Google Addresses Concerns About Massive Disavow Lists

July 15, 2024 at 12:46:03 PM

TL;DR Google's John Mueller addressed concerns about large disavow lists on LinkedIn, reassuring SEO professionals and website owners. Michael Martucci asked if extensive disavow files could negatively impact a website or if removing them could cause harm. Mueller's response was "Zero," indicating no concern is needed for either scenario. His guidance suggests that having or removing a large disavow list is unlikely to affect a site's performance.

Google Addresses Concerns About Massive Disavow Lists

Google's Search Advocate, John Mueller, addressed concerns about large disavow lists on LinkedIn, providing reassurance to SEO professionals and website owners. Michael Martucci asked whether extensive disavow files, containing tens of thousands of domains, could negatively impact a website or if removing such a list could harm the website. Mueller's succinct response was "Zero", indicating no concern in either scenario.

Key Points:

Impact of Large Disavow Lists: Having a large number of domains in a disavow file is unlikely to negatively affect a website's performance in Google search results.
Removing Disavow Lists: Removing an extensive disavow list is also unlikely to harm the website's search performance.
Google's Advice: Mueller's response aligns with Google's longstanding advice that the disavow tool should be used sparingly and primarily for addressing manual actions or known bad links.

This guidance reassures SEO professionals and website owners that managing disavow lists, even extensive ones, is not a critical factor in a site's search performance.