A user posted on Reddit describing a ranking drop after using Google’s Disavow Tool, asking for advice on recovery.
Here’s what he wrote on reddit:
“Accidentally Disavowed Valuable Backlinks — Lost My #3 Ranking. How Can I Recover?”
John Mueller replied on reddit:
There’s a lot of hate on the disavow tool here – but it has its place & time, it does have effects. That said, disavowing a handful of links is not going to make your site drop out of search, so a) I’d fix the disavow file to be what you really need/want it to be (which might be empty, or might not be empty), and b) I’d look for other potential reasons. For example, there was a broader spam update which might have happened at around that time (I don’t recall the actual date, and you don’t mention a date in your post). If it’s the case the at it aligns with the spam update, to set expectations, fixing issues around bigger algorithmic changes can take quite some time – sometimes many months – until you see the effects. Another cause I’d look into more deeply is broad & big technical issues (not “oops, wrong canonical” but more like “oops, blocked the whole site”), just to rule out that it’s something easier to fix.
This is a useful reminder that disavowing a small number of links is unlikely to cause a major ranking drop on its own. Google’s response points toward other possible causes worth investigating first including whether the drop coincides with a broader spam update, or whether a larger technical issue on the site might be the real culprit.
