Adapting Link Building Strategies After Bing’s Disavow Tool Discontinuation

The End of an Era: Life After Bing’s Disavow Links Tool

In October 2023, Microsoft made a significant move in the SEO world by removing the disavow links feature from Bing Webmaster Tools. This tool, which had been a staple for SEO professionals since 2012, allowed webmasters to indicate which inbound links should be ignored when Bing assessed a site’s quality.

The decision wasn’t made lightly. According to Bing, advancements in their artificial intelligence technology now enable them to better understand link context, intent, and source trustworthiness without manual intervention from webmasters. In essence, Bing believes its algorithms have become smart enough to identify and ignore unnatural links automatically.

But what does this mean for your link building strategy in 2025? Has the landscape truly changed, or is this just another evolution in the ever-changing world of SEO? Let’s dive into what this means for you and explore alternative approaches for managing your backlink profile in a post-Bing Disavow world.

The most successful SEO professionals don’t chase algorithms—they anticipate them. Bing’s removal of the disavow tool isn’t a setback; it’s a signal that search engines are increasingly capable of distinguishing quality from manipulation without our help.

Why Bing Removed the Disavow Tool

To understand the implications, we need to examine why Bing made this decision in the first place. The stated reason was simple: to save webmasters time and resources. By automatically identifying and ignoring potentially harmful links, Bing wanted site owners to focus more on creating quality content and building reputable relationships rather than defensive link management.

This aligns with the broader trend among search engines to reduce the effectiveness of manipulative SEO tactics while rewarding genuinely valuable content. Google made similar moves with its Penguin 4.0 update, which enabled their algorithm to ignore most bad links automatically rather than penalizing entire sites.

The message is clear: search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their ability to assess link quality without manual input from webmasters. This doesn’t mean backlink management is becoming irrelevant—rather, the focus is shifting from defensive tactics to proactive quality building.

The Current State of Backlink Management

With Bing’s disavow tool gone, Google’s Disavow Links Tool remains the primary official channel for webmasters to indicate problematic backlinks. However, even Google has been downplaying its importance in recent years, suggesting that most sites don’t need to use it unless they’ve received a manual penalty or have reason to believe they’re experiencing the effects of a negative SEO attack.

This raises an important question: in 2025, how necessary is active backlink disavowal for most websites? The answer depends on several factors:

• Your site’s history: Websites with a past history of link-building violations or manual penalties may still benefit from proactive backlink management.
• Your industry: Some competitive niches are more prone to negative SEO attacks, making vigilance more important.
• Your current link profile: Sites with a high percentage of obviously spammy or manipulative links may still benefit from disavowal through Google’s tool.

For most sites with a natural backlink profile and no history of penalties, however, the need for regular disavowal has diminished significantly. Both Google and Bing have stated that their algorithms are quite capable of identifying and ignoring most problematic links without manual intervention.

Alternative Methods for Backlink Management

With Bing’s tool gone and Google’s becoming less critical for routine SEO, what are the best practices for monitoring and managing your backlink profile in 2025? Here are several approaches that remain highly effective:

1. Regular Backlink Audits

Even if you’re not planning to disavow links, regular audits of your backlink profile remain essential. These audits help you understand your link landscape, identify potential issues before they become problems, and spot opportunities for improvement.

Several tools can help with this process:

• Ahrefs: Offers comprehensive backlink analysis with metrics to help identify potentially problematic links.
• Semrush: Provides detailed backlink analytics and toxic link identification.
• Majestic: Uses Trust Flow and Citation Flow metrics to help evaluate link quality.
• Google Search Console: Provides free insights into your backlink profile directly from Google.
• Bing Webmaster Tools: While the disavow feature is gone, Bing still maintains its backlink report, which can be valuable for analysis.

2. Focus on Link Profile Diversity

Rather than obsessing over individual bad links, focus on diversifying your link profile. A diverse backlink profile with links from various relevant domains, different TLDs (.com, .org, .edu), and a mix of follow/nofollow attributes appears more natural to search engines.

