Backlinks are essential for SEO, but not all backlinks are beneficial. While good quality backlinks will boost your rankings and reputation, bad backlinks will have the opposite effect, damaging your site’s visibility and reputation.

Search engines like Google view these spam links as a sign of low-value or spam content, which is punished with ranking. Statistics show that top-ranked pages comprise much larger backlinks, but quality over quantity is essential.

In this guide, we will examine what toxic backlinks are, how to identify them, and how to eliminate them. By removing harmful links, you can ensure that your site has a positive and healthy link profile.

What Are Toxic Backlinks?

Toxic backlinks are inbound links that harm a site’s search rankings rather than improve them. Toxic links typically come from low-authority, spammy, and irrelevant websites and violate Google’s link spam policies.

Google evaluates backlinks to determine a website’s trust and authority. While good links from reputable websites can enhance your SEO, poor links can have the opposite consequence, potentially damaging your site’s reputation on search engine results pages.

To combat manipulative link schemes, Google’s algorithm demotes suspicious backlinks. However, if a site accumulates many harmful links, it may face a manual penalty, meaning it has engaged in link spam.

A manual penalty has severe consequences like rank drops, loss of organic traffic, or even de-indexing from Google’s search results. Hence, conducting periodic backlink audits and cleaning up spam links is necessary to maintain your SEO profile in good health.

  • Opposite view:
Others argue that Google is more inclined to ignore poisonous backlinks rather than penalize websites therefore, they are less problematic. Instead of spending time deleting them, producing quality content and natural linking could be better for SEO.

Expert opinion

Having a healthy backlink profile is great for your website rankings.

Kate Starr

Freelance Content Writer

The Harmful Effects of Toxic Backlinks

Toxic backlinks can drastically harm a site’s search engine ranking by signaling to Google that the site uses manipulative link-building practices. 

While higher-ranked pages do have more backlinks, 3.8 times more, on average, than lower-ranked pages, quality is more important than quantity. Having many bad backlinks from spam or irrelevant sites will penalize a site, and such penalties come in the form of lower rankings, less organic traffic, and even de-indexing by search engines.

Toxic backlinks undermine the credibility of a website both for search engines and users. As soon as Google detects unnatural link patterns, it may algorithmically downgrade the website or apply a manual penalty, from which it is difficult to recover in terms of lost rankings. 

How to Find Bad Backlinks

Detecting toxic backlinks is crucial for a healthy backlink profile and safeguarding your SEO performance. Toxic links can dilute your site’s authority and even result in penalties when not addressed.

The following are two efficient ways to identify bad backlinks:

Option 1: Identify Bad Backlinks Manually

Manual backlink checkup means checking every link that links to your site. It takes a long time, but it tells you about your link profile and reveals toxic backlinks.

Start by logging into Google Search Console (GSC). Under “Links,” click “MORE” for “Top linking sites” to see all the sites linking to your site. From here, you can search and see which of your site’s pages are being backlinked to and from which sites.

Watch out for warning signs like low-quality websites, spam websites or automated content, too many adverts, and unrelated websites that link to yours. Watch out for websites that have no contact information, have a lot of broken links (404 errors), or look old, as they may be suspicious.

After verification, identify the spam backlinks and see if they are from link farms, spam directories, or irrelevant sources. You can then ask website owners to remove them or use Google’s Disavow Tool to prevent them from affecting your rankings.

  • Important:
When reviewing backlinks, prioritize those with the highest potential risk—links from entirely unrelated industries or sites with excessive outbound links are often the most harmful. Removing these first can have a quicker impact on your SEO.

Option 2: Use a Bad Backlink Checker

The easiest way to scan for spam links is by using a backlink audit tool. Semrush Backlink Audit simplifies how you analyze and manage your backlinks.

Enter your site URL into the tool and choose “Start Backlink Audit.” Continue with the setup steps, and if you have Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or Majestic integrated, connect them under “Integrations” for better results.

Once complete, go to the “Audit” report to see signaled backlinks. Semrush gives each link a Toxicity Score (TS) from 0-100—higher, and the link will be more dangerous. Click a score to learn why it’s been labeled as “Dangerous” or “Potentially dangerous.”

