Disavow file

A disavow file (disavow English for "deny" or "distance themselves from something") is a way unwanted references to the separate page for the search engine Google to devalue. In certain circumstances, incoming and poor quality links can influence the evaluation of a website by Google. Put simply, by using the disavow file, undesired backlinks can be declared invalid by Google.

The aim is to prevent negative effects in the ranking, such as a downgrade or removal of a page or domain from the Google search index. Other search engine providers such as B. Bing now offer this functionality.

history

The Disavow tool was released by Google in October 2012. The effect is that all links listed in the file are invalidated, i.e. H. can no longer be considered for the ranking. This corresponds to marking the links with nofollow .

Examples of poor quality links

Examples of poor quality links according to Google's quality guidelines are:

Links from footers and sitebars
Excessive link exchange
Bought links, even if they were "paid for" with product samples
Links from automatically generated pages
Links from inferior quality directories
Links within widgets
Forum posts or signatures with optimized anchor texts

Example setup

The following is an example of the content of a text file. Comment lines begin with a hash #. The text file must be available with UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII coding.

# example.com removed most links, but missed these
http://spam.example.com/stuff/comments.html
http://spam.example.com/stuff/paid-links.html
# Contacted owner of shadyseo.com on 7/1/2012 to
# ask for link removal but got no response
domain:shadyseo.com

application

To implement this, a text file (with the file extension ".txt") with the links to be invalidated must be created and uploaded from the Google Search Console for the domain in question using the "Declare links for invalid" tool . The size of the disavow file must be within a certain limit: it must be less than 100,000 lines and less than 2 MB at the same time. When uploading the disavow file, Google issues the following warning: " This is an advanced feature and should be used with caution. If used improperly, it could have a detrimental effect on your website's performance in Google search results. " For this reason, it is recommended that this process be done with caution.

Disavow files must be submitted separately for each subdomain and for each transmission protocol (http and https).

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Google Support: invalidating backlinks - Search Console help. Retrieved March 7, 2018 .
↑ Google Webmaster Central Blog: A new tool to disavow links
↑ Google: Webmaster Guidelines from Google. Google, accessed March 7, 2018 .
↑ https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=de
↑ invalidate backlinks - Search Console help. Retrieved July 11, 2019 .
↑ Google: Disavow-Tool - declare links to be invalid. Retrieved March 9, 2018 .
↑ Disavow-Tool.de: file format of the Disavow files. Retrieved August 25, 2020 .

[googlesupport-1] Google Support: invalidating backlinks - Search Console help. Retrieved March 7, 2018 .

[2] Google Webmaster Central Blog: A new tool to disavow links

[3] Google: Webmaster Guidelines from Google. Google, accessed March 7, 2018 .

[4] ttps://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=de

[5] invalidate backlinks - Search Console help. Retrieved July 11, 2019 .

[6] Google: Disavow-Tool - declare links to be invalid. Retrieved March 9, 2018 .

[7] Disavow-Tool.de: file format of the Disavow files. Retrieved August 25, 2020 .