This approach aligns with search engines’ move toward contextual understanding of links. Search algorithms now evaluate factors like:

• The relevance between linking and linked sites
• The contextual placement of links within content
• The authority and trustworthiness of linking domains
• The diversity of linking sources

3. Proactive Link Building

One of the best defenses against toxic links is a strong foundation of high-quality ones. Proactive link building strategies that focus on earning links through valuable content, industry relationships, and legitimate outreach remain highly effective.

Some approaches that continue to work well in 2025:

• Creating linkable assets: Original research, comprehensive guides, and innovative tools that naturally attract links
• Digital PR: Earning mentions and links from media outlets through newsworthy content
• Relationship-based link building: Developing genuine connections within your industry that lead to natural link opportunities
• Content collaborations: Partnering with complementary brands or influencers to create co-branded content that attracts links from multiple communities

4. Manual Outreach for Link Removal

For particularly problematic links that you believe could harm your site, direct outreach to webmasters requesting removal remains effective. This approach is often more time-consuming than disavowal but provides a more permanent solution.

When reaching out:

• Be polite and professional in your communication
• Clearly identify the link in question (URL of both the linking page and your site)
• Explain briefly why you’re requesting removal
• Provide easy instructions for removal
• Keep records of your outreach attempts for future reference

5. Google’s Disavow Tool as a Last Resort

While Bing’s disavow tool is gone, Google’s remains available and should be used in specific situations:

• When you’ve received a manual action from Google related to unnatural links
• When you identify a significant number of toxic backlinks that could potentially harm your site
• When you’ve attempted outreach for removal with no success

Remember that Google’s tool should be used cautiously. Disavowing legitimate links by mistake could potentially harm your rankings rather than help them.

Identifying Truly Harmful Backlinks

With Bing now automatically filtering bad links and Google’s algorithm becoming more sophisticated, the bar for what constitutes a “harmful” link worth addressing has risen. Not every low-quality link warrants action.

Here are some characteristics of truly problematic links that might still require attention in 2025:

Link Patterns That Raise Red Flags

• Sudden spikes in low-quality links: A rapid increase in backlinks from low-authority sites, particularly with identical or similar anchor text, often indicates a negative SEO attack.
• Links from known link schemes: Connections from private blog networks (PBNs), link farms, or sites previously penalized by Google.
• Links with over-optimized anchor text: An unnatural concentration of exact-match commercial keywords in anchor text.
• Links from irrelevant or objectionable content: Connections from sites in prohibited industries (adult, gambling, pharmaceuticals) unrelated to your business.
• Sitewide links from low-quality sources: Links appearing in footers, sidebars, or headers across an entire low-quality website.

Using Context to Evaluate Links

Context matters more than ever in link evaluation. A single metric like domain authority isn’t sufficient to determine if a link is harmful. Consider:

• Relevance to your industry: Links from sites in your niche or related fields generally pose less risk.
• Link placement: Editorial links within content are typically more valuable and less risky than sitewide links in footers or sidebars.
• Link velocity: Natural link profiles grow organically over time rather than showing sudden, dramatic spikes.
• Link diversity: A natural profile shows variety in referring domains, anchor text, and link types.

Case Study: Life After Bing’s Disavow Tool

To illustrate the practical implications of Bing’s decision, let’s examine a real-world scenario.

A mid-sized e-commerce company in the home goods sector had been regularly using both Google and Bing’s disavow tools as part of their quarterly SEO maintenance. Following Bing’s removal of the tool in October 2023, they adopted a new approach:

1. Consolidated monitoring: Rather than separate processes for Google and Bing, they streamlined to a single backlink monitoring system using Ahrefs and Google Search Console.
2. Established clearer thresholds: They developed more specific criteria for when to take action on suspicious links, raising the bar significantly for what warranted intervention.
3. Shifted resources to proactive link building: The time previously spent on defensive link management was reallocated to creating linkable assets and relationship building.
4. Maintained Google disavow file: They continued to update their Google disavow file quarterly, but only for the most egregious toxic links.

