Unpacking Google’s 2024 E-E-A-T Knowledge Graph update

The Killer Whale is back.

The latest Knowledge Graph update, released in March, continued the laser focus on person entities. It appears Google is looking for person entities to which it can fully apply E-E-A-T credibility signals and aims to understand who is creating content and whether they are trustworthy.

In March, the number of Person entities in the Knowledge Graph increased by 17%. By far, the biggest growth in new Person entities is people to whom Google is clearly able to apply full E-E-A-T credibility signals (researchers, writers, academics, journalists, etc.).

Reminder: The original Killer Whale update

The “Killer Whale” update started in July 2023 as a huge E-E-A-T update to the Knowledge Graph. The key takeaways from the July 2023 Knowledge Graph are that Google is doing three things: 

• Accelerating the growth of the Knowledge Vault (starting with Person entities).
• Restructuring the Knowledge Vault to focus on important subtitles for user trust to improve the algorithms’ application of E-E-A-T signals.
• Rapidly sunsetting its dependence on Wikipedia and other human-curated sources.

We concluded that the March Killer Whale update was all about Person entities, focused on classification and designed to promote E-E-A-T-friendly subtitles.

The Knowledge Graph is Google’s machine-readable encyclopedia, memory or black box. It has six verticals and this article focuses on the Knowledge Vault vertical. 

The Knowledge Vault is where Google stores its “facts” about the world. The Killer Whale update increased the facts and entities in the Knowledge Vault to over 1,600 billion facts on 54 billion entities, per Kalicube’s estimate.

What happened in the March 2024 Knowledge Graph update? 

• The number of entities in the Knowledge Vault increased by 7.23% in one day to over 54 billion.
• Person entities in the Knowledge Vault increased by 17%. 
• The biggest increase (+38 %) was among Person entities with E-E-A-T-friendly subtitles (researchers, writers, academics, journalists, etc.).
• The number of Knowledge Vault entries for Person entities using Wikipedia did not increase. That means all the new Person entities came from other trusted sources.
• Knowledge Panels for person entities increased by 2.55% and appeared in the SERPs immediately. This is a new phenomenon: the July 2023 Killer Whale update did not immediately affect Knowledge Panels in the SERPs.
• We estimate that between 15% and 25% of all Person entities in the Knowledge Vault are duplicates. 
• 18% of new person entities tracked by Kalicube Pro that were added in the July 2023 Killer Whale update were deleted from the Knowledge Vault before the Return of the Killer Whale update. When an entity gets a place in the Knowledge Vault, there is a 1 in 5 chance it will be deleted – unless you continue working on your entity and its E-E-A-T credibility signals.

The Killer Whale update is all about Person entities

Between May 2020 and June 2023, the number of Person entities in Google’s Knowledge Vault increased steadily, which is in line with the growth of the Knowledge Vault overall.

In July 2023, the number of Person entities tripled in just four days. In March, Google added an additional 17%.

In less than four years, between May 2020 and March 2024, the number of Person entities in Google’s Knowledge Vault has increased over 22-fold. 

Between May 2020 and March 2024, the number of Corporation entities in Google’s Knowledge Vault has increased 5-fold. In the last year, however, the number of Corporation entities decreased by 1.3%.

Google is focusing on Person entities to a stunning degree, almost exclusively.

Data: Kalicube Pro was tracking a core dataset of 21,872 people in 2020 and our analysis in this article uses that dataset. As of 2023, Kalicube Pro actively tracked over 50,000 corporations and 50,000 people.

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Why is Google looking for people to apply E-E-A-T (N-E-E-A-T-T) signals to?

Google is looking for people. However, it specifically focuses on identifying people to whom it can apply E-E-A-T signals because it wants to serve the most credible and trustworthy information to its audience. 

We use N-E-E-A-T-T in the context of E-E-A-T because our data shows that transparency and notability are essential in establishing the bonafide of a brand.

The types of people Google is focusing on are writers, authors, researchers, journalists and analysts.

In March, the number of people Google can apply E-E-A-T signals to increased by 38%.

You can safely ignore Wikipedia and other ‘go-to’ sources 

Google added over 10 billion entities to the Knowledge Vault in four days in July 2023, then followed that up with another 4 billion entities in a single day in March. 

At that scale, it is safe to assume that the Knowledge algorithms have now been “freed” from the shackles of the original human-curated, seed set of trusted sites (Wikipedia only has 6 million English language articles). 

