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Runbook
Before a guru sells you a fix, find out what is actually there. This runbook takes an afternoon and costs nothing beyond tools you may already have.
A pitch that opens with "your profile is toxic" and a fix for sale has to be checked against your own data. Your audit is the second opinion.
Open Links, then Top linking sites, and export. This is Google's own report, though it shows samples rather than every link.
Run the same domain through Ahrefs, Semrush, Majestic or Moz. Differences between tools are normal, because each crawls differently.
Mark each linking site as editorial, directory, forum, network or unknown. A spreadsheet with five columns is enough.
Look for dozens of links from one unrelated site, sudden spikes, or anchors that repeat your keyword word for word.
Most sites need no disavow. Google says its systems mostly ignore links they do not trust, so a disavow is for clear cases only.
| Source | Cost | Good for | Blind spot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search Console | Free | Google's view of your own site | Samples, not a full list |
| Ahrefs | Paid | Wide link index and competitor views | Own estimates, not Google's |
| Semrush | Paid | Backlink audit and toxicity flags | Flags are heuristics |
| Majestic | Paid | Link history and trust metrics | Metrics are its own |
| Moz | Free and paid | Domain Authority checks | DA is not a Google metric |
A link intersect tool lists sites that link to your rivals but not to you. It is the one report where a paid index earns its fee.
Run it against three competitors you respect. If a site links to all three, that is a place worth a closer look, and you can see the row on the marketplace list if it is there.
Do not treat the output as a shopping list. It shows where links exist, not whether they helped.
Most audits find nothing alarming. A few odd links from forgotten directories are normal for any site older than a couple of years.
What should worry you is a pattern: hundreds of links from unrelated domains in the same week, or a single anchor repeated across dozens of sites. After the December 2022 link spam update, Google's automated systems discount a lot of this, so the bigger risk is wasted money on a fix rather than a penalty.
If someone sells you a rescue package, ask for the list of links they want removed. A real problem comes with real URLs.
Compare that list with your own export. No match? Then you have just saved the cost of the package. See the pyramid teardown for the sales side.