On October 29, 2021, during the Google SEO Office-Hour Hangout meeting, the relation of disavow tool and ranking became the main topic for the day. Google’s Search advocate and host of the meeting, John Mueller, was asked about a bad experience from using the Disavow tool.
A person with concern uploaded a disavow file, and their ranking dropped within a few days.
Mueller answered various questions on the subject matter and then unfolded the timing of uploading invalid files and following changes in ranking. Meanwhile, he also talks about how much time Google takes to process disavow in the algorithm.
Contents
Disavow File Affects Ranking Within Days?
The person asked various questions about why uploading a disavow file might have resulted in a complete drop in ranking; this also reflects other views.
The most crucial question was whether using a disavow file is a wrong signal of its own and how much time it takes to toss out the “black flag” using the Disavow tool.
The exact question was:
“Does using the disavow tool raise a flag in the algorithm and trigger a soft penalty on a website for possibly engaging in link building in the past?
We’ve used this tool to remove hundreds of spammy links, and our site collapsed a few days later.
Should we remove the disavow tool, and how long will it take for a site to return to normal traffic and ranking?
Or is there a permanent black mark against this website for using the disavow tool?”
Mueller’s Explanations:
Mueller clarified that there is no penalty for using the Disavow tool itself.
He said:
“No, there is no penalty or black flag or sign or anything related to the use of the denial tool.”
He further added that a denial tool is a technical tool that indicates links that the publisher does not want to link to their site in Google’s systems and that’s it.
He also assured the publisher that the links in the disapproved tool do not indicate past bad behavior as it is often just the links that the publisher is worried about.
“And that doesn’t mean you created those links. It could be something you found where you’re worried that Google might find the wrong image for your website.”
No Need To Use Disavow Tool For Random Links
Mueller reassured the person that if they discover any random links, there is no need to use the Disavow tool. But, if they do think that it’s from the publisher, they recommend using the disavow tool.
“But if you’re seeing something where you’re saying, well, I definitely didn’t do this, and if someone from Google manually were to look at my website, they might assume that I did this, then it might make sense to use the disavow tool.”
A Disavow File Is Not An Acceptance Of The Guilt Of Link building.
According to Google, filing the disavow is not considered an endorsement of past mistakes in link building.
“…it doesn’t mean that you did it or it’s not a kind of a sign that oh you’re admitting that you’re admitting that you were doing link games in the past.”
Mueller also assured that for Google, once the site is cleared of manual actions, there doesn’t exist any memory of past mistakes after that.
“From our point of view, if you’ve cleaned up an issue, then you’ve cleaned up that issue. With some kinds of issues, it takes a little bit longer for things to settle down. Just because we have to reprocess everything associated with the website, which takes a bit of time.
But it’s not the case that there is any kind of like a grudge in our algorithms that’s holding back a site.”
Does Disavow Tool Affect SERPs/Ranking Within Days?
For this exciting question, Mueller responded with:
“With regards to this particular case, where you’re saying you submitted a disavow file, and then the ranking dropped, or the visibility dropped, especially a few days later, I would assume that that is not related.
So, in particular with the disavow file, what happens is we take that file into account. But only when we reprocess the links kind of pointing to your website. And this is a process that happens incrementally over a period of time where I would expect it would have an effect over the course of… I don’t know… maybe three, four, five, six months …kind of step by step going in that direction.
So if you’re saying that you saw an effect within a couple of days and it was a really strong effect. Then, I would assume that this effect is completely unrelated to the disavow file. …it sounds like you still haven’t figured out what might be causing this.”
So, Mueller Confirmed that it takes a long time for a disavow file to correlate with an algorithm to the rankings. And just because you saw some changes following your actions doesn’t necessarily mean that there is only one possible explanation for that outcome.
The reason you are thinking of might be a coincidence.
There could be any possible reason, therefore don’t jump to conclusions and try to find accurate explanations.