Disavow file format

Google lists the rules below the heading “Link file format” on its help page Disavow links to your site. Each quotation in this list comes from that page.

• “Specify one URL or domain to disavow per line. You cannot disavow an entire subpath, such as example.com/en/” (Search Console Help, fetched 10 October 2026)
• “To disavow a domain (or subdomain) prefix it with "domain:", for example: domain:example.com” (Search Console Help, fetched 10 October 2026)
• “The file must be a text file encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII” (Search Console Help, fetched 10 October 2026)
• “The file name must end in .txt” (Search Console Help, fetched 10 October 2026)
• “Maximum URL length is 2,048 characters” (Search Console Help, fetched 10 October 2026)
• “Maximum file size is 100,000 lines (including blank lines and comment lines) and 2MB.” (Search Console Help, fetched 10 October 2026)
• “You can include comments if you like by starting a line with a # mark. Any lines that begin with # will be ignored by Google.” (Search Console Help, fetched 10 October 2026)

Google gives no number of bytes for 2MB. The checker shows the size of your text in bytes. It compares that size with 2,000,000 bytes and with 2,097,152 bytes. These two numbers are a check of this page and not a Google rule.

This example is on the same help page (Search Console Help, fetched 10 October 2026).

# Two pages to disavow
http://spam.example.com/stuff/comments.html
http://spam.example.com/stuff/paid-links.html

# One domain to disavow
domain:shadyseo.com

The checker gives no error and no warning for this example.

An error is a line or a text that does not agree with a rule that Google states.

• The text has more than 100,000 lines. Blank lines and comment lines count.
• A URL has more than 2,048 characters.
• A line has a space or a tab between two parts. Google asks for one URL or domain on each line.
• The text after domain: is empty, or it has a URL or a path.
• The text has more than 2,097,152 bytes. This is more than 2MB for the two usual byte counts (2,000,000 and 2,097,152). The number 2,097,152 is a check of this page, not a Google number.

A warning is a line that you must examine. The cleaned text keeps the line.

• An entry ends with a directory path, such as example.com/en/. Google does not let you disavow a subpath.
• An entry is a host name without the domain: prefix.
• Check of this page, not a Google number: the text has more than 2,000,000 bytes and not more than 2,097,152 bytes. Google gives no number of bytes for 2MB.
• Check of this page, not a Google rule: a URL does not start with http:// or https://.
• Check of this page, not a Google rule: the prefix is not written in lowercase as domain:.

A line that starts with # is a comment line and is not an error. The cleaned text keeps each comment line, each blank line and each repeated line. The checker removes only the spaces at the start and at the end of a line, and it shows the number of lines that it changed. The cleaned text appears only when the checker finds no error.

The checker compares your text with the quoted rules. It cannot tell you what the upload tool of Google accepts.

These are the words of Google from the same help page (Search Console Help, fetched 10 October 2026). This page adds no advice to them.

• “In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most sites will not need to use this tool.”
• “You should disavow backlinks only if:” “You have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site,” “AND” “The links have caused a manual action, or likely will cause a manual action, on your site.”
• “First and foremost, we recommend that you remove as many spammy or low-quality links from the web as possible.”
• “This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google Search results.”
• “The disavow links tool does not support Domain properties. If you have a Domain property, this page does not apply to you.”

The spam policies of Google define link spam: “Link spam is the practice of creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings.” (Spam policies for Google web search, fetched 10 October 2026)

These quotations come from the same help page (Search Console Help, fetched 10 October 2026).

• “You can post one disavow list for each property that you own. Uploading a new list for a property will replace any existing list for that property.”
• “If the file has any errors, you will see a list of errors immediately. Your old list will not be replaced. You can fix your new list and try to upload it again.”
• “If the upload is successful, it can take a few weeks for Google to incorporate your list into the index as Google recrawls the web and reprocess the pages that we see.”
• “If you have found URLs or sites to disavow in the links report for your site, you can download the data from the Links report by clicking the export button. Be sure to remove any URLs from the downloaded file that you don't want to disavow.”

The help page for the Links report says: “You can export your link data as a CSV file or a Google Sheet.” (Links report, Search Console Help, fetched 10 October 2026) The disavow file is a text file with a name that ends in .txt. Put one URL or one domain on each line of that file.