Toxic links
A vendor term for backlinks judged harmful by a third-party tool's scoring; Google has repeatedly said it has no such classification and…
LinksDisavow file
Disavow links tool
A Search Console tool for asking Google to ignore specified inbound links or domains, intended for sites with a link-related manual action or known paid links.
In full
The tool accepts a plain-text file of URLs and `domain:` entries. Google's own guidance is that most sites never need it, because its systems already discount untrusted links, and that careless use can hurt by disavowing links that were passing value. It is not a general hygiene routine: the legitimate use cases are recovering from a manual action or pre-emptively disclosing links you or a previous agency paid for.
Example
After buying links, a new owner uploads a disavow file listing the 60 purchased domains and files a reconsideration request.
Related terms
Manual action
A demotion or removal applied by a human reviewer at Google for a spam policy violation, reported in Search Console with a reconsideration…
Link spam
Google's spam policy category covering links intended to manipulate rankings: buying or selling links, excessive exchanges, automated link…
Negative SEO
Attempts to damage a competitor's rankings, typically by pointing spam links at their site, scraping their content, or fabricating removal…
Google Search Console
Google's free property-level reporting and diagnostics service covering search performance, indexing status, enhancements, manual actions…