Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How long does it take Google to remove links after using disavow tool?
-
Hi guys,
So we're currently in the process of removing some of the less useful and more suspect links from our profile, and used the Google disavow tool to do so.
We uploaded the .txt file to the search console on 7th July this year, 2 months ago now, and according to our most recent site crawl, the suspect links are still showing up on our link profile.
Do we have any idea how long this is roughly supposed to take? The ideas I've found online are conflicting - anything from 3-4 weeks to 6-9 months. Which is it? Is there any way of fast-tracking this process?
Thanks!
-
You should only use a disavow tool if you are losing traffic or got a penalty. The Disavow tool is working, but it takes time for Google to stop counting these links. As Paddy said, these links will always stay, you cannot remove them by disavowing them.
-
Hi Stephen,
Thanks for the question.
When you use the disavow tool, it's still possible for the disavowed links to appear in Google Search Console and never be removed. The disavow tool just means that Google may choose to disregard the links from their link graph for ranking purposes. There isn't really any sure-fire way to know if the disavowed links are actually ignored or not, unfortunately.
The time it takes to process the file is also a bit of an unknown but generally speaking, it may be whenever Google recrawl those links and then they can decide whether to ignore them or not. Either way, when the file is processed, the links may remain in your Search Console reports.
I hope that helps a bit!
Paddy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What are the best link-building strategies for 2024, considering Google's evolving algorithms?
Link-building remains a crucial part of SEO, but with Google's algorithms constantly evolving, many traditional techniques are becoming less effective. I'm interested in learning about the latest link-building strategies that are expected to be successful in 2024. What approaches or tools should we focus on to ensure our efforts align with Google's current best practices and avoid potential penalties?
Link Building | | Ibrahim-Khuzam0 -
Should I disavow these links?
Hi all, I have a ski website that I am currently performing a toxic backlink audit on. I have noted that a lot of the links being flagged as toxic/spammy by the tool I am using seem to be the same/similar sites with different URLs. The sites are vaguely related to skiing (relating to helicopter travel options for travelling to ski resorts) but it is concerning me that there are so many of them and they are being flagged as so toxic.
Link Building | | SolveWebMedia
Do you think it is worth disavowing these? Or contacting the owner to ask them to remove the link? I have included an example of some of the links below. https://www.cannes-helicopters.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://nice-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5 Slightly different site but same favicon icon:
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://www.whitetracks-holidays.com/Helicopter_Transfers_Villars_Switzerland.htm Thanks in advance for any advice / help!0 -
Value of Links? What is each link worth?
Morning Everyone, I just had this thought and wondered what everyone's opinions were in terms of link value in monetary terms. We'll assume for the purposes of this that the links come from contextually relevant sites and that the sites in question have got the Moz DA from being high quality and have a good quality incoming link profile. Its a bit of a theoretical question, but i guess imagine if the only way you could get links was to pay for them, what would they be worth to you. This is link value for SEO purposes, they will have in addition value from traffic from good sites, that no doubt varies wildly depending on topic. I assume everyone also agrees on: The first link from a domain is the most valuable High DA sites are worth more than low ones. So could anyone who has an opinion on the link value suggest a monetary value for links. Its really just using a monetary amount to see how best to target my time. Here is my example of what might be expected, but I am hoping people with more knowledge will perhaps correct it. DA Rating First Link 2nd-5th Link 5th-10th Link 10Plus Links 5 $5 $2 $1 $0 15 $7 $3 $2 $1 25 $25 $10 $5 $2 35 $45 $20 $7 $3 45 $65 $30 $11 $4 55 $95 $45 $19 $5 65 $200 $100 $45 $6 75 $350 $120 $65 $9 85 $700 $240 $95 $15 95 $1100 $450 $200 $30
Link Building | | wellandpower1 -
Has anyone used Fat Joe as an outsource solution for blog links?
Hi guys, I have seen a company on social media a lot recently who offer a guest blog posting service. It seems to be reasonable quality from the reviews and the blurb they give as they at least seem to find you a relevant blogger to match up with, actually write good content with as many reviews as is needed and then post it to just that one page. I noticed on their site they have claimed that their service is Loved by Moz but I couldn't find any reference to them anywhere on the Moz site. My question is - has anyone used them and are the links going to be any good for my site?
Link Building | | OrderBlinds1 -
Drop in Rankings After Removing Links
So I removed some links to a particular homepage for one of the sites we own, this page had A LOT of links pointing to it using exact match anchors. And for the most part the links were coming from low quality pages/content. After removing a good chunk of them I noticed are rankings went down from around 8-9th two weeks ago to 21 as of today. Has anyone else had a problem like this before? I'm thinking about restoring some of these links now to see if I can recover some of that. Any thoughts on doing this? Thanks
Link Building | | ThridHour0 -
Google Disavow File Update
Is there any specific format to update the Disavow file? Also if I submitted the file a months ago, and need to update it now... should I leave the old 'excluded domains' or should I remove them? Lets say this is what I have: How would you update it? #explanation from to Google went here... and ended here.
Link Building | | dhidalgo1
"domain:exampledomainalreadysubmitted1.com"
"domain:exampledomainalreadysubmitted2.com"
"domain:exampledomainalreadysubmitted3.com" Thanks for your input0 -
Are links with space considered to be the same as links with %20?
I wonder if Google would consider those three links to be the same? http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test+page.html
Link Building | | lucek0 -
Link Detox and Link Removal
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png
Link Building | | CobraJones950