How to Use Google’s Shiny New Disavow Tool

Don’t. Certainly not now and possibly not ever.

Sure, it’s shiny and new and you want to touch it. Step away from the button. There are many reasons not to disavow that last pesky half dozen links you’ve been trying to remove for three months, two weeks, six days and nine hours:

1. Why Be the Guinea Pig?- You do not and cannot know what is going to happen when you upload that file (with or without commented-out confessions and declarations of piety) and click the button. It may be a disaster. Of course you could then write a great case study and earn the gratitude of the legions, but wouldn’t it be a lot less stressful to wait and read that blog when someone else writes it? Yes, I know, their grammar might not be as good as yours and their insistence on referring to themselves in the third person drives you nuts, but it’s going to be them (or more likely their clients) who have suffered a double-dip disaster, not yours.

2. You Ain’t No Grass, Right?– Not that those doggone dirty so-and-so’s don’t deserve to be taught a lesson for trying to bill you to remove links you already paid them to build, but do you really want to be policing this part of the internet on Google’s behalf? Isn’t there something better, less frustrating and more constructive you could be doing with your time? Remember that just because it’s called a disavow links tool doesn’t mean that’s its only purpose. You’re smarter than that.

3. Hey! Look At Me! I Confess! – You haven’t had a manual penalty notice, but you’re convinced that dastardly Penguin is to blame for your slump in rankings/traffic/mojo and you’ve found the links responsible! If only – you advise your clients – Google had a link revocation facility then everything would be fine. Alas! After receiving your list it didn’t take long for that cunning Penguin to discover that perhaps there were more skeletons in the closet than you cared to admit. Oh dear.

But Iain!, I hear you say, What about the shininess? And the newness? And won’t my clients all be ever so impressed if I appear to know all there is to know about this untested, unmonitored, unknowable tool? Yes, probably they will, particularly if they have no insight into how SEO works. Is impressing your clients with your knowledge and a little sprinkling of jargon you know they can’t understand top of your list of priorities? Will they still be impressed when your promised cure-all is ineffective?

Just leave it alone. At least for now. If you don’t, if you act on assumptions and not data, good luck to you. You’re going to need it.