One SEO professional asked a question about link building and their disavow file.
Their question was: Over the last 15 years, they have disavowed around 11,000 links in total.
They never bought a link or did anything that was against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, such as sharing.
The links that they disavowed were probably from hacked sites or from nonsense, auto-generated content. Since Google now claims they have better tools that don’t factor these types of hacked or spammy links into their algorithm, should they just delete their disavow file?
Is there any risk or downside to just deleting it?
John explained that from Google’s perspective, they work really hard to avoid taking any bad links into account. And they do that because they know that the disavow links tool is somewhat a niche tool, and SEOs know about it.
But, the average person running a website doesn’t even know about it. All of the links you mentioned, these are the kinds of links that any website gets over the years. And Google’s systems understand that these are not things that you’re trying to do to game the algorithms.
From Google’s perspective, if you’re really sure that there’s nothing around, like a manual action that you had to resolve with these links, John said he would just delete the disavow file and move on with life.
The one thing he recommends doing with it is making sure you download it and make a copy, so you have a record of what you deleted. Otherwise, if you’re sure these are just the normal crufty things from the internet, John recommends deleting the disavow file and moving on.
This happens at approximately the 10:20 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Question)
Okay, next up, a question about links and disavows: Over the last 15 years, I’ve disavowed over 11,000 links in total, I never bought a link or did anything unallowed, like sharing. The links that I disavowed may have been from hacked sites or from nonsense, auto-generated content. Since Google now claims that they have better tools to not factor these types of hacked or spamming links into their algorithms, should I just delete my disavow file? Is there any risk or upside or downside to just deleting it?
John (Answer)
So this is a good question. It comes up every now and then. And disavowing links is always kind of one of those tricky topics, because it feels like Google is probably not telling you the full information. But from our point of view, it’s actually like we do work really hard to avoid taking these kinds of links into account. And we do that because we know that the disavow links tool is somewhat a niche tool and SEOs know about it.
But the average person who runs a website has no idea about it. And all of those links that you mentioned there are the kinds of links that any website gets over the years. And our systems understand that these are not things that you’re trying to do to kind of like game our algorithms. So from that point of view, if you’re really sure that there’s nothing around, like a manual action that you had to resolve with regards to these links, I would just delete the disavow file and move on with life and kind of leave all of that aside.
One thing I would personally do is just download it and make a copy so that you have kind of a record of what you deleted. But otherwise, if you’re sure these are just kind of the normal crufty things from the internet, I would just delete it and move on. There’s much more to spend your time on when it comes to websites than just disavowing these random things that happen to any website on the web.
