Purchasing backlinks for SEO: what is actually being sold, what Google's policy says, and where paid budget does work

Google's spam policies for web search define link spam as creating links to or from a site primarily to manipulate search rankings, and the first named example is buying or selling links for ranking purposes, including exchanging money, goods or services for links. The same policy states the exception plainly: Google understands that buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web for advertising and sponsorship, and that such links are not a violation as long as they are qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". Those two sentences are the whole answer. A paid link carrying the attribute complies and passes no ranking credit. A paid link without it is the thing the policy names. So the useful question is what paid budget buys that earns links, and that has good answers.

This page covers what is sold under this phrase and how to spend the budget instead. For choosing between tactics, see backlink strategy, and for assessing a supplier's delivery model, see backlink building company.

The five products sold under one phrase

What is sold	What it actually is	How the policy names it
Guest post placement	An article placed on a site in a network, with your anchor text inside it, priced per placement	Advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links passing ranking credit, and optimised anchor text in guest posts
Link insertion, also sold as a niche edit	A link added into an existing published article on somebody else's site, for a fee	Exchanging money for links
Private network links	Links from a set of sites owned or controlled by the seller, built to pass credit	Creating low value content primarily to manipulate linking and ranking signals
Directory, profile and bookmark packages	Bulk submissions to sites that list anything submitted	Low quality directory or bookmark site links, and automated link creation
Press release distribution with anchors	A release syndicated to many sites, carrying keyword rich links	Optimised anchor text in press releases distributed on other sites

The pattern across all five is the same: the seller controls the placement, the buyer specifies the anchor text, and the link exists for ranking rather than a reader. That is the intent test the policy describes.

What happens to the spend

On 14 December 2022 Google published the December 2022 link spam update and said it was using SpamBrain, its spam prevention system, to detect both sites buying links and sites used for the purpose of passing outgoing links, and to neutralise the impact of unnatural links. The post stated that ranking may change as spammy links are neutralised and any credit passed by those links is lost. That sentence describes two separate costs to a buyer. The credit you paid for is removed, so the spend produces nothing. And the sites in the seller's catalogue are themselves identifiable as sites used to pass outgoing links, which is why one catalogue stops working for everybody who bought from it.

A third cost is easy to overlook. Paid links are rarely a single purchase, and two years of monthly placements leaves an inbound profile that takes real work to inventory, remove and disavow, usually falling on whoever runs the site next.

The attribute rules, exactly as Google documents them

Google's qualify your outbound links page lists three values and what each is for. If you publish paid or sponsored content yourself, work from that page.

<!-- advertisements and paid placements: sponsored is preferred -->
<a rel="sponsored" href="https://example.com/offer">our sponsor</a> <!-- user generated content, such as comments and forum posts -->
<a rel="ugc" href="https://example.com/thread">posted by a reader</a> <!-- use when the other values do not apply -->
<a rel="nofollow" href="https://example.com/page">reference</a> <!-- several values are allowed, space or comma separated -->
<a rel="ugc nofollow" href="https://example.com/post">reader link</a>

Google's documentation notes that nofollow was previously recommended for paid links and remains acceptable, with sponsored now preferred, and that links carrying these attributes are generally not followed.

Where paid budget genuinely buys links

Money works here when it buys labour, an asset or an audience rather than a placement. Five routes that hold up:

• Outreach labour. Paying a person or an agency to find the right journalists, writers and site owners, pitch them something worth covering, and follow up. You buy hours and relationships, and the editorial decision stays with the publisher.
• Original research or a data study. A survey, an analysis of your own operational data, or funded research in your field. Writers need numbers to quote, and a citable number gets cited for years.
• A free tool or calculator. Engineering time spent on something your market uses weekly. The highest ceiling purchase in link building, and the one most often skipped.
• Sponsorships and memberships bought for the audience. A conference, a local club, an industry association, a newsletter. Mark the link sponsored and judge it on referral traffic and reputation.
• Paid distribution of something genuinely good. Promoting strong research to the people who write about that subject puts it in front of the audience that cites things. The links that follow are earned, and the spend was media.

The common thread: in every one, somebody independent decided to link. That decision is the entire value of a link, and the one thing a marketplace cannot sell you.

Telling a link seller from a link building service

• A price per link. Real outreach has an uncertain hit rate, so it sells as time or a retainer. A fixed unit price means the placements are already arranged.
• A catalogue of sites with metrics attached. If you can browse an inventory and choose, you are buying placements from a network.
• Anchor text taken as an input. Editors choose anchor text. A supplier asking you to specify it per link is placing it, not pitching it.
• A red flag worth refusing: a guaranteed domain rating, or a set number of links at a stated authority within thirty days. Both describe an inventory, and Google's own guidance tells site owners to walk away from anyone promising a number one ranking.
• No publisher contact at any point. Credible digital PR shows the pitch, the outlet and the correspondence.

If you have already bought links

• Check Search Console for a manual action first. An unnatural links manual action is a named problem with a documented route out, different from an algorithmic devaluation. See recovering from a Google penalty.
• Remove what you can. Links placed through a supplier can often be withdrawn by asking them. Start with the worst twenty domains.
• Qualify what stays legitimately. Sponsorships, affiliate arrangements and advertising keep their place with rel="sponsored" applied.
• Disavow the remainder, carefully. Google documents the disavow links tool and the narrow cases it is meant for.
• Redirect the budget. Move the monthly link spend to one of the five routes above and give it two quarters. The links arrive more slowly and they stay.

Is buying backlinks illegal?

It is a breach of Google's spam policies rather than a legal matter, with one qualification: paid endorsements carry disclosure obligations under consumer protection and advertising rules in many countries, so an undisclosed paid article is an advertising compliance question too.

Do paid links still work?

Google stated in December 2022 that its systems detect sites buying links and sites used to pass outgoing links and neutralise the credit those links pass. The spend buys a link that exists and credit that is removed, which is why the cheap route turns out to be the expensive one.

What about paying for a guest post on a real publication?

Paying an editor for coverage makes it advertising, and the link should carry rel="sponsored". Pitching an article an editor chooses to publish is editorial, and the link is earned. The difference is who decided, and whether money changed hands for the decision.

Are paid directory listings a problem?

Industry associations and curated directories with membership criteria and human review are legitimate, and are bought for the referral traffic and credibility. Directories that list everything submitted are named in the policy as low quality directory links. The test is whether a human reviewed the entry.

How do I check what is already pointing at my site?

The Links report in Google Search Console gives the external links Google associates with your site, grouped by linking site and by target page. It is Google's own view, which is the one that matters when you are assessing policy exposure. For the operators and sources that fill in the gaps, see finding backlinks in Google.

Where links are now doing a second job

A growing share of buyers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude or Google's AI Overviews before they search, and read an answer that names two or three companies. The citations behind those answers are usually independent sources: industry publications, comparison pages, curated directories and community threads. The work that earns a genuine link, being quoted in a trade publication, publishing a number others cite, being listed somewhere reviewed by a human, is the same work that gets a business named in those answers, which is a second return on the honest route and none at all on the purchased one. Measure it: ask your main buying questions in two or three assistants, leave your own brand name out of the prompt so the answer is not steered, and record who is named and what is cited. AI Knows Us runs that check across the five assistants and reports the sources behind each answer, and the first scan needs no account.