Look at any website’s backlinks and you’ll find junk: scraper sites that copy content, foreign-language link directories, auto-generated pages listing thousands of domains. Many SEO tools label these “toxic” and give them a score. The name suggests poison. The reality is usually less dramatic.
What Google actually does
Google’s position since around 2016 is that its systems identify spammy links and ignore them. They don’t count for you, and in most cases they don’t count against you. Google has also said that “toxic link” scores from third-party tools aren’t something it uses.
There’s an important exception. Links you (or an agency, or a previous owner) built to manipulate rankings, such as paid links, link networks or large-scale exchanges with keyword-rich anchors, can lead to a manual action for unnatural links. That’s a penalty applied by a Google reviewer, and it shows up in Search Console.
How to tell the difference
| Probably harmless | Worth investigating |
|---|---|
| Random scraper and directory links you never asked for | Links you or a provider paid for |
| A few odd links from foreign sites | Many links with identical, keyword-rich anchor text |
| Links from low-quality sites that also link to everyone else | Links from a private blog network |
| Sudden spam links from a negative SEO attempt | Guest posts bought in bulk on unrelated sites |
Why it matters for a real business
Brightside Dental’s practice manager runs a backlink tool and sees “142 toxic links” in red. She panics and considers paying someone to “clean up” the profile. A closer look shows they’re scraper sites and spam directories that link to thousands of businesses. The practice never bought links, and there’s no manual action in Search Console. The right move is to do nothing about them. Disavowing them wouldn’t change anything, and an over-eager cleanup could have removed good links too.
Bean & Barrel Coffee’s situation is different: a former marketing contractor bought 60 “dofollow” links on unrelated blogs with the anchor “best coffee beans online”. Those are worth dealing with: ask for removal or add a sponsored attribute where possible, and consider the disavow tool if they can’t be removed.
Common mistakes
- Treating a third-party toxicity score as Google’s view
- Disavowing large numbers of links without a clear reason
- Paying for “toxic link removal” services that mostly email spam sites
- Ignoring the real risk: links bought as part of black hat SEO
How to check
First, check Search Console for any manual action. Then review your profile in RankThat’s Backlinks feature, focusing on new links, unusual anchor text patterns and anything you recognize as paid. Context matters more than any single score.