“Toxic backlinks” is mostly a term from SEO tools, not from Google. Some links really can hurt you, but far fewer than most tools suggest.
What counts as a toxic link
- Links you bought or built in bulk: PBNs, link farms, spammy directories
- Links from hacked sites or pages stuffed with hundreds of outbound links
- Lots of exact-match anchors from unrelated sites
- Links that are part of a link scheme Google has already flagged
Random spam is usually ignored
Every site attracts junk links from scrapers and spam bots. Google says it ignores most of these. A high “toxic score” in a tool isn’t a reason to panic.
When to disavow
Use Google’s disavow tool when you have a manual action for unnatural links in Search Console, or when you know you (or a previous agency) built a large number of manipulative links. Not for random spam.
How to disavow links
- Export your backlinks from Search Console and an SEO tool.
- List the domains you’re confident are part of a link scheme.
- Create a text file with one entry per line, e.g.
domain:spammy-site.com. - Upload it in Google’s disavow tool for your property.
Disavowing good links can hurt your rankings. When in doubt, leave it out.