The results after 18 months were telling:

• No measurable negative impact on Bing rankings or traffic
• 15% increase in referring domains from their proactive link building efforts
• Reduction in time spent on backlink management by approximately 60%
• Slight improvement in rankings across both Google and Bing for their primary keywords

This case illustrates what many SEO professionals are finding: for sites without serious link issues, the removal of Bing’s disavow tool represents an opportunity to reallocate resources toward more productive approaches rather than a threat to search visibility.

Best Practices for Backlink Management in 2025

Based on the current landscape, here are the recommended best practices for backlink management after Bing’s disavow tool discontinuation:

Establish a Regular Monitoring Schedule

• Set up quarterly backlink audits to identify trends and potential issues
• Use automated tools to flag suspicious link patterns between full audits
• Pay special attention to rapid changes in your backlink profile

Develop Clear Intervention Criteria

• Define specific thresholds for when to take action on suspicious links
• Consider factors beyond just link quality metrics (patterns, context, relevance)
• Document your criteria to ensure consistent evaluation over time

Prioritize Proactive Over Reactive Strategies

• Allocate more resources to earning high-quality links than fighting bad ones
• Focus on creating content that naturally attracts links from authoritative sources
• Build genuine relationships within your industry that can lead to editorial links

Maintain a Single Disavow File

• Keep an updated disavow file for Google, focusing only on truly harmful links
• Document the rationale for each domain or URL added to your disavow file
• Review and prune your disavow file periodically to ensure you’re not blocking beneficial links

Stay Informed About Algorithm Changes

• Follow official communications from both Google and Bing about link evaluation
• Monitor industry case studies on the impact of toxic links
• Adjust your strategy based on evolving best practices and search engine guidance

Looking Forward: The Evolution of Link Building

Bing’s decision to remove their disavow tool reflects a broader trend in search: the increasing sophistication of algorithms in understanding content and links in context. This evolution suggests several future developments in link building and management:

The Continued Rise of Content-Driven Link Acquisition

As algorithms get better at identifying manipulative link schemes, the value of editorially given links based on content quality will increase. This means investment in truly exceptional, unique content will likely yield better ROI for link building than technical link acquisition tactics.

Greater Emphasis on Topical Relevance

Both Google and Bing have signaled that they’re getting better at understanding content topics and the relationships between them. This suggests that topically relevant links will carry more weight, while off-topic links (even from high-authority sites) may provide diminishing returns.

Integration of Additional Signals

Search engines are increasingly incorporating user behavior signals, brand mentions, and other non-link factors into their evaluations of site authority. While backlinks remain important, they’re becoming one part of a more complex ecosystem of trust and relevance signals.

Conclusion: Adapting to the New Reality

The discontinuation of Bing’s Disavow Links tool marks not the end of backlink management, but rather a shift in approach. In today’s SEO landscape, quality matters more than quantity, context matters more than metrics, and proactive link earning trumps reactive link defense for most websites.

As search algorithms continue to evolve, successful SEO professionals will focus less on technical manipulations and more on creating genuine value that attracts natural links. They’ll spend less time worrying about every potentially toxic link and more time building relationships and content that earn endorsements from relevant, authoritative sources.

The message from search engines is consistent: focus on your users, create exceptional content, and build your site’s authority through legitimate means. Do this well, and the links will follow—and the algorithms will increasingly recognize and reward your authentic efforts.

As we move forward in this new era of link building, the most successful strategies will be those that align with this philosophy—not those that try to find new loopholes or shortcuts around it.

Ready to take your link building strategy to the next level? Join the Sapient SEO waitlist today and get early access to our AI-powered backlink analysis tools designed for the post-disavow era of search.