Link building glossary

Disavow file

A disavow file is a plain text list of URLs or domains uploaded to Google's disavow links tool in Search Console, asking Google to ignore those links. Google says most sites do not need one and advises using it only for spammy links that have caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action.

Reviewed by Gareth Hoyle, Managing Director
Last reviewed 31 October 2026

When does Google say you should disavow links?

Search Console Help says to disavow only if a site has a considerable number of spammy, artificial or low-quality links pointing to it, and those links have caused a manual action or are likely to. Otherwise Google can usually assess which links to trust without help. Removing the links at source comes first, and the file covers what cannot be removed.

Google launched the tool on 16 October 2012, saying the vast majority of sites do not need it and that a disavowal is a strong suggestion rather than a command. John Mueller has kept to that line: in March 2026 he said most sites do not need a disavow file, but not all, and in September 2026 that disavowing a handful of links will not make a site drop out of search.

How do you format a disavow file?

Each property holds one list, and a new upload replaces the old one, so keep a master file. Google says changes can take a few weeks because the linking pages must be recrawled. The help page says the tool does not apply to Domain properties, so the file goes against a URL-prefix property, and disavowed links still appear in the Links report.

A .txt file encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII
One URL or domain per line, with domain: in front to cover a whole domain or subdomain, for example domain:example.com
Lines starting with # are comments and are ignored
No more than 100,000 lines or 2MB, and no URL longer than 2,048 characters
A subpath such as example.com/en/ cannot be disavowed

Example

A SaaS company finds that a former agency bought 300 links from a network of blogs, and it receives an Unnatural links to your site manual action. It asks the site owners to remove what they can, lists the rest as domain: lines, uploads the file and submits a reconsideration request. A site with only random scraper links and no manual action would normally do nothing.