Google Disavow Backlink Tool

The definition of disavow is simply to “deny any responsibility or support for.” Which is exactly what Google’s disavow tool is intended to do for your links.

Important context first. Google has publicly de-emphasized the disavow tool since around 2020. John Mueller and Gary Illyes have repeatedly said that the vast majority of sites should not use it, because Google’s algorithms are now very good at simply ignoring low-quality or spammy backlinks rather than letting them hurt you. The disavow file is really only called for in two specific cases: (1) you have received a manual action in Search Console citing unnatural links, or (2) you know for a fact that you (or a past SEO) actively built manipulative links yourself. If you are not in one of those two buckets, leave it alone. The rest of this guide walks through how the tool works if you do end up needing it.

The disavow tool was released around the time Google Penguin started to become a big thing. Webmasters were scrambling and many of them eventually came to ask the same question: “what if I’m totally unable to remove these backlinks?” Google responded with the Google disavow tool. In October of 2012, Google released a blog post along with a video to sum things up:

So for those die-hard SEO’s that just watched that, basically what Matt is saying is that if you know for a fact that you have spammy backlinks built to your site, and you have done everything that you can to get rid of those links, then you can use this tool to get rid of those links. This tool is for SEO’s and webmasters unable to remove their backlinks and have made their best effort. According to Google, this will not guarantee the elimination of all links and it will not “abide by” this list by default. What it will do is “take a strong suggestion” of the list that you have given Google and take that into account. To read more information about the Google disavow tool, read what Google Search Central help docs has to say about it.

To get started with Google disavow, navigate to the Google disavow main page. You must be logged into Google Search Console to view this. If you have multiple sites, at this point you will need to choose which site you want to disavow.

Please keep in mind that Google has posted a very straightforward warning about the disavow tool, before you begin or make any changes:

Once you’ve agreed to that warning, you’ll be taken directly to the point where you will upload the text file. Keep in mind there are very strict formatting rules for the disavow file. Failure to comply with these formatting rules will nullify your disavow file.

If you’d like to see an example disavow file, you can download our example disavow file here.

Once you’ve uploaded the file, you can come back to it at a later date and upload a new disavow file.

You will also be told if your disavow file was successfully uploaded or not, what the filename was, how many domains / URLs, and what the date and time was.

Keep in mind you cannot append to the disavow file live, you must upload a new one.

Chances are you still have many questions about the disavow file. Rather than going into more detail, Google has done a great job of answering most of the questions you might have.

Google has also posted an extensive Q & A within the Webmaster Central Blog post about disavow, which is definitely worth looking into if you are thinking about disavowing.

If you do have more questions please feel free to reach out to us at any point, we have a number of people in our office who can speak to you about the disavow file, penalties, or SEO in general.

If you are looking for a sample disavow file or to download a sample disavow.txt file, look no further. You can download a plaintext version of our sample disavow.txt file here.

Please note this is just a general template. You can use comments with the # sign. Just be sure to check and double check your formatting!

After a year or so of SEO’s and other webmasters using and mis-using the Google disavow tool, we started to notice that many people were using the tool incorrectly. With that, we came up with some common Google disavow tool mistakes, and how SEO’s and webmasters can combat these. The reason this is such a big issue is because many SEO’s are already upset about being penalized by Google, and don’t realize for another month or more that they have been using the tool incorrectly, and now need to wait even longer for the penalty to be removed.

1. Using an improper file format. Google is receiving a ton of crazy file formats such as Word (.doc), Excel (.xls) and a number of different file formats that are not compatible with Google’s parser. Google only accepts .txt files in the disavow tool and anything else could null your submission. If you want to be sure your file is a .txt file, right click on the file and click “properties.” It should say “.txt” within the file properties window.

2. Don’t stress the details (seriously). Instead of combing through your link portfolio with a fine tooth comb, in most cases you can just list the domain that you need to disavow. There are scenarios where you don’t want to do this. For instance, on some domains you might have a few good links and a few bad links. While this is rare, in this case you should list each URL in your text file one per line.

For example, if you’ve found 5 spammy backlinks from one domain, and there are 300 more to look through, chances are the rest of them are also bad. Our advice is to scan through maybe 10-20 more of them at random, if they all give a positive signal for “SPAM” then just list the entire domain in the disavow tool.

3. Use the correct syntax within your disavow TXT file. You wouldn’t try to eat your laptop, so don’t feed Google things it can’t consume. Many people are using all kinds of crazy syntax such as domain:https://domain.com and other variations. The only correct syntax is:

domain:domain.com

or

https://www.domain.com/page.html

Anything else will either be improperly processed, not processed, or sent back

Furthermore, Google is getting a TON of files with actual context relating to the request within the file itself. Do not do this. This file is meant to be processed by a machine parser, not a human. If you want to explain yourself, do it within the reconsideration request, not the disavow file.

4. Disavow tool will not solve all of your problems. That’s right, it is a last resort. Clean up your links. Do everything in your power to clean up all of your links, then and only then should you attempt to disavow.

If you still have questions, please feel free to send them our way or leave them in the comments below. We’ll get back to you within a few hours with a solid plan of attack.

Last updated April 2026