Disavowing links
Listing the questionable pages or domains that link to your site in a file for Google's disavow links tool in Search Console. Google says most sites won't need to.
Also called disavow file and disavow tool.
Google says that “In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most sites will not need to use this tool” (Google Search Console Help). It calls the tool an advanced feature that “should only be used with caution”, because used incorrectly it can harm how your site does in Google Search.
When Google suggests it
Only when both are true: you have “a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site”, and those links have caused a manual action, or likely will. Google’s first advice is to get the links removed from the other sites, and to disavow only the ones you can’t.
How it works
- The file is a plain text list, one page or domain per line, with
domain:in front of a domain. - You upload it in Search Console. Only a property owner can, and a new file replaces the old one for that property.
- It can take a few weeks for Google to take a new list into account as it recrawls the web.
Related terms
Tools for it
Sources
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487 (Oct 8, 2026)
Updated Oct 8, 2026.