Should You Really Disavow Toxic Links After a Google Core Update?

Google Core Updates are major algorithm updates that occur approximately every 3 months. Contrary to popular belief, these updates do not specifically target a site's link profile.

According to Google engineers, these updates primarily focus on evaluating content quality. If your site loses traffic following a Core Update, the cause is typically found in the quality of your content, not in your backlinks.

This means that using the disavow file or frantically cleaning up your link profile will likely have no impact on recovering traffic lost during a Core Update.

• Core Updates evaluate content quality, not netlinking
• No need to disavow links after traffic loss related to a Core Update
• Toxic links are not the factor penalized by these updates
• The average frequency is one Core Update every 3 months

This statement is consistent with field observations over several years. Sites that recover after a Core Update generally do so by improving their content, not by cleaning up their backlinks.

However, be careful: this does not mean that netlinking has become unimportant. Links remain a major ranking factor, but they are simply not specifically reevaluated during Core Updates. A toxic link profile can still negatively impact your site, but through other algorithmic mechanisms than Core Updates.

In practice, this information allows you to better prioritize recovery actions: focus first on improving content after a Core Update rather than wasting time on link disavowal.

Following this official clarification, here's how to adapt your SEO strategy in case of traffic loss during a Core Update:

• First analyze your content quality: relevance, depth, demonstrated expertise, information freshness
• Don't waste time on link disavowal immediately after a Core Update, it's not the cause
• Evaluate your content according to E-E-A-T criteria (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)
• Identify "thin" content or low-quality content that may drag the entire site down
• Improve or remove weak pages rather than massively creating new content
• Verify search intent: does your content truly answer what users are looking for?
• Continue your netlinking strategy normally: links remain important for SEO in general
• Reserve disavowing for specific cases: manual actions, proven negative SEO attacks, or clearly artificial link campaigns