from those to disavow |
| Final action | None, a disavow line by URL or with domain: | Ties the evidence to the file |
Share the sheet as view-only (a Google Sheet is fine) and link to it in the request.
How to write the disavow file (2 MB, 100,000 lines and an undocumented syntax)
The disavow file is a text file with a .txt extension, encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII, with one URL or domain per line. These are the limits Google sets:
| Rule | Value |
|---|---|
| One entry per line | Full URL or domain:example.com |
| Comments | Lines starting with #, ignored by Google |
| Maximum size | 2 MB |
| Maximum lines | 100,000, including blank lines and comments |
| Maximum URL length | 2,048 characters |
| Supported properties | URL-prefix only, not Domain properties |
| Files per property | One: the new one replaces the previous one |
| Processing time | A few weeks |
An example of a well-written file, with the reason next to each group of lines (the domains are made up):
# Paid guest posts from 2023, contacted twice in September, no reply
domain:example-blog.net
# Directory: the owner refused to remove it
https://www.example-directory.org/services/page-14.htmlThree details trip people up. Each property is handled separately: http and https are two different properties. The new file replaces the old one: if you upload only the new domains, the ones you disavowed before start counting again. And disavowed links stay visible in the Links report, so that isn't where you check whether the file has worked.
Then there's the syntax you won't find in the documentation. As Barry Schwartz reported in Search Engine Land on 9 March 2026, John Mueller confirmed that writing domain: followed only by the extension, for example domain:store, disavows an entire top-level domain. He also explained that they don't put it in the help pages because it's too big a hammer, and that you can't carve out the individual good sites.
We ran the numbers on our own data. On 9 October 2026 the DataForSEO backlink index counted 766 referring domains for visilay.com, against 452 on 5 October, when we described the wave in our article on negative SEO.
| Measure | Value on 9 October 2026 |
|---|---|
| Total referring domains | 766 |
| Appeared since 1 August 2026 | 719 (94%) |
| Appeared since 6 October 2026 | 268 |
| On cheap extensions (.store, .space, .online, .site, .shop, .website, .link, .info, .xyz) | 687 (90%) |
| With "checker" in the domain name | 386 (50%) |
| Italian (.it) domains | 10 |
| Disavow lines using the per-domain syntax | 687 |
| Disavow lines using the per-extension syntax | At most 9 |
Nine lines instead of 687. It looks like a bargain. But with domain:shop you'd also disavow every genuine online shop that might mention you one day, and with domain:info any information portal. We upload neither version, for the reason you'll find in the last section.
The reconsideration request for links (slower than the others, and it doesn't give you your rankings back)
You send the reconsideration request from the Manual actions report, with the Request review button, once the fix is complete. Google sets three requirements: explain the exact issue, describe the steps you've taken to fix it, document the outcome.
For links, in practice:
- the issue: which links, what kind, who created them and when (if it was a previous supplier, say so);
- what you did: how many sites you contacted, how many times, with the link to your evidence sheet;
- the outcome: how many links were removed, how many got nofollow, how many went into the disavow file and on what date you uploaded it.
On timing, Google says most reviews take several days or weeks, and that link-related requests may take longer than usual. You get one email when the request is received and one when it's done. A second request while the first is still in the queue speeds nothing up.
And once the action is revoked, are you back where you were?
No. In its post on the link spam update of 14 December 2022, Google wrote that rankings may change as spammy links are neutralised and that any credit passed by those unnatural links is lost. You get back the chance to rank, not the rankings built on those links. That's why a credible recovery plan talks about editorial link building and digital PR, not about "recovering your positions".
When the disavow does damage (and why we don't use it against the spam wave)
The disavow does damage when it throws out links that were working. Ahrefs reports the case of a user whose traffic fell 60% after disavowing the links a tool had flagged as toxic, and a test on its own blog where the disavow pulled traffic down, which recovered once the file was removed. These are American cases, but the mechanism doesn't depend on the country.
The reason is simple: "toxicity" scores are calculated by the tools, not by Google. Of the 766 domains linking to visilay.com today, 687 sit on cheap extensions and 386 have "checker" in the name. On a site that has never bought links there's nothing to disavow: those domains fall into the third case in the table, and there Google says to do nothing.
Microsoft has drawn its own conclusions too. On 21 September 2023 Bing announced it would remove the disavow tool from Webmaster Tools in October 2023, explaining that it had improved its ability to detect and ignore unnatural links automatically. Google keeps the tool, but its own help page says most sites will not need it.
If your concern is a different one, namely how much risk a site carries because of how it was built over the years, the full picture is in our guide to SEO risks.
Frequently asked questions about the disavow tool and unnatural links
No. In most cases you don't need it: Google recommends the tool when there are a considerable number of artificial links to the site and a manual action has arrived or is likely. The reasonable exception is a site that bought links in the past and has proof of it: there you disavow those links, and only those.
It depends on the clean-up work, which takes weeks on a large profile, and on Google's review, which usually takes several days or weeks and can take longer for link-related requests. The disavow file itself takes a few weeks to be processed.
No. It brings the site back within the rules, but Google says that any credit passed by neutralised unnatural links is lost. Rankings are rebuilt with content and editorial links.
It depends: if the domain exists only to sell or generate links, use domain: followed by the domain; if it's a normal site with one bought link, for example a sponsored article on a news site, disavow the URL of the page. The per-extension syntax, such as domain:store, isn't documented by Google and cuts out good sites too.
No. It concerns outbound links published on your site: they need to be removed or qualified with the nofollow or sponsored attribute, then you send a reconsideration request from the Manual actions report.
No. Bing removed its disavow tool from Webmaster Tools in October 2023 and assesses links with automated systems. The file you upload to Search Console applies to Google only.
In short (and the thing almost nobody does with the file)
The disavow is for a manual action on inbound links.
The warning about outbound links is fixed with nofollow and sponsored, not with the file.
Ask for removal first, disavow second.
More than half the domains in an old profile may no longer exist.
Rankings built with bought links don't come back.
One thing the industry rarely says: the disavow file outlives whoever wrote it. It stays uploaded for years, and the consultant who comes next doesn't know why a particular line is there. That's why every group of lines should have a comment with a date and a reason, and the file should be reopened every time you change supplier. The tool has a button to cancel all disavowals, but nobody presses it if they don't know what's inside. If you'd like us to go through it with you, it's the kind of check we do in our SEO service.
Speak soon!
