If you have ever received a message in Google Search Console about “unnatural links Google,” you understand how alarming that moment can be. One such notification is enough for a website to risk losing rankings, traffic, and, as a result, revenue.
The paradox is that completely legitimate link building strategies can sometimes look just as suspicious to algorithms as outright manipulation. At the same time, some approaches that are formally considered “forbidden” may remain under Google’s radar for years. Why does this happen?
In this article, we explain how Google’s detection systems actually work and where the line lies between an effective tactic and a strategy that can destroy a website.
What Google Considers Unnatural Links
Google wants links to be “earned.” That means they should appear because your content is genuinely useful, not because you made an agreement with another website owner in exchange for money or services. So what exactly are unnatural links?
In SEO, unnatural links are precisely those “paid” or artificially created recommendations. These are any hyperlinks that appear not because the author of another website genuinely wanted to share your great content, but because they were created to artificially boost a site’s authority in Google’s eyes.
If a link is created primarily for a search engine bot rather than for a human, it is most likely unnatural.
Google regulates link practices through its Spam Policies (formerly Webmaster Guidelines), where it explicitly lists which “link schemes” violate the rules. These include:
- Direct buying or selling of links: exchanging money for links or posts with links, or providing products or services in exchange for a link (yes, even a “free product for review” with a mandatory link is considered a violation from Google’s perspective).
- Excessive link exchanges: schemes like “you link to me and I’ll link to you” when done at scale purely for SEO.
- Large-scale guest posting with commercial anchors: publishing articles on many external sites using exact-match commercial anchor texts, such as “buy cheap sneakers online.”
- Use of automated programs: creating links via scripts or services that mass-submit a site to forums or comment sections.
- Hidden links: links visible to bots but invisible to users (for example, white text on a white background or links hidden in code).
- Footer or widget links distributed at scale: for example, embedding a backlink into a free plugin or website template without the option to remove it or without a nofollow attribute.
Importantly, Google does not prohibit advertising or PR. However, it requires such links to be marked with special attributes like rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored”. This signals to the search engine that the link exists for commercial reasons and should not be counted toward ranking calculations.
How Google Detects Unnatural Links
Google uses a multi-layered detection system that combines machine learning, statistical analysis, and human review.
Algorithmic Detection of Link Spam
Since 2018, Google has actively used SpamBrain, a machine-learning–based system that analyzes billions of links every day. Unlike older algorithms such as Penguin, which relied on relatively simple rules, SpamBrain is trained to recognize complex patterns.
The algorithm monitors link growth velocity. For example, a sudden jump from 10 to 500 links in a week is suspicious. Linear growth at exactly the same pace every month looks unnatural. Seasonality without a logical explanation (for instance, why an e-commerce site suddenly received 200 links in July when there were no sales) also appears artificial.
By contrast, natural patterns are highly uneven. There may be a spike after publishing viral content, followed by a lull, and then growth again.
Google also builds link graphs and looks for suspicious structures:
- Isolated clusters: groups of websites that link only to each other and have few connections to the wider web (a common PBN signal).
- Hub-and-spoke patterns: one central site distributing hundreds of links that all point to two or three resources.
- Reciprocal link farms: sites A, B, C, and D massively exchanging links in obvious patterns.
The algorithm uses graph theory to identify anomalous structures that do not occur in the organic web.
To evaluate how logically links fit into context, Google uses BERT and other NLP models.
Google also analyzes user behavior: whether users click the link, how long they stay on the destination page, and whether they interact with content after clicking. If a link exists but nobody clicks it, Google may devalue it. If users click but immediately leave, that is also a negative signal.
The algorithm evaluates source quality using hundreds of parameters, including:
- Domain Authority (Google’s internal metric),
- site history (young domains with thousands of outgoing links are often treated as spam farms),
- ratio of inbound to outbound links,
- quality of content on the linking site,
- whether the donor site has previously been penalized.
SpamBrain evaluates not only the link itself but also the “neighborhood.” If the page containing your link also links to 50 spam sites, your link becomes suspicious by association.
SpamBrain operates in near real time, meaning Google’s link-related filters can trigger within days. This is also an advantage: after cleaning up a link profile, recovery is significantly faster than during the Penguin era.
Manual Reviews and Manual Actions
Despite the power of algorithms, Google still relies on human teams, including Quality Raters and the Search Quality Team.
Manual reviews are triggered in several scenarios:
- Algorithmic signals fire, but SpamBrain is not 100% confident, so the case is escalated to a human.
