Is this link spam? We answer directly
Short answer: from the perspective of Google's formal rules — yes, links placed for the purpose of influencing ranking fall under the definition of link spam. We will not convince you that a cascade of publications is 'natural mentions'. Further in the text — what this means in practice, where the real risk boundary lies, and how managed placements differ from spam mailings, for which sites are indeed penalized.
What is literally written by Google
In Google's spam rules, any links created primarily for manipulating ranking are classified as link spam: purchasing links, exchanging links on a 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' basis, mass guest posts with optimized anchors, and placements in directories for the sake of a link. The wording is broad: it encompasses almost all commercial link building, including expensive guest publications in thematic publications.
Therefore, a contractor who says 'our links fully comply with Google's policy' either hasn't read the policy or assumes you haven't.
Why link promotion still exists
Links remain one of the ranking factors, and Google confirms this. The fight is not against the existence of links, but against the scale of manipulation. Modern anti-spam algorithms mostly devalue suspicious links — they simply stop considering their weight, — rather than penalizing the receiving site. Manual sanctions for incoming links are applied noticeably less frequently and, as a rule, to sites where the scheme is obvious and massive.
The practical conclusion: the main risk of purchased links is not 'the site will drop out of the results', but 'money wasted'. It is from this risk that we protect ourselves through measurements, not promises.
Where the real boundary lies
| Dangerous practice | What we do |
|---|---|
| Thousands of links from one or two domains | Limiting the number of publications per domain and rotating platforms across the entire pool |
| The same commercial anchor in all links | Rotation from your anchor list; recommendations on shares — in the article about the anchor plan |
| Meaningless generated text around the link | The article is written on the topic of the page, with checks on length and structure; see who writes articles |
| Instant spike of hundreds of links in an hour | Natural mode with uneven intervals of publications |
| Platforms not indexed | We measure the indexability of each platform and disable hopeless ones — 27 out of 72 are turned off |
| Hidden text, cloaking, hacked sites | We do not do this under any circumstances |
What we fundamentally do not do
- We do not place links on hacked sites and in other people's admin panels.
- We do not hide links: hidden text, zero font, CSS invisibility — this is a direct violation that is trivially caught.
- We do not buy drop domains for a network and do not pass off other people's platforms as our own.
- We do not draw in the report links that do not exist: only what has passed automatic verification gets into the report.
How to reduce risk on your side
- Keep the share of commercial anchors low — more details in the anchor plan.
- Do not ramp up volume abruptly: better several small launches than one giant.
- Develop the site in parallel — links strengthen what already exists, rather than replace content.
- Monitor dynamics in 'Pulse', not individual links.