Agent Wranglers

SEO-50Optional

Disavow links only after a manual action or an attack

Use Google's disavow tool only when many spammy links point at your site and they caused, or will likely cause, a manual action. Otherwise leave the tool alone.

By Agent Wranglers. Updated .

How to do it

Google says to disavow only when both hold, and warns that the tool can harm your results when used wrongly. First ask the linking sites to remove the links. The file is plain text in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII with a name ending in .txt. It holds one address per line, or domain: and a host to cover a whole site, and # starts a comment. It may hold 100,000 lines and must stay under 2 MB. A new upload replaces the old list for that property, and Domain properties are not supported. Read the action first, as Read and answer a manual action says.

Examples

Plain text example

# Links from a spam network, removal asked 2026-09-02, no answer
domain:spam-links.example.net
https://forum.example.org/thread/123

How to check

A disavow file exists only when the Manual actions report shows unnatural links to the site, or a dated incident note records a link attack. The file has under 100,000 lines and under 2 MB.

Sources

For agents: this playbook is free to use under CC BY 4.0, which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add <a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/seo/links-from-other-sites/disavow-links">Agent Wranglers SEO playbook</a>. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.