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…
LinksBad linksSpammy backlinks
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 simply ignores links it distrusts.
In full
Because Google's systems neutralise rather than punish most low-quality links, mass disavowing on the basis of a tool's toxicity score is unnecessary and can remove links that were helping. The genuine risk cases are narrow: a live manual action, or a known history of paid or networked link buying. Otherwise, toxicity scores are best read as a prompt to investigate, not a verdict.
Example
A tool flags 4,000 'toxic' links from scraper sites; no manual action exists, so the site leaves them alone and they have no measurable effect.
Related terms
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…
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 profile
The aggregate characteristics of all links pointing to a site: source diversity, anchor text distribution, follow ratio, topical relevance…