Google has finally given us something I’ve wanted since Penguin landed in April: a way to tell it to ignore links pointing at your site. The disavow tool went live a couple of days ago, tucked away in Webmaster Tools, and for anyone who has spent the summer emailing webmasters begging for link removals it feels like relief. It’s also the most dangerous thing Google has handed webmasters in a long time.
Here’s what it does. You upload a text file listing the links, or whole domains, you want Google to disregard when it weighs up your site. In effect you’re saying “I know these links are bad, please act as though they aren’t there”. For a site buried under paid or spammy links it couldn’t get removed by hand, that is genuinely useful.
The trouble is that it points both ways. You are handing Google a list of the links you consider so toxic you want them ignored, compiled by hand, from your own judgement of which links are good and which are bad. Get that judgement wrong and you can disavow links that were helping you. I’ve already seen people, in a fit of post-Penguin nerves, talking about disavowing hundreds of domains they haven’t properly looked at. Some of those will be perfectly good links they’re about to throw in the bin.
Cutts was careful when he announced it to call it an advanced feature and to say most sites shouldn’t touch it. He’s right, and that warning will be ignored by precisely the people who most need to hear it.
When I’d reach for it: you had a manual penalty or a clear Penguin hit, you’ve genuinely tried to get the worst links removed the hard way, and there’s a residue of bad links you simply cannot get taken down. That’s the case it’s built for, the last resort after the manual work, not a replacement for it.
When I wouldn’t: rankings dipped, you’re not sure why, so you decide to disavow anything that looks a bit ropey just in case. That’s the opposite of cleanup. You’d be firing a shotgun at your own link profile in the dark.
If you do build a file, keep it small, keep it evidenced, and keep the list of what you removed by hand alongside it. And if you’re not sure whether a link is bad, my advice is to leave it out. You can always add it later; getting a good link back once you’ve told Google to ignore it is a great deal harder.