That means an entry in traditional trusted sources such as Wikipedia, Wikidata, IMDB, Crunchbase, Google Books, MusicBrainz, etc., is no longer needed.

They are helpful, but the algorithms can now create entities in the Knowledge Vault with none of these sources if the information about the entity is clear, complete and consistent across the web.

Anecdotally, I received this message on LinkedIn the other day

For a Person entity, simply auditing and cleaning up your digital footprint is enough to get a place in Google’s Knowledge Vault and get yourself a Knowledge Panel. Anyone can get a Knowledge Panel. 

Everyone with personal E-E-A-T credibility that they want to leverage for their website or the content they create should work to establish a presence in the Knowledge Vault and a Knowledge Panel.

You aren’t safe (until you are)

Almost one in five entities created in the Knowledge Vault is deleted within a year, and the average lifespan is just under a year. 

That should make you stop and think. Getting a place in Google’s Knowledge Vault is just the first step in entity optimization. Confidence and understanding are key to maintaining your place in the Knowledge Vault over time and keeping your Knowledge Panel in the SERPs.

The confidence score the Knowledge Vault API provides for entities is a popular KPI. But it only tells part of the story since it is heavily affected by:

• News cycles. (More news, the score goes up, then drops as the news cycle dies.) 
• Google’s grasp of the multifacetedness of the entity. (For example, as it understands more about a person’s multiple careers, the score will likely drop.)
• Relationships with other entities. (The score of one entity will distort the score of its closest neighbors.)

In addition, Google is sunsetting this score. Much like PageRank, it will continue to exist, but we will no longer have access to the information.

As such, success can be measured by: 

• Retaining a stable KGID in the Knowledge Vault over time.
• Not triggering duplicates of the entity (this splits and dilutes N-E-E-A-T-T credibility equity).
• Creating relationships with a large number of relevant related entities. 
• Having an information-rich Knowledge Panel.
• Having an accurate Knowledge Panel.

You aren’t alone (but you want to be)

This update shines a light on entity duplication, which is a particularly thorny problem for Person entities. This is due to Google’s approach to the ambiguity of people’s names.

Almost all of us share our names with other people. I share mine with at least 300 other Jason Barnards. I hate to think how many John Smiths and Marie Duponts are there. 

When Google’s algorithms find and analyze a reference to a Person, they assume this person is someone it has never met before unless multiple corroborating facts match and convince it otherwise. 

That means a duplicate might be created if there is a factually inaccurate reference to a Person entity or the reference doesn’t have sufficient common traits with an existing Person entity.

If that happens, then any N-E-E-A-T-T credibility equity that references the duplicate is lost. This is the modern equivalent of link building but linking to the wrong site.

When will the next update be?

From our historical data, for the last nine years, the pattern for entity updates is clear: December, February (or March) and July have consistently been the critical months. 

In each of the last five years, July has seen by far the most impactful updates.

Get ready. Our experience building and optimizing thousands of entities is that you need to have all your corroboration straight 6 to 8 weeks before the major updates. The next updates might be in July and December. 

Google’s growing emphasis on Person entities in its Knowledge Graph

Looking at the data from the Killer Whale updates of July 2023 and March 2024, I am finally seeing the first signs that Google is actually starting to walk the talk of “things, not strings” at scale. 

The foundation of modern SEO is educating Google about your entities: the website owner, the content creators, the company, the founder, the CEO, the products, etc. 

Without creating a meaningful understanding in Google’s “brain” about who you are, what you offer and why you are the most credible solution, you will no longer be in the “Google game.” 

In a world of things, not strings, only if you can successfully feed Google’s Knowledge Graphs with the facts will Google have the basic tools it needs to reliably figure out which problems you are best in the market to solve for the subset of its users who are your audience.

Knowledge is power. In modern SEO, the ability to feed the Knowledge Algorithms is the path to success. 

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Google hides search results count under tools section

Google Search now has made it harder to find the number of search results for a search query. Instead of it being displayed under the search bar, at the top of the search results, now you need to click on the “tools” button to reveal the results count number.

What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of the top of the search results page:

To see the results, you need to click on “Tools” at the top right of the bar and then below that you will see Google show you the estimated results count:

Here is what it looked like before:

Previous testing. Google has been testing removing the results count for years, as early as 2016 and maybe before. Google also removed them from the SGE results a year ago.

So, this seems to be on Google’s roadmap to remove the feature.

In fact, Google has said numerous times that the results count is just an estimate and not a good figure to base any real research and SEO audits on.

