{"id":14829,"date":"2022-07-11T18:22:08","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T18:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginejournal.com\/any-risk-in-deleting-a-disavow-file\/457226\/"},"modified":"2022-07-11T18:22:08","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T18:22:08","slug":"any-risk-in-deleting-a-disavow-file-via-sejournal-martinibuster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/?p=14829","title":{"rendered":"Any Risk In Deleting A Disavow File? via @sejournal, @martinibuster"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Google\u2019s John Mueller answered whether it\u2019s okay to delete a disavow file since Google is so good at not counting the average junk links that sites acquire typically, through no fault or effort on the part of the website publisher.<\/p>\n

Mueller mentioned an interesting quality about these links that sets them apart from links that might cause a negative result, like a manual action.<\/p>\n

A minor quibble, the person asking the question claimed to have disavowed links for 15  years, but the disavow tool has only existed for 10 years.<\/p>\n

Disavow Tool<\/h2>\n

The disavow tool was introduced in 2012 by Google in response to the overwhelming demand of the SEO community, who wanted an easier way to deal with the thousands of sites suffering from the Penguin algorithm.<\/p>\n

Google introduced the Penguin algorithm to deal with the vast amount of manipulative links, particularly paid links, that businesses used to influence the search results in their favor.<\/p>\n

The disavow tool provided SEOs an easy way to deal with links they couldn\u2019t remove.<\/p>\n

Google only intended the tool for dealing with manual actions.<\/p>\n

The Google 2012 disavow tool announcement<\/a> advised:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cIf you\u2019ve been notified of a manual spam action based on \u201cunnatural links\u201d pointing to your site, this tool can help you address the issue.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t gotten this notification, this tool generally isn\u2019t something you need to worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Toxic Links<\/h2>\n

What tends to happen nowadays is that a publisher who is unable to objectively review their content as anything other than perfectly fine and better than their competitors looks around for a scapegoat for their poor rankings. The finger ends up pointing toward the so-called toxic links.<\/p>\n

Many people regard toxic links as random links that spammers generate to regular sites.<\/p>\n

Should An Honest Site Delete Its Disavow File?<\/h2>\n

The person asking the question wants to know if it\u2019s okay to delete a disavow to address spammy links when they haven\u2019t received a manual action.<\/p>\n

They asked:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cOver the last 15 years, I\u2019ve disavowed over 11,000 links in total.<\/p>\n

I never bought a link or did anything unallowed, like sharing.<\/p>\n

The links that I disavowed may have been from hacked sites or from nonsense, auto-generated content.<\/p>\n

Since Google now claims that they have better tools to not factor these types of hacked or spammy links into their algorithms, should I just delete my disavow file?<\/p>\n

Is there any risk or upside or downside to just deleting it?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Random Links Different From Manipulative Links<\/h2>\n

Mueller\u2019s answer focused on assuring the person that Google can distinguish between accidental and manipulative links.<\/p>\n

What stands out in his answer is how he highlights that random spammy links don\u2019t resemble the kinds of links used to manipulate search engines.<\/p>\n

Mueller answered:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cSo this is a good question, it comes up every now and then.<\/p>\n

And disavowing links is always kind of one of those tricky topics because it feels like Google is probably not telling you the full information.<\/p>\n

But from our point of view, it\u2019s actually like, we do work really hard to avoid taking these kinds of links into account.<\/p>\n

And we do that because we know that the disavow links tool is somewhat a niche tool.<\/p>\n

\u2026SEOs know about it, but the average person who runs a website has no idea about it.<\/p>\n

And all of those links that you mentioned there are kind of links that any websites gets over the years.<\/p>\n

And our systems understand that these are not things that you\u2019re trying to do to kind of like game our algorithms.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s a good answer for people trying to wrap their minds around how Google can tell the difference between random spammy links and links that can lead to a ranking penalty.<\/p>\n

Manipulative links look different from random spammy links. No legitimate website buys ten thousand links spam links to rank better.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s an easy call to make to ignore those kinds of links because according to Mueller:<\/p>\n

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\u201c\u2026our systems understand that these are not things that you\u2019re trying to do to kind of like game our algorithms.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s Okay to Delete the Disavow File<\/h2>\n

Mueller continued his answer, using the word \u201ccrufty<\/em>\u201d in reference to the random links.<\/p>\n

Cruft is a word from the programming world that means something extra or junk.<\/p>\n

Mueller wrapped up his answer:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cSo from that point of view, if you\u2019re really sure that there\u2019s nothing around like a manual action that you had to resolve with regards to these links, I would just delete the disavow file and move on with life and kind of leave all of that aside.<\/p>\n

One thing I would personally do is just download it and make a copy so that you have kind of a record of what you deleted.<\/p>\n

But otherwise, if you\u2019re sure these are just kind of the normal crufty things from the Internet, I would just delete it and move on.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s much more to spend your time on when it comes to websites than just disavowing these random things that happen to any website on the web.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Trust Google Enough to Delete the Disavow?<\/h2>\n

The main things to consider are:<\/strong><\/p>\n