"Unnatural links to your site" manual action: audit, removal and disavow

Where these backlinks tend to come from

Most sites that get this action can trace it to a specific period or vendor. Common sources for WordPress sites:

• Paid guest posts bought through outreach agencies, where the article exists mainly to carry a keyword-rich link.
• Private blog networks: clusters of sites, often on expired domains, that link out to paying clients.
• Sitewide footer or sidebar links placed on other sites, including old theme and plugin "sponsor" credits with commercial anchor text.
• Link exchange arrangements where you link to a partner and they link back, at scale.
• Automated link building: profile, bookmark and comment links created by software.

If you bought the domain, the links may predate you. Say so in the request; Google's help page specifically invites new owners to explain a recent acquisition.

Exporting and sorting the link list

In Search Console, open Links. Export by host from Top linking sites → Export, and chronologically from Export external links → Latest links. Google suggests that if the list is huge, you start with the sites that link to you most and links created in the last few months.

Put everything in a spreadsheet with columns for the linking domain, example URL, anchor text, whether money changed hands, the contact you tried, the date, and the outcome. Judge each domain against the link spam policy, not against a third-party "toxicity" score. A random scraper that copied your post is not a scheme you took part in, and Google's systems already ignore most of that noise. Do not disavow organic links; Google warns against it explicitly. Mark each row with a decision (keep, remove, disavow) so the spreadsheet doubles as your evidence later, and note which vendor or campaign produced each group of links. Reviewers look for a pattern being addressed, not a random selection.

Removal first, disavow second

Email each site owner and ask them to remove the link or add rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". Log every attempt, including no reply. Then upload a disavow file for whatever remains, using domain: for sites with many links:

# Paid guest posts via outreach vendor, 2023. Removal requested 2 and 16 May, no reply.
domain:cheap-guest-posts.example
domain:pbn-network-site.example
# Single paid link, owner declined removal
https://blog.example.net/best-widgets-2023/

The file is plain text, one entry per line, uploaded through the Disavow links tool for the property. Google says blindly adding every backlink to the file "is not considered a good-faith effort" and may lead to a rejected request. See the disavow entry for the file format rules.

Stopping new bad links at the source

Before you request review, make sure nothing is still generating links. Cancel any active link-building retainer, ask vendors for a list of every placement they made, and check whether sponsored content on partner sites still links to you without a qualifier.

Hydrogen SEO cannot remove links on other people's sites and has no backlink index. What it can help with is the other half of the picture: pages on your own site that exist only to receive those links, such as keyword-stuffed landing pages. If you consolidate them, point the old URLs at the real page with a 301 in Hydrogen SEO → Redirections rather than leaving thin doorways live.

Filing the reconsideration request

When the cleanup is done, open the action in the Manual actions report and select Request Review. Google asks that you include documentation of removed links and an explanation of the ones you could not remove. A structure that gives a reviewer what they need:

What happened: From 2022 to 2023 we paid an agency for guest posts with
exact-match anchors. We ended that contract in April 2024.
What we did: Audited 1,240 linking domains from the Links export.
Contacted owners of 212. 74 removed or nofollowed the link.
Disavowed the remaining 138 domains (file uploaded 20 May).
Evidence: Spreadsheet of every domain, contact date and response (link).
Prevention: No paid links; sponsored mentions must carry rel="sponsored".

Share the spreadsheet as a link a reviewer can open without signing in. You get an email when the request is received and another when the review finishes. Do not resubmit while one is pending. If it is rejected, the reply usually means links remain; go back to the list, work through more of it, and file again. Revocation lifts the penalty, but the links you removed no longer pass value, so rankings may settle lower than they were while the scheme was working.