Why we care. Many SEOs still use the results count to estimate keyword competitiveness, audit indexation, and many other purposes. If this fully goes away, many SEOs won’t be happy. Although, I doubt Google cares too much if SEOs are happy.

If the results count is not accurate, Google may decide to do away with it anyway.

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How an ecommerce site increased commercial monthly organic traffic from 37K to 210K

See how Lectric eBike has transformed SEO to gain valuable insights for any ecommerce business looking to significantly enhance organic search traffic and compete in high-stakes markets.

At a glance

• Massive traffic increase: Organic clicks rose from 37,000 to 210,000 per month by targeting high-search commercial keywords.
• Top Google rankings: Secured top three positions for competitive terms like “electric bike” (246,000 searches) and “eBike” (90,500 searches), boosted by strategic digital PR and a focus on the online audience journey.
• Brand keyword efficiency: Increased brand-specific searches like “Lectric ebike,” by  securing links and brand mentions in content at key touch points along the audience’s journey.
• Integrating digital PR and SEO: Integrated digital PR with SEO efforts to enhance visibility and maintain prominent search rankings, using the audience journey to guide both on-page and off-page tactics.

Ecommerce SEO can be painful. You can try blog or informational content, links to category or product pages and rank well for informational content just to never see an impact on traffic with buying intent.

This is not the case with Lectric eBike, an electric bike ecommerce company. The site was able to:

• Rank in the top three positions of Google for commercial keywords that get up to 246,000 average monthly searches.
• Generated over 210,000 clicks per month by generating both brand and non-brand organic traffic.

They did all this with a heavy focus on digital PR and marketing-owned assets throughout the audience’s online journey to buy electric bikes.

This article examines Lectric’s SEO success and points out key methods for driving similar results in ecommerce or any vertical with high-competition keywords.

Background: The brand

Lectric eBike is one of the fastest-growing electric bike companies in the U.S., selling over 400,000 eBikes in the last four years. Their Lectric XP bike is the third most popular EV in the U.S.

However, in January 2022, two years after designing their first electric bike, the site received only 37,000 sessions (Semrush) and no significant keywords ranked in the top three. 

Let’s look at how Lectric completely changed its organic visibility in just two years.

Organic performance details

Organic traffic comes from both non-brand and brand keywords. Lectric ranks for highly competitive commercial intent keywords and brands in the top three positions of Google.

• Ranks in position three for “electric bike” with 246,000 average monthly searches, with an estimated 5,900 clicks (Figure 1).
• Ranks in position one for “eBike” with 90,500 average monthly searches, with an estimated 3,200 clicks (Figure 2).
• Branded keyword “Lectric eBike” has only 40,500 searches but generates 32,400 in traffic (Figure 1), with all branded keywords generating over 150,000 organic clicks (Figure 3).
• Organic traffic grew from under 40,000 to over 210,000 clicks from January 2022 to March 2023 (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Brand and non-brand keywords overview (Source: Semrush)

Figure 2: Organic traffic growth (Source: Semrush)

Figure 3: Brand search and traffic (Source: Semrush)

Non-brand keyword CTR

Ranking in the top three positions in Google generates the vast majority of clicks (Figure 4). Thus, ranking in the top positions is still a good goal.

Figure 4 (Source: Advanced Web Ranking)

Although this CTR study shows CTR for standard blue links and not the feature snippets, we can assume that ranking in the top spots in any listing type could drive strong CTR.

Additionally, ecommerce SERPs tend to have ads taking up some of the real estate, which can reduce organic CTR. Thus, this CTR study signifies that ranking higher means more traffic.

Branded keyword CTR

Branded keywords have a 60% CTR in position one (Figure 5) and may be higher with site links. In many cases, these terms have a much higher conversion rate. Even though phrases that contain “Lectric” have low total search, total traffic can be much higher and provide a higher ROI.

Figure 5 (Source: Backlinko)

Note: I use the term “clicks” to explain “organic traffic” from Semrush’s reporting. This is because Semrush estimates clicks based on keyword search volume and click-through rates (CTR), thus not calculating direct sessions or users.

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Why does Lectric rank in the top 3?

In the case of Lectric, I examined the relationship between brand mentions, referring domain links and organic traffic (brand and non-brand) growth.

Starting in January 2021, as links from referring domains and brand mentions increased, so did brand search volume (Figure 6).

This shows a relationship between all the measures. Thus, we can’t understand the non-brand ranking without examining all measures.

