<b>The two situations where disavow is genuinely the right call</b>

<b>The two situations where disavow is genuinely the right call</b>

<b>The myth:</b> disavow is a maintenance task with no clear trigger.

<b>Reality:</b> there are exactly two legitimate triggers, both from Google's own guidance.

— You have an <i>unnatural links</i> manual action in Search Console, and you've tried and failed to get the bad links removed at the source.
— You know you (or a past agency) built or bought manipulative links — real ones, not scraper noise — and you want to pre-empt an issue.

<i>Actually,</i> outside these, the documented advice is to do nothing and let the algorithm handle it.

Reality check: no manual action and no links you paid for? You're not in either bucket. Close the disavow tool.