What is a toxic backlink?

A toxic backlink is a link from a spammy, low-quality, or irrelevant site that may harm your rankings. These often come from link schemes, paid farms, or websites flagged for malicious practices. Search engines may interpret them as manipulative attempts to influence rankings. Having many toxic backlinks can weaken credibility and trigger penalties. To maintain a healthy link profile, webmasters review backlinks regularly and either request removal or use the disavow tool to ask search engines to ignore harmful links, protecting their site’s authority.