Between March 2021 and November 2021, brand mentions and referring domain links increased (Figure 6), and brand traffic followed that, starting around January 2022. The brand mentions slowed in January 2022 but increased again in June and September 2022. Following each spike in brand mentions, organic traffic grew.

Each spike in brand mentions reflects more media mentions, but traffic lags. Lectric constantly secured media coverage and links, influencing the audience to search for the brand name.

 Figure 6: Relationship between organic clicks, referring domains and brand mentions.

Note: Ahrefs and Semrush provide dramatically different traffic estimates in many cases. I normalize the data by looking at trends instead of the raw numbers.

The brand search index from Google Trends doesn’t show a strong relationship between brand search volume and non-brand clicks from 2022 to 2024, but before 2021, Lectric didn’t have many brand searches.

After November 2021, brand mentions increased and non-brand traffic followed (Figure 7). Additionally, sites with a low number of brand mentions and brand searches can rank in the top three (Figure 8).

This indicates that increasing brand search volume doesn’t increase non-brand clicks at a certain point, but having some brand search is important when targeting the top three rankings.

Figure 7: Relationship between non-brand keyword clicks and brand search trends. Non-brand click samples from April/November of each year show the annual trend.

I recently analyzed top-ranking sites in the cyber security vertical. I found a correlation between brand search volume, brand mentions, and the number of keywords ranked in the top three positions of Google (Figure 8).

The x-axis shows U.S. search volume for brand keywords, the y-axis shows the number of brand mentions, and the bubble size shows the number of keywords ranked in Google’s top three positions. The larger the bubble, the more keywords ranked in the top three.

Figure 8: Relationship between brand search, brand mentions and top three rankings.

I know; correlation’s not causation. The lurking variable here is Google’s ability to identify and attribute value to a site based on brand mentions’ impact on driving brand search.

But I assume that brand mentions are earned to drive brand search and links are included in many content with brand mentions.

What type of coverage did Lectric receive?

I combed through the top media placements to better understand the type of placements driving this rank and brand search.

Google has noted that links are less impactful now than in the past, but at the same time, links and brand mentions from media the audience consumes and the impact on brand search seem to influence ranking.

I use audience journey maps to analyze media because they’re designed to consider the audience’s perspective. Google has constantly stated that it should focus on the relevance of marketing to the audience instead of any specific ranking signals. I agree with this, and the audience journey map helps us do just that.

Lectric gained media coverage (links and mentions) across each stage of the audience’s journey.

Awareness stage: Media articles in environmental and lifestyle outlets introduce the concept of eBikes, highlighting Lectric for its innovation and environmental benefits.

• Podcasts
• Article on post-COVID eBike growth
• Article on using an eBike on a mountain bike trail

Consideration stage: Potential customers encounter Lectric through comparative reviews and expert blogs, which detail the brand’s advantages over competitors in contexts like urban commuting.

• Resource lists
• General brand mentions
• Mentions in lists for RV-related bikes

Decision stage: In-depth reviews, customer testimonials and featured stories in niche publications help solidify buyer decisions by showcasing Lectric eBikes’ practical benefits and user experiences.

• Awards
• Feature articles all about the brand
• Customer stories about biking on trails

Strategic links and mentions in authoritative and relevant media across the audience’s journey seem to have boosted Lectric’s organic visibility and search rankings.

While directly measuring the impact of specific media appearances on SEO is challenging, indicators like increased brand searches, link and mention trends and content context suggest a significant impact on organic visibility. 

Consistent, quality media coverage correlates with these improvements, underscoring the importance of integrated digital PR and SEO strategies.

Media coverage guides customers through the audience’s journey and can significantly impact organic search rankings and drive brand searches. A strategic approach to digital PR that aligns with SEO goals is essential for maximizing visibility and growth.

What this means for your SEO strategy

Do you want to drive results similar to those of Lectric? I write extensively about digital PR for SEO and cross-functional PR and SEO teams. I examine every case study under this lens.

Securing media coverage that can improve organic visibility and brand search requires a strong strategy integrating both digital PR and SEO, which we see from Lectric.

Targeting the audience journey

Identify the local, national and trade media your audience consumes when deciding to buy your product. Create an audience journey map and list the relevant media at each stage of the journey.

I create an audience journey map for most of my digital PR projects. Below is a template I built to simplify the process of mapping media touchpoints to the stages.

Although you don’t need to be this detailed, understand that you have to answer your audience’s questions at each stage of the journey on the websites where live.

Figure 9: Audience journey map

As with Lectirc, they answer the question “Can I use an electric bike on bike trails?” with their article placement travelawates.com.

