Earlier this month, we reported a case of someone removing all their links from their disavow file and then saying they saw a huge ranking benefit from doing so. Of course, there may have been other variables in that case, but still, it isn't the first time I've heard of this.
In the Google Hangout yesterday with Google's John Mueller, someone asked John if that is okay or are you setting yourself up for being reviewed as a spammer. The question was, can you safely remove links in mass from your disavow file. John said, you can do whatever you want, it is just a technical change and it doesn't necessarily result in a manual review.
The question was at the 30:35 minute mark into the video:
If a great number of URLs (more than 1000 URLs and 1000 domains) was removed from Disavow file, can it be called as link boom? (Can it be understood by google as spam actions?) For example if the URLs were added by mistake more than a half of a year ago.
John Mueller responded short and sweet:
I don’t see any problem with that. That is not something where I would say this would be a bad thing or a good thing. It is essentially just a technical change that you are making, you are telling us when we recrawl those URLs we should take those links into count. And those are normal good links then by all means let us take those into account.
So go for it, but of course, if those links hurt you, then removing them from the disavow file can cause some serious damage.
Here is the video embed:
Forum discussion at Google+.