- Competitor complaints are submitted. Google does review reports of manipulation, although it rarely acts solely on them.
- High-visibility queries: sites ranking in the top 10 for commercial keywords are reviewed more often.
- Random sampling for algorithm training and calibration.
A Google specialist, or Quality Rater, reviews your link profile and evaluates whether link sources appear natural, whether there is a logical reason for those sites to link to you, whether the surrounding content is truly relevant, whether anchor texts are overly repetitive, and whether internal page distribution looks suspiciously “perfect.”
Algorithms may miss nuances that humans immediately notice. For example, 50 guest posts with nearly identical author bios and links may look acceptable algorithmically, but a human reviewer will instantly recognize the pattern.
Why are manual link penalties so dangerous? If violations are confirmed, Google applies a Manual Action. You will receive a message in Google Search Console such as “Google detected unnatural links pointing to your site,” followed by serious consequences:
- loss of rankings across all or specific queries,
- potential removal from the index in extreme cases,
- traffic drops of 50–95%.
Manual penalties do not resolve themselves. You must fix the issue and submit a Reconsideration Request. Google may reject it if the cleanup is insufficient, and the process can take 3–6 months with multiple iterations.
Link Profile Analysis
Google does not evaluate links in isolation. It analyzes the entire link profile as an ecosystem.
Among the parameters Google evaluates are:
- Link velocity: if a site that normally gains two links per month suddenly gets 500 in a week, this is an algorithmic trigger.
- Anchor text distribution: if 80% of your links use text like “order apartment renovation,” this looks extremely unnatural. Healthy profiles are dominated by brand names, URLs, and generic phrases like “here” or “via link.”
- Topical relevance of the neighborhood: if a baby food website receives a link from a tractor repair portal or an online casino, Google treats the connection as suspicious.
- Donor quality: Google evaluates who else the linking site links to. If it links to many questionable resources, its recommendation carries little weight and may even cause harm.
Google compares a site’s link acquisition speed to typical niche benchmarks, known as the link velocity baseline. Rapid growth can be normal if user interest is also growing. But if links increase by 300% while traffic grows only 5%, Google will raise questions.
Strong, recognizable brands that provide significant user value may be partially immune to “dirty” link profiles. Google’s logic is pragmatic: removing a well-known brand from top results could harm users more than it harms the brand itself. New or unknown sites do not have this immunity. Any anomaly in their link profile is treated as a manipulation attempt and may result in rapid filtering.
Key Signs of Unnatural Links
Below are specific triggers to watch for during a link profile audit.
Problematic Anchors and Commercial Over-Optimization
An anchor is the visible text of a link. In the natural web, people rarely link using phrases like “buy plastic windows price Kyiv.” More commonly, they use brand names, URLs, or words like “here,” “article,” or “source.”
If more than 10–15% of your anchor list consists of exact-match commercial keywords (especially containing words like “buy,” “order,” or “price”), this becomes a strong manipulation signal for algorithms.
If hundreds of different websites link to you using identical anchor text, Google understands that this is not spontaneous citation but planned link buying.
Low-Quality and Irrelevant Donors
Google expects links to come from topically related resources. This creates what is known as “topical authority.” If you sell organic cosmetics and receive links from tractor repair forums or gambling portals, the connection appears suspicious.
Another red flag is link farms: sites created solely to sell links. They publish articles on any topic, from medicine to cryptocurrency, without editorial standards. Google identifies such platforms by an unusually high number of outbound links combined with near-zero traffic.
Link Schemes and Site Networks
PBNs (Private Blog Networks) are groups of websites owned by one entity and designed to funnel authority to a main site. Although popular in competitive niches, Google hunts these networks using “digital footprints” such as:
- shared hosting and IP addresses,
- similar design (identical WordPress themes or plugins),
- private WHOIS across all domains,
- circular internal linking between network sites.
To make identifying low-quality links easier, you can rely on comparative tables during audits.
| Parameter | Natural Links | Unnatural Links |
| Source (donor) | Authoritative, niche-relevant resources with a real audience. | Low-quality sites created for selling links, or thematically irrelevant resources. |
| Anchor text profile | Diverse: brand names, URLs, generic words, long-tail phrases. | Overloaded with commercial keywords (“buy”, “price”, “cheap”). |
| Placement in content | Inside useful content where the link logically complements the topic. | In footers, sidebars, or detached “Partners” blocks with no contextual relevance. |
| Link acquisition dynamics | Smooth and uneven (depends on publishing new content). | Sharp spikes (for example, +200 links overnight after a bulk purchase). |
| Purpose of placement | To provide users with additional information or to reference a source. | An attempt to manipulate the PageRank algorithm and top search positions. |
| Attributes | Usually dofollow for editorial recommendations or nofollow for comments. | Often dofollow where, according to Google’s rules, the link should be marked as sponsored. |
Paid Links: Can Google Detect Them?