They effectively targeted the awareness stage at the right touchpoint. However, gaining the right placement requires advanced digital PR strategies.

Use digital PR for SEO

Digital PR for SEO markets your website to the audience through media, securing links and brand mentions as a result. Digital PR builds relationships with national, local and trade media: press and podcasts.

I use a strategy called owned asset marketing (OAM), which markets the website to media that secure links and brand mentions on the homepage, case study pages, research reports or bio pages.

OAM works by identifying internal expertise related to media trends and creating unique research assets to pitch to the media.

• Internal expertise: Show internal expertise with individual experts or user stories to gain media coverage.
• Trends: Analyze media or audience trends to follow news cycles or predict future story ideas.
• Unique research: Surveys or analysis of public data that answers important questions better than other places.

If anything, do this next

If you have had trouble ranking in the top three in search of your high-search keywords or have stalled in driving significant sales in ecommerce or any business type, focus on understanding key media touchpoints and messaging across the entire audience journey. These touchpoints can be social, press, podcasts or blogs your audience reads.

Instead of just building links to specific pages to improve ranking, consider using digital PR to build links and mentions in content that create value for the audience and media. This is how you leverage internal experience and expertise to build authority and trust.

Your context should use your experience and expertise to build authority and trust. Do this by sharing case studies, creating unique research and providing expert insights to the media to earn links and mentions. 

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Google begins enforcement of site reputation abuse policy with portions of sites being delisted

Google has started its enforcement of the new site reputation abuse policy by delisting portions of websites from the Google Search index. This seems to have launched in the past hour or so, where sites as large as CNN, USA Today, and LA Times are seeing their coupon directories no longer ranking for coupon-related keyword phrases.

We were expecting the enforcement to begin this week, we posted a reminder last week. Google told us this change was coming in March, when Google announced multiple search enhancements, which also included the March 2024 core update.

Google said today. Google’s Search Liaison said on X today, “It’ll be starting later today. While the policy began yesterday, the enforcement is really kicking off today.”

Examples of enforcement. Laura Chiocciora and Glenn Gabe posted screenshots of some sites that were impacted by this update. They include CNN, USA Today, and LA Times. These sites all did not block these directories from being indexed or ranked by Google and tonight found those sections removed from Google Search.

You're right. I'm seeing the same thing. USA Today, CNN, and LA Times are gone for "subway coupons" and other queries. Sure seems like the update is underway. :) First screenshot is now and second is as of yesterday. pic.twitter.com/f46B5h2ccP

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 6, 2024

Some other sites, like Forbes, Wall Street Journal and others manually blocked these directories from Google’s spiders before enforcement of this new policy began.

This is just a sampling of some of the enforcement.

Manual actions. We have not yet seen examples of manual actions, where Google issues manual penalties through Google Search Console. Those are expected to come as well. These specific actions above appear to be algorthmic.

What is site reputation abuse? When third-party sites host low-quality content provided by third parties to piggyback on the ranking power of those third-party websites. As Google told us in March:

• “A third party might publish payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefit from the site.”
• “Such content ranking highly in Search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website.”

Under Google’s new policy, site reputation abuse is defined as “third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner” and “intended to manipulate Search rankings” will be considered spam.

The new Google Search spam policies about reputation abuse was announced by Google over here and and the updated policies are over here.

But. Not all third-party content will be considered spam, as Google explained:

• “Many publications host advertising content that is intended for their regular readers, rather than to primarily manipulate Search rankings. Sometimes called ‘native advertising’ or ‘advertorial,’ this kind of content typically wouldn’t confuse regular readers of the publication when they find it on the publisher’s site directly or when arriving at it from Google’s search results.”

Why we care. Many SEO have been complaining about the harm and unfairness that comes from parasite SEO. With so many complaints about the quality of Search results lately, this may help with some of those complaints.

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DOJ hammers Google over search ad price manipulation

Google manipulated ad auctions and inflated costs to increase revenue, harming advertisers, the Department of Justice argued last week in the U.S. vs. Google antitrust trial.

What follows is a summary and some slides from the DOJ’s closing deck, specific to search advertising, that back up the DOJ’s argument.

Google’s monopoly power

This was defined by the DOJ as “the power to control prices or exclude competition.” Also, monopolists don’t have to consider rivals’ ad prices, which testimony and internal documents showed Google does not.

To make the case, the DOJ showed quotes from various Googlers discussing raising ad prices to increase the company’s revenue.