Source: Semrush

Here’s what to check:

  • Anchor Text: It is unnatural if the anchor text is exact-match keywords or brand + keywords combination.
  • Authority Score (AS): The higher the score (0-100), the more authoritative the site is, with a lower score suggesting that the site is spammy.
  • Source Website: Click on the link and view if the website looks legitimate.

If a link is safe, move it to the Whitelist. If it is malicious, place it on the Remove List for future action.

How to Remove Toxic Backlinks

When you find a toxic backlink, the first thing to do is to notify the webmaster and ask them to remove it or use a rel=\”nofollow\” tag. This tells search engines not to pass any rank value through the link.

If the site owner won’t or can’t take down the link, you’ll have to disavow it. Be careful; disavowing bad links when you shouldn’t will hurt your rankings.

Request Link Removals

After identifying poisonous backlinks in the Backlink Audit tool, go to the Remove report to see the marked links. First, connect your business email by clicking “Add” beside “Mailbox:” and completing the setup instructions. This allows you to send removal requests directly from the tool.

Then, choose a backlink to attack. Begin with the most poisonous ones since they are the worst. Check for the contact information of the referring domain. Semrush can direct you to the website’s contact page or social handles. If not, you may visit the site to obtain an email address.

Once you have gotten the contact information, click “Send” to write your email. Use a clear and polite message saying where the backlink is, that you would prefer it be deleted, and why keeping the message concise will ensure a response.

On sending, check the Status column to view if the mail was sent, delivered, opened, or replied to. If there is no feedback after a few business days, you can click “Resend” so that a reminder can be mailed. You can also use the “Access link” column to check if the backlink got deleted.

If the poisoned backlink remains after a few weeks, you may be forced to disavow it (see below before taking action).

Disavow Toxic Backlinks

Disavowing links is asking Google to ignore specific backlinks so they do not affect your SEO. However, Google suggests not doing so except if you obtained a manual action for unnatural backlinks or purchased links earlier. 

If you proceed, go to your “Remove” list under Backlink Audit. Select the backlinks you wish to disavow, then click the “Disavow” icon. It is best to disavow an entire domain rather than one specific URL. It removes all spam links from a domain and prevents the issues from reappearing in the future.

Once you have compiled your list, head to the “Disavow” tab and select “Export to TXT.” Next, upload this file to Google’s Disavow Tool. Afterward, return to Backlink Analytics and confirm the upload by selecting “Yes, I uploaded the file.” This will invoke the tool to recompute your site’s Toxicity Score.

If you were issued a manual action, you must also ask for reconsideration in Google Search Console through the Manual Actions report. It will take weeks or even months for Google to process the disavowed file, and it may take some time before you notice any impact on your SEO.

  • Summary
First, request the site owner to remove or place a rel=\”nofollow\” tag to disavow toxic backlinks. If this doesn’t work, use the disavow tool cautiously, as misuse can damage rankings. Start by locating malicious links in Backlink Audit, sending removal requests via email, and following up if required. 

If links keep rolling in, disavow them at a domain level, submit the file of disavows to Google, and request reconsideration when you have a manual action. See weeks or months before the SEO gets an improvement.

Conclusion

Toxic backlinks significantly threaten your website’s search visibility but can be regulated methodically. Prioritizing high-quality backlinks and disposing of harmful ones guarantees long-term SEO stability.

Periodic backlink audits and judicious use of the disavow tool protect your rankings. Instead of worrying about every bad link, create authoritative, organic links that reinforce your website’s credibility.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, toxic backlinks can negatively affect your site’s SEO by lowering its rank or even deleting it from Google’s search results. If Google determines too many spammy or fake links, your website can be penalized, and you can observe a drastic reduction in organic traffic.

You might also manually audit your backlinks via Google Search Console under “Links.” However, tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz can identify spammy or low-quality backlinks by providing detailed toxicity scores to better analyze them.

Not always. Google will ignore some spammy links, so they don’t always hurt your website. But if you’re getting a lot of bad links or receive a manual penalty, you must act to remove or disavow them.

Google’s algorithm is created to avoid most of the low-quality backlinking so they may not necessarily damage your site. However, suppose you’ve been inherited with a manual penalty for unnatural links by Google. In that case, you need to put some effort into removing or disavowing them in order for your ranking to be restored.

It is recommended to check your backlink profile regularly, every 3-6 months, to maintain a healthy one. Regular checks allow you to identify toxic links early and take action against them before they affect your search rankings.