Why Disavow Won't Work
Why Google Ignores Disavow Tool Requests?
Not all links submitted via Disavow tool would be considered by Google. Find out the reasons when it may consider keeping them.
11th Jul 24 | 5 mins read
By Sannidhi
Yesterday, Cyrus Shepard published an interesting (and an important topic to understand) article I Disavowed Every Link To My Website. Here’s What Happened. He conducted an experiment to see the effect of the disavow tool on his website's traffic by disavowing every inbound link to it, even though he hadn't received any manual action in Google Search Console (GSC). The result? Nothing happened. He didn't notice any decline in traffic, and the website continued to function as usual under Google. But why was there no effect? I explored the subject and developed a few hypotheses, which I present in this article.
Background
When I read the title, I was curious about the duration of the disavowed links—Cyrus ran the experiment for two months. That was goog-enough for any potential impact on visibility (and thus traffic) and rankings to manifest. However, nothing happened, despite the site having good referring domains and links, including from high-quality sites.
He mentioned a reason he believed this occurred: "Here’s what I believe happened: Google didn’t trust this disavow file." Here's a screenshot of the excerpt:
Hypotheses
I started to wonder why the action didn't affect visibility and rankings, which are highly influenced by backlinks, especially from reputable sources. Here are my thoughts:
No Manual Action: The website didn't receive a manual action. This is important to consider because Google may not process a disavow request unless there is a substantial number of links violating its spam policy, which could negatively affect the quality of search results. This is why SEOs shouldn't bother disavowing links unless there's a manual action reported in GSC.
Trusted Site: Given Cyrus's and his company's background, his website is likely on Google's trusted list due to its E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) factors. Therefore, investing processing resources on a reputable website with a mostly clean backlink profile may not be worthwhile for Google.
Google's Business Perspective: This is perhaps the most crucial point. To understand this, consider Google's perspective. There are numerous high-quality sites like Cyrus's that Google benefits from. If Google devalued these sites based on disavow requests (whether intentional or unintentional), it would be a significant loss for it. Why? Because Google needs to showcase results from such high-quality sites to satisfy its users, which ultimately affects its revenue. Hence, even though Cyrus disavowed the links, Google maintained them for the benefit of its system and business. Now you should be able to understand the point it mentioned "...Google reserves the right to trust our own judgment for corner cases..." which can be seen in earlier screenshot. So, it's not always just technical and non-technical aspects that are considered for SEO; Google's business perspective is also crucial.
Conclusion
Cyrus Shepard's disavow links experiment sparked my thought process about why Google might ignore disavow requests. If a high-quality site submits a request to remove quality links via the Disavow tool, it should be considered only as a hint. It's Google's discretion to take action as it deems fit for its business. Therefore, not all links submitted via the tool may be ignored.
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Image credit: Signage.