Analyze backlinks + disavow toxic pages

Backlinks are still one of the strongest ranking factors — but the same is true for toxic links: a few hundred spam domains pointing at you can cost you positions. This guide shows you the full workflow: pull the profile, score spam, export the disavow list.

Create a backlink project

In the UI: Tools → Backlinks → New project. You enter the target domain (or a specific URL for page-level tracking) and decide right away whether the Full analysis should run alongside.

The "Full analysis" checkbox is enabled by default. It automatically dispatches the EnrichSpamScoresJob after the quick pull. That means: you first get the list of backlinks (fast, a few seconds), and afterwards the spam score evaluation continues in the background.

If you only want the quick profile pull (e.g. for competitor research), uncheck the box.

Spam score enrichment

The enrichment job uses the DataForSEO bulk spam score API (/backlinks/bulk_spam_score/live) and scores every referring domain on a scale of 0–100 based on multiple spam signals (PBN patterns, excessive OBL, thin content, poor domain authority, linguistic anomalies, etc.). Depending on profile size this takes between 5 and 30 minutes.

While the job runs, the UI shows an in-progress card with a live counter ("187 of 1240 pages scored"). You can leave the page — the job continues running on the server.

If the initial pull was aborted or you want to apply spam scores to an existing project after the fact, there's a manual trigger in the dashboard ("Enrich spam scores") — same job, but on demand.

Identify toxic pages

Once enrichment is done, every referring-domain row has a spam_score (0–100). Rule of thumb (matches the DataForSEO thresholds, which are also used in the code under app/Livewire/Backlinks/ToxicLinks.php):

• 0–59 — clean, ignore
• 60–79 — gray zone (warn), monitor
• 80+ — toxic (is_toxic=true), candidate for disavow

The UI has a "Toxic only (≥ 80)" filter. With it you reduce the list to the domains that really need to go. Have a quick manual look at each one — false positives are rare, but for important domains it's worth a glance.

Export disavow CSV / Excel

Once you've made the toxic-page selection (via multi-select checkboxes in the UI), click Export → Disavow CSV or Export → Excel.

• Disavow CSV — the format is exactly Google Search Console-compatible (domain:example-spam.com per line, comments with #). You can upload it 1:1 to GSC under "Disavow Tools".
• Excel — full page list with every column (URL, anchor, spam score, first-seen, domain authority) for internal reporting or outreach lists.

# API variant:
curl "https://rankion.ai/api/v1/backlinks/{project_id}/export?format=disavow&filter=toxic" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -o disavow.csv

Best practices

• Don't disavow in panic. Only domains with spam_score ≥ 80 AND an obviously artificial profile. Google usually ignores spam by itself.
• Back up before a disavow upload. Uploaded lists fully replace the previous one.
• Quarterly review — backlink profiles change. Re-enrich every 90 days, add new toxics.
• Compare competitor profiles — the quick pull without enrichment is cheap and shows you what works in the market.

Full module docs, DB schema and job flow under Backlinks Module.