In SEO, disavow usually refers to the action of rejecting or discarding harmful backlinks to your site. It is an available action in Google Search Console that can help you fix, or prevent your site from getting, a manual action.

When you have a manual action against your site due to unnatural links – or if you think you are in risk of getting one due to a backlink scheme – you can disavow these links. Doing so tells Google that you don’t want them to take these links into account when assessing your site.

Disavowing, then, removes harmful links from Google’s consideration.

When to use Google’s disavow tool?

You might want to disavow malicious links when:
• Your site receives a manual penalty.
• Your site receives an algorithmic penalty.
• When you detect toxic backlinks on your site’s link profile.

How to use Google’s disavow tool?

Usually, Google does a good job of figuring out which links to trust without additional input, so you won’t be using this tool regularly. Try and only use the tool when you believe your site has a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links, or to remove links that triggered a manual action.

To use the tool, just put together a list with all the links you want to disavow in a text file, and upload that file on the disavow link tool page.

Do keep in mind that it can take a few weeks for Google to process the information you uploaded.