Consider disavowing

Domains listed in the consider disavowing list are principal referrer or shared referrer domains that should be considered for disavowing with Google because backlinks from these domains may actually harm the principal domain's ranking. These domains must meet a variety of eligibility criteria, one of which may be having elevated spam score.

Eligibility criteria

Typically, but not exclusively, to appear in the consider disavowing list, a domain must:

A domain can also appear in this list because it appears in the automatic consider disavowing list.

For example, in the following illustration, domains A, B, C, D, E, and F all have a distance of 1 from the principal domain (which appears at the centre):

One of these domains is immediately ineligible:

In the main visualisation of a report interactive, the 'Spam score' view re-colours the domains to indicate their spam score. Dark grey indicates a zero score (the best), and then bands from yellow to red indicate progressively higher scores.

Domains C and E have a Spam score of zero, which makes them unlikey to appear in the consider disavowing list. Domain F has a Spam score in the 31-59 range, but it is in the whitelist. So, only domains A and D are likely to appear in the consider disavowing list (but they will have to meet additional criteria).

Visualising the consider disavowing list

In the report interactive, Quick analysis > Consider disavowing applies the spam score palette to domains in the consider disavowing list, and dims all other domains.

You can also use Explore further > Special > Consider disavowing to put red rings around domains in the consider disavowing list (this does not override the currently selected palette).

Viewing the consider disavowing list domains

The consider_disavowing worksheet in the data tables (MS Excel file) for a report contains full details of all domains in the consider disavowing list.