A year after officially closing down the old version of Google Search Console, Google announced that it has migrated the disavow link tool from the old Search Console to the new Search Console.
Where is the disavow link tool? The new location for the disavow link tool is now at https://search.google.com/search-console/disavow-links. Previously it was located at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main. Both URLs still seem to work, but I suspect Google will redirect the old URL to the new one.
What is new? The big change is the new location, but Google also updated the interface for the tool. You can now also download a disavow file as a text file, and there is a new error reports for uploaded files are no longer limited to 10 errors.
Why use the disavow link tool? If you are concerned that you have bad links pointing to your site that may end up hurting your site’s performance in Google Search, you can give Google a list of URLs or domains you would like Google to ignore. This can be done for manual actions but likely is not needed, according to Google, for algorithmic issues since Google primarily just ignores bad links, as opposed penalizes for them algorithmically.
“If you have a manual action against your site for unnatural links, or if you think that you’re about to get one because of paid links or link schemes that violate our quality guidelines, ask the other site to remove those links,” said Google. “If you can’t get these links removed, then disavow those sites using this tool.”
Before. This is what the tool looked like before:
After. This is what the tool looks like now:
More information. The disavow link tool first launched in Search Console only 8 years ago, in 2012. So it is a relatively new feature for Search Console’s standards. But it has been a controversial tool over the years. Should you use it, when do you use it, how should you use it and does Google use the lists to harm sites. The answer is, you probably should just use it if you cannot get out of a manual action related to unnatural links pointing to your web site.
Why we care. Many SEOs and SEO firms use the disavow tool. Knowing the location has changed is important and understand the small changes Google made to the tool with the migration is also important.
