One SEO professional asked John about paid backlinks. Their main question was: Google has said in the past that paying for backlinks is spam.
However, in PersianWeb, they see many websites that (mostly they sell flight tickets) spend a lot for site wide backlinks.
But, they are still on top of the search results. They want to know: why is there such a contradiction here?
John explained that it’s hard to say without looking at the sites themselves. However, many times what he sees is that sites will do something wrong, but they will do other things really well. And because of this, it still makes sense to show them in the search results.
They would not remove a site from the search results just because they are doing one thing bad, if in their algorithm they can recognize that and ignore it and reduce the weight of that factor.
And that’s what they tried to do with links in general is to understand – which of these links are actually good natural links?
Which links should we give weight to, and which ones aren’t natural? And just because there are some bad links there too, that perhaps the site owner is buying.
That doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t show the site at all in the search results.
This happens at approximately the 1:28 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 1 1:28
Okay, thank you. Um, a second question is Google says that paying for backlinks is spam. But in PersianWeb, we see many websites, mostly, they sell flight tickets, they spend a lot for site wide backlinks, but still they are on the top of the search results. So why is there such a contradiction here?
John 1:52
I don’t know. I mean, it’s hard to say without looking at the sites themselves. But a lot of times, what I see is that sites will do some things wrong, but they will do other things really well.
And because of that, it still makes sense to show them in the search results, like we would not remove a site from the search results, just because they’re doing one thing bad, especially if in our algorithms, we can recognize that and ignore or kind of, kind of do reduce the weight of that factor.
And that’s kind of what we tried to do with links in general to understand like, which of these links are actually good natural links?
And which should we give weight and which ones aren’t? And just because there’s some bad links there too, that maybe they’re buying? I don’t know. That doesn’t mean that we would not show the site at all.