• Dr. Adam Juda said Google tried to come up with “better prices or more fair prices, where those new prices are higher than the previous ones.”

• Dr. Hal Varian indicated that Google had many levers it could use to change the ad auction design to achieve its desired outcome.

• Juda and Jerry Dischler confirmed this. Dischler was quoted discussing the impact of increasing prices from 5% to 15% in these two slides:

Other slides from the deck the DOJ used to make its case:

• Google Search ad CPCs more than doubled between 2013 and 2020.

Advertiser harm

Google has the power to raise prices when it desires to do so, according to the DOJ. Google called this “tuning” in internal documents. The DOJ called it “manipulating.”

Format pricing, squashing and RGSP are three things harming advertisers, according to the DOJ:

Format pricing

• “Advertisers never pay more than their maximum bid,” according to Google.
• Yes, but: What Google failed to mention is “Project Momiji,” which very quietly launched in 2017.
• What is Momiji: It artificially inflated the bid made by the runner-up.
• The result: A 15% increase for the “winning” advertiser. More ad revenue for Google.
• Relevant slides: From the DOJ’s deck:

Squashing

• How it worked: Google increased an advertiser’s lifetime value based on how far their predicted click-through rate (pCTR) was from the highest pCTR. According to a 2017 document introducing a new product called “Kumamon,” Google had been doing this using “a simple algorithm consisting of bid, three quality signals, and some (mostly) hand tuned parameters.” (A screenshot of this document seemed to indicate Kumamon would add more machine learning signals in the auction.)
• In other words: Google raised “the price against the highest bidder.”
• Google’s goal: To create a “more broad price increase.”
• The result: The Google ad auction winner paid more than it should have if squashing wasn’t part of the ad auction.
• And: The DOJ indicated this all led to a “negative user experience” as Google ranked ads “sub-optimally in exchange for more revenue.”
• Relevant slides: From the DOJ’s deck:

RGSP

• What is it: The Randomized Generalized Second-Price was introduced in 2019. (Dig deeper. What is RGSP? Google’s Randomized Generalized Second-Price ad auctions explained)
• How it worked: Google referred to it as the ability to “raise prices (shift the curve upwards or make it steeper at the higher end) in small increments over time (AKA ‘inflation’). It did not lead to better quality, according to 2019 Google emails.
• How Google talked about it: “A better pricing knob than format pricing.”
• The result: It incentivized advertisers to bid higher. Google increased revenue by 10%.
• Relevant slides: From the DOJ’s deck:

Search Query Reports

The lack of query visibility also harms advertisers, according to the DOJ. Google makes it nearly impossible for search marketers to “identify poor-matching queries” using negative keywords.

The DOJ’s presentation. You can view all 143 slides from the DOJ: Closing Deck: Search Advertising: U.S. and Plaintiff States v. Google LLC (PDF)

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Google disavow link tool will go away at some point

Google may do away with the disavow link tool within Google Search Console in the future. John Mueller, a Senior Search Analyst at Google, said on X, “At some point, I’m sure we’ll remove it,” referring to the disavow link tool.

What Google said. John Mueller responded to questions about the disavow tool, suggesting again that most sites do not 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 regarding the conspiracy-posts, but I'll hold my tongue.

— John … (@JohnMu) May 4, 2024

Bing removed it. Earlier this year, Bing Webmaster Tools removed their disavow link tool. Back then Fabrice Canel from Microsoft explained that the disavow links tool is no longer needed now that the Bing Search algorithms are great at figuring out which links to count and which ones to ignore. “Times have changed, and so has our technology,” Canel wrote.

More. Google added the disavow link tool back in October 2012, then migrated to the new Google Search Console interface in 2020. Back then we explained why one would want to use this tool:

 If you are concerned that you have bad links pointing to your site that may end up hurting your site’s performance in Google Search, you can give Google a list of URLs or domains you would like Google to ignore. This can be done for manual actions but likely is not needed, according to Google, for algorithmic issues since Google primarily just ignores bad links, as opposed penalizes for them algorithmically.

“If you have a manual action against your site for unnatural links, or if you think that you’re about to get one because of paid links or link schemes that violate our quality guidelines, ask the other site to remove those links,” said Google. “If you can’t get these links removed, then disavow those sites using this tool.”

Why we care. There are many SEOs who spend time disavowing links in Google Search Console. If and when Google drops the link disavow tool from Google Search Console, SEOs will no longer need to be busy with that task. Truth is, most SEOs probably should not be spending much time on this task at this point based on the communication Google has been providing over the past few years.

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