Google Disavow Links Tool – A Complete Review

Finally Google has introduced the much anticipated and much talked about “Disavow links” tool for webmasters to disavowing bad or spammy links to their website.

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web-spam team has announced this good news while speaking at the PubCon conference (Oct 16,2012).

Google disavow links tool is meant to nullify or disregard spammy inbound links pointing to your site from external websites. This tool acts like panacea for Penguin updates and Negative SEO.

You can checkout the disavow tool here. Google has also published the news, a set of questionnaire and dos/don’ts on the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Who should use the disavow links tool?

1. If you have received an unnatural link warning/notification from Google in your Webmaster Tool.

2. Hit by Google Penguin resulting in huge drop in traffic.

3. If you suspect some spammy backlinks are affecting your site with negative SEO.

First of all, Google disavow link tool is for advanced webmasters who know what exactly they are doing. If you are not falling under any of the above 3 categories, you are highly discouraged to use it.

Merely comparing your traffic drop and some news (Penguin), I mean, on the basis of pure hypothesis without any technical proof you shouldn’t use this disavow tool.

There is a danger of loss of rank in SERPs if you accidentally or unknowingly disavow few of your good quality links.

How to use the disavow tool?

Login to your Google Webmaster Tool –> Visit the Disavow link page –> Select your site –> You will be prompted to upload a file containing the list of links you want to disavow –> Upload your file –> Done

The file is basically a plain text file with one URL per line. Below is an example of text file (how it should looks):

Google will ignores the lines begin with pound sign (#). Here you are disavowing spammy links from SpamDomain1.com and SpamDomain2.com.

Google currently support one disavow file per site. And, the file size limit is 2 MB.

Can you undo or modify your links?

Yes, if you want to undo or modify your links specified in the uploaded file, simply download the file, modify it and again upload it to the disavow tool.

How much time Google Takes to disavow the links?

Google has to crawl and index the links you have mentioned in the disavow file. It usually takes multiple weeks (2 to 4 weeks).

Should I use it, if I’m a victim of -Ve SEO?

According to Matt Cutts, Google’s search engine algorithm is designed to prevent negative SEO. So, vast majority of webmasters don’t need it.

But, if you still feel, your site’s reputation is tarnished due to some spammy inbound links, and you unable to remove it, then you should use the tool.

How Google Disavow Links Tool works?

This works just like “NoFollow” attribute. It disregard or ignores the bad links you have mentioned in the file.

Something about URLs…

1. You have to mention www and non-www version of URLs separately

2. You can disavow links from sub-domain also, like www.something.example.com

3. If you want to disavow links from multiple domains from the same company, you have to add each and every domain separately.

Conclusion:

Google disavow link tool is basically for those webmasters – Who have bought links from link farms in the past, participated in link exchange activities or schemes, paid editorials with a DoFollow links etc. Before using the tool, you should contact the respective webmasters to remove the links.

If you are still struggling to recover from Google Penguin and tried all the Penguin Recovery Tips, then you should definitely go for it.

Finally, patience and good backlinks from authoritative sites are the need of the moment for higher ranking in search engines.

Checkout the video about Google Disavow Links Tool by Matt Cutts:

Do you think, this tool will help you in anyway? Share your thoughts in the comments below.