Filing link disavows is generally a futile way to deal with spammy links, but they are useful for dealing with unnatural links an SEO or a publisher is responsible for creating, which can require urgent action. But how long does Google take to process them? Someone asked John Mueller that exact question, and his answer provides insight into how link disavows are handled internally at Google.
Google’s Link Disavow Tool
The link disavow tool is a way for publishers and SEOs to manage unwanted backlinks that they don’t want Google to count against them. It literally means that the publisher disavows the links.
The tool was created by Google in response to requests by SEOs for an easy way to disavow paid links they were responsible for obtaining and were unable to remove from the websites in which they were placed. The link disavow tool is accessible via the Google Search Console and enables users to upload a spreadsheet with a list of URLs or domains from which they want links to not count against them in Google’s index.
Google’s official guidance for the disavow tool has always been that it’s for use by SEOs and publishers who want to disavow paid or otherwise unnatural links that they are responsible for obtaining and are unable to have removed. Google expressly says that the vast majority of sites do not need to use the tool, especially for low quality links for which they have nothing to do with.
How Google Processes The Link Disavow Tool
A person asked Mueller on Blue Sky for details about how Google processed the newly added links.
He posted:
“When we add domains to the disavow, i.e top up the list. Can I assume the new domains are treated separately as new additions.
You don’t reprocess the whole thing?”
John Mueller answered that the order of the domains and URLs on the list didn’t matter.
His response:
“The order in the disavow file doesn’t matter. We don’t process the file per-se (it’s not an immediate filter of “the index”), we take it into account when we recrawl other sites naturally.”
The answer is interesting because he says that Google doesn’t process the link disavow file “per-se” and what he likely means is that it’s not acted on in that moment. The “filtering” of that disavowed link happens at the time when a subsequent crawling happens.
So another way to look at it is that the link disavow file doesn’t trigger anything, but the data contained in the file is acted upon during the normal course of crawling.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Luis Molinero
