Google may end the Google Search Console opt-out link tool in the future. John Mueller, Senior Search Analyst at Google, said to X, “At some point, I’m sure we’ll remove it,” referring to the opt-out link tool.
What Google said. John Mueller responded to questions about the opt-out tool, suggesting again that most sites don’t need to use the feature. Here are those posts:
At some point, I’m sure we’ll remove it.
I’m tempted to add something snarky about conspiracy posts, but I’ll hold my tongue.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) May 4, 2024
Bing took it out. Earlier this year, Bing Webmaster Tools removed its disavow link tool. Microsoft’s Fabrice Canel then explained that the disavow link tool is no longer needed now that Bing Search’s algorithms are great at figuring out which links to count and which to ignore. “Times have changed, and so has our technology,” Canel wrote.
Month. Google added the disavow link tool in October 2012, then migrated to the new Google Search Console interface in 2020. Back then we explained why you’d want to use this tool:
If you’re concerned that you have bad links pointing to your site that could end up hurting your site’s performance in Google Search, you can give Google a list of URLs or domains that you want Google to ignore. This can be done for manual actions, but is probably not necessary, according to Google, due to algorithmic issues, since Google mostly ignores bad links, rather than algorithmically penalizing them.
“If you have a manual action against your site for unnatural links, or if you think you’re about to get one because of paid links or link schemes that violate our quality guidelines, please ask the other site that deletes those links,” he said. Google. “If you cannot remove these links, disallow these sites from using this tool.”
Why we care There are many SEOs who spend time denying links in Google Search Console. If and when Google drops the link disallowance tool from Google Search Console, SEOs will no longer have to be busy with this task. The truth is, most SEOs probably shouldn’t spend much time on this task at this point, based on the communication Google has been providing over the past few years.
