Google Changed Its Story on the Disavow Tool. Here’s When You Actually Need It.
For years, the answer was a shrug. Disavowing links is a waste of time. Most sites never need to. Google has said more than once that the tool hurts more sites than it helps, and there has been open speculation that it will be retired entirely, the way Bing’s counterpart was.
Then John Mueller replied to a Reddit thread from someone whose traffic had dropped right after they uploaded a disavow file, and said something the SEO community has spent the weeks since arguing about:
“There’s a lot of hate on the disavow tool here — but it has its place & time, it does have effects.”
He followed it with the sentence that matters more than the headline: “Disavowing a handful of links is not going to make your site drop out of search.”
What Google actually said, in context
The context matters, because it explains why this is not a reversal so much as a clarification.
The site in question had been buying guest posts and links from low-cost marketplaces. Traffic dropped. The owner blamed the disavow file. Mueller’s read was different: the file probably did something small, but if a site buying links drops after uploading a disavow list, the more likely suspect is a spam update that ran in the same window — and the disavow file was simply the thing the owner changed most recently, which is why it became the presumed cause.
His actual advice was three-part: fix the disavow file so it contains what you genuinely need it to contain (which might be nothing), then look for other causes, and if a broad algorithmic change is involved, expect the recovery to take months rather than weeks.
The third part is where most of the confusion lives. Algorithmic recoveries do not look like bug fixes. They look like slow drift over a quarter, and teams that expect a switch to flip spend that quarter experimenting rather than waiting.
So when do you actually need it
There are four situations where a disavow file earns its place. Outside of these, the tool is mostly a way to feel busy.
1. You bought a batch of links and they are identifiable as a batch. Not “I have 300 links and I don’t recognize some of them.” Rather: 60 links from 60 domains with a common footprint, purchased in a single campaign. When there is a discrete, traceable group, a disavow file is a targeted correction.
2. You have a manual action you’re trying to clear. In a manual-action scenario, documentation of what you cleaned up is part of the process, and the disavow file is the mechanism. This is the one case where the tool is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
3. You are the victim of a deliberate negative campaign at scale. Hundreds of links with abusive anchors pointing at you from a coordinated network. This is rare, and it is worth checking before you assume it applies to you — most “attack” patterns turn out to be scrapers and dead directories.
4. You bought links and the purchase is continuing. A disavow file is not a fix for an ongoing practice. If you are still buying, you are creating links faster than you are removing them.
Notice what is not on the list: a site that launched two years ago, submitted to 40 directories, and has some links from low-authority pages. That site does not need a disavow file. Low-authority links are not the same as harmful links, and Google’s own position is that it generally ignores what it cannot trust rather than penalizing you for receiving it.
Why “disavow everything suspicious” backfires
The most common mistake we see is a spreadsheet audit that ends with 200 domains in a disavow file, most of them simply weak. Three things go wrong.
First, you are handing Google a list of links you no longer want credit for. If any of them were carrying value, you just removed it. There is no undo.
Second, disavow files get uploaded and forgotten. Six months later nobody remembers why a domain is in there, and the file becomes permanent infrastructure with no owner.
Third, and worst: the audit consumed the time that should have gone into building. A team that spends two weeks disavowing 200 directory links has spent two weeks not earning the links that would have moved the numbers.
A decision rule you can apply today
| Situation | Action |
|---|---|
| Links you deliberately bought, identifiable as a group | Disavow that group |
| Manual action in Search Console | Disavow + document, follow the reconsideration process |
| Links you don’t recognize, low quality, no pattern | Leave them |
| Links from a directory that still exists and describes you correctly | Leave them, consider whether to keep the listing |
| Links from a site that violates Google’s spam policies across the board | Watch it — see our note below |
| Traffic drop with links unchanged | Look at updates and technical issues first, not the backlink file |
That fifth row is worth dwelling on, and it’s a topic in its own right: when a site Google considers generally spammy links out to you, the likely outcome is not a penalty against you but the devaluation of everything it publishes. That is a different problem with a different fix, and disavowing does not address it.
The part people skip
Mueller’s advice had a step zero that gets lost in the argument: figure out what actually changed.
Before touching a disavow file, check three things. Did a confirmed or suspected algorithm update run in the window where traffic moved? Did anything technical change — robots rules, canonical tags, a CDN migration, a template deploy? And is the drop concentrated on a page cluster rather than the whole site?
If a spam update ran and your site buys links at scale, the honest diagnosis is not “the disavow file is broken.” It is that the practice you have been running has become expensive, and the fix is to change what you build going forward rather than to file paperwork about what you built in the past.
That is the more useful reading of Mueller’s answer. The tool works, in a narrow lane. The lane is smaller than most people want it to be, and the exit from that lane is a plan for links you would not need to disavow later.
The other half of the answer is the direction of travel: fewer, better placements rather than a file to clean up later. https://backlinksubmit.org is built around that shape of work — a product URL matched to relevant directories and communities from a handpicked list, manual submissions written rather than generated, and a console showing which platforms have been submitted and how each is progressing.
FAQ
Does the disavow tool still work in 2026?
Yes, according to Google’s own spokesperson, with the caveat that it applies in specific situations rather than as general hygiene.
My traffic dropped after I uploaded a disavow file. Should I remove it?
First check whether anything else changed in the same window — a spam update, a template deploy, a canonical error. Disavowing a small number of links is unlikely by itself to cost you meaningful visibility.
How many links do I need to disavow to see a difference?
There is no threshold, and treating it as a volume problem is the mistake. The relevant question is whether there is a discrete, traceable group of manipulative links, not how many links you can find that look weak.
Can I just disavow every low-DR domain?
That is the most common way to spend a week and lose whatever value those links carried. Low authority is not a violation.
What should I do if I bought directory listings from a low-quality provider?
Leave them unless they meet the criteria above, and replace the practice rather than chasing the past: build the next batch on platforms that still exist in a year, describe you accurately, and are indexed. That is a change you can verify, unlike a disavow file.
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