This is probably one of the most debated topics in SEO communities. Some claim that Google easily recognizes unnatural links as paid schemes, while others cite examples of websites that have been using purchased links for years without any consequences. However, reality is more complex than either scenario — Google can detect paid links, but it does not always do so.
How Google Detects Paid Links
Algorithms evaluate the speed and nature of link growth, anchor repetition, typical placement patterns, and the behavior of donors that link out to multiple websites at scale. Context also plays a separate role: page relevance, traffic, and user interaction after the click. When these signals do not align with each other or with the dynamics of the niche, links begin to look unnatural.
Some websites may sell links for years, but Google simply does not take those links into account for ranking purposes. You pay money, see the link in Ahrefs, but the SEO effect is zero.
Why Even “High-Quality” Paid Links Can Be Risky
Even well-designed, seemingly high-quality paid links are not always safe. Google does not evaluate a single link in isolation, but the entire backlink profile. If such links appear regularly without clear informational triggers, PR activity, or brand growth, they gradually lose their natural appearance. Additionally, donor sites themselves may change status over time or come under review, causing previously “working” links to be devalued or to create additional risks.
For Google, the key factor is not how the link was obtained, but whether it looks logical, useful, and justified in the real development of the website.
Google Filters and Penalties for Unnatural Links
In SEO, it is important to distinguish between two main mechanisms Google uses to influence violating websites — algorithmic filters and manual penalties.
Algorithmic Filters vs Manual Penalties
Algorithmic filtering is automatic devaluation, where SpamBrain and other Google algorithms evaluate links and decide to:
- ignore suspicious links (not count them in rankings),
- reduce their weight (provide minimal or zero effect),
- apply negative adjustments (if the pattern is too obvious).
In such cases, you receive no notifications in Search Console. Google simply stops considering specific unnatural links for SEO or lowers their value. You only notice this through ranking drops.
Usually, not the entire site is affected, but specific links whose value is nullified. If you have 1,000 links and 300 of them are suspicious, Google ignores those 300 while the remaining 700 continue to work.
If you clean up your profile (remove problematic links or add them to the Disavow file), the algorithm will automatically reassess your site during the next reindexing. There is no need to contact Google or explain anything.
What a Manual Action for Links Looks Like in Search Console
Manual penalties are decisions made by a human reviewer from the Search Quality Team stating that your website violates the rules. You receive a notification in Google Search Console under the Manual Actions section. It specifies:
- the type of violation (unnatural links, thin content, cloaking, etc.),
- whether the penalty applies to the entire site or specific pages,
- the date the penalty was applied.
Unlike algorithmic filtering, a Manual Action can demote the entire site across all queries, remove the site completely from the index, or block specific sections. In this case, you must fix the issue (remove unnatural links or modify content), submit a reconsideration request, wait for a response from a Google reviewer, and possibly repeat the entire process multiple times.
| Parameter | Algorithmic Filtering | Manual Penalties (Manual Actions) |
| Who makes the decision | Automated algorithms (SpamBrain, Core Algorithm) | A specialist from the Search Quality Team |
| Notification in Search Console | No notifications at all | There is always an official notification in the Manual Actions section |
| How the issue is discovered | Ranking drops, analysis after updates | A message with the violation type and examples |
| Speed of action | Instant or during the next update | 1–4 weeks after the violation is detected |
| Scope of impact | Devalues specific links or groups of links | Can affect the entire site or specific sections |
| Severity of consequences | Usually milder: 10–40% ranking drop | Often more severe: 50–95% ranking drop |
| Diagnostic accuracy | Difficult to identify problematic links | Google often provides example URLs |
| Recovery process | Automatic after cleaning up the link profile | Requires a Reconsideration Request and approval |
| Recovery timeframes | From several days to several months | 1–4 weeks for request review |
| Possibility of appeal | Not possible | Possible via Reconsideration Request |
| Dynamic behavior | Continuously re-evaluated during indexing | Remains in place until the request is approved |
| Frequency of occurrence | Very frequent — 95%+ of all cases | Rare — only 2–5% of websites |
| Preventive actions | Links can be added to Disavow in advance | Works only after fixing issues and submitting a request |
| Impact on brand | Invisible to the public | May become public if reported by the media |
| Typical causes | Low-quality links, spam donors | Mass link buying, PBNs, link schemes |
| Can it be ignored | Yes, if the impact is insignificant | No — the penalty will not disappear on its own |
What to Do If Google Detects Unnatural Links
A proper approach to cleaning your backlink profile can not only restore lost rankings but also make your website stronger in the long term.
Backlink Profile Audit
Before removing anything, it is important to assess the scale of the problem. This means compiling a complete list of all links pointing to your website.
The best place to start is Google Search Console (the “Links” section → “Top linking sites”). In addition, it is recommended to use paid tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Majestic for deeper analysis.
What to pay attention to:
- sites with suspicious names and domains like .top, .xyz, .win,
- donors with zero traffic and a large number of outgoing links,
- links from foreign-language sites (for example, Chinese or Indian websites linking to a Ukrainian online store),
- anchors consisting solely of over-optimized keywords.
Link Removal and Disavow (Disavow Tool)
If your site has received a manual penalty for link manipulation, simply disavowing links may not be enough. You should attempt to remove the links physically. Contact the website owners where spam links are placed and ask them to remove the links or add the rel=”nofollow” attribute. Save screenshots of your emails, as they will be needed for your report to Google.
For links that cannot be removed manually, use Google’s dedicated tool. Create a .txt file in UTF-8 encoding and list domains (for example, domain:spam-site.com) or specific URLs. Upload this file via the Google Disavow Tool.
Use this tool with caution, as you may lose valuable links along with toxic ones.
Site Recovery After Penalties
Recovery depends on the type of penalty applied.
If the penalty is manual, after cleaning the backlink profile you must submit a Reconsideration Request via Search Console. Be honest in your request:
- acknowledge that manipulative methods were used,
- describe in detail what actions were taken (how many links were removed, which site owners were contacted),
- include a link to a Google Sheet with your audit,
- commit to following Google’s guidelines in the future.
If the issue was caused by Google’s algorithms targeting link spam, you simply need to fix the backlink profile and wait. When Google re-crawls and re-evaluates your links (which may take several weeks to several months), your status will be updated automatically and rankings may begin to recover.
How to Avoid Unnatural Links in the Future
To avoid ending up on Google’s “blacklist” again, adjust your SEO strategy:
- prioritize outreach: negotiate publications on real, active websites where your audience exists,
- maintain natural anchor distribution: 70–80% of your links should be branded (company name) or unanchored (plain URL),
- choose quality over quantity: one link from an authoritative niche media outlet is better than hundreds of irrelevant links,
- ensure source diversity: acquire links from different types of platforms (forums, blogs, media, social networks).
FAQ
How does Google know a link is paid?
Google analyzes behavioral patterns. If a donor systematically publishes articles with commercial links, has no organic traffic, and its clients receive links from the same pool of sites, the algorithm identifies a paid scheme. Google also considers the absence of rel=”sponsored” on paid publications, unnatural anchor text distribution, and contextual issues where links are inserted artificially without relevance.
Which links does Google consider unnatural?
Unnatural links are any links created to manipulate rankings rather than due to content value. This includes paid links, large-scale link exchanges, automated comments and forums, PBNs, spam directories, links with exact-match commercial anchors on irrelevant sites, footer/sidebar links across hundreds of pages, and links from sites with no traffic or auto-generated content.
Can Google automatically detect link spam?
Yes. SpamBrain, a machine-learning system, analyzes billions of links daily. It detects anomalous patterns such as sudden link spikes, PBN structures, semantic irrelevance, behavioral signals (whether users click links), and donor characteristics. The algorithm works in real time and automatically devalues or ignores suspicious links without manual intervention.
What should you do if your site receives link-related penalties?
Conduct a detailed audit by exporting links from Search Console, Ahrefs, and Semrush, and identify toxic links. Attempt removal by contacting webmasters and documenting efforts. Use the Disavow Tool for links that cannot be removed. Submit a Reconsideration Request (for manual penalties) with detailed explanations, evidence, and preventive measures. Wait for a response and repeat the process if necessary.
Do paid links work in 2026?
Yes, but only if they look like a natural part of high-quality content on authoritative platforms. Mass buying of low-quality links no longer works.
