Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Research & Trends
    3. White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    4. How does Google determine if a link is paid or not?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How does Google determine if a link is paid or not?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    6
    10
    5028
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • jampaper
      jampaper Subscriber last edited by

      We are currently doing some outreach to bloggers to review our products and provide us with backlinks (preferably followed). The bloggers get to keep the products (usually about $30 worth). According to Google's link schemes, this is a no-no. But my question is, how would Google ever know if the blogger was paid or given freebies for their content?

      This is the "best" article I could find related to the subject: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2332787/Matt-Cutts-Shares-4-Ways-Google-Evaluates-Paid-Links

      The article tells us what qualifies as a paid link, but it doesn't tell us how Google identifies if links were paid or not. It also says that "loans" or okay, but "gifts" are not. How would Google know the difference? For all Google knows (maybe everything?), the blogger returned the products to us after reviewing them.

      Does anyone have any ideas on this? Maybe Google watches over terms like, "this is a sponsored post" or "materials provided by 'x'". Even so, I hope that wouldn't be enough to warrant a penalty.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • WhoWuddaThunk
        WhoWuddaThunk last edited by

        I haven't reviewed all of the comments on this post thoroughly, but I thought it was imperative to mention this.  If you are paying someone to review your product they are required by law, at least in the U.S., to acknowledge that.  Not doing so would be violating FTC guidelines, and bring on potential fines.

        Source:

        http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus71-ftcs-revised-endorsement-guideswhat-people-are-asking

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • DanielFreedman
          DanielFreedman last edited by

          Agree completely with the above responses.

          Bottom line: Google has some of the smartest people in the world working on these issues. In the end, they will prevail.

          The idea that can can fool Google or game the system is...well, foolish.

          At best, you might be able to score some temporary gains by disregarding the guidelines.

          And then the hammer will fall.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • ShaMenz
            ShaMenz last edited by

            Hi Jampaper,

            Just to preface, I spend my days wading through the unnatural links sewer looking at the mess people have gotten themselves into because they thought they were smarter than Google or had that "how would Google ever know" thought in their heads.

            EGOL is spot on with his response.

            The criteria for undesirable links is not "how would Google ever know it's unnatural?", but "is it unnatural?"

            On the "How", here are some things to consider:

            1. Google's reach and ability to mine and interpret data (accurately or not) is so far outside our comprehension that it is probably better we don't even think about it.

            2. Reviewers have a habit of unitentionally sharing information or creating patterns in the way they do things that are a clear red flag for orchestrated reviews

            3. "These reviews always point to inner pages" ...Ooops! There's a pattern 😞

            4. "We're obviously targeting authoritative sites which do do reviews" ...Ooops! another pattern 😞

            5. Unnatural links on "Authoritative sites" would be more likely to enrage me if I were a member of the Webspam team than those on less influential sites. Let's face it, nobody ever sent me an email suggesting they could sell me links on a crap site 😉

            6. (and this you should take as very tongue in cheek, but perhaps give some thought to implications)
              This site has upwards of 400,000 community members. One of them is a guy who is currently on leave from his job at G, but occasionally comments on Moz blog posts that interest him (that's the tongue in cheek part as while it is possible, I seriously doubt he or any of the other Googlers who might be members spend time combing through this site looking for extra work!) 🙂

              However, it doesn't take much imagination to think there may be other people out there who could be made aware and if they were a certain kind of person might be likely to look into a backlink profile and perhaps lodge a report. Once the manual review process comes into play, the cleverness of the algorithm is irrelevant.

            When you have a great product your customers will always be your best sales force! Do things that make THEM want to tell people how THEY feel about you. If you do that enough, even those Authoritative sites will be checking you out for themselves and gifting you natural links 😉

            Hope that helps,

            Sha

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
            • jampaper
              jampaper Subscriber @EGOL last edited by

              I will amend what I said. It's never sudden when we get a review, there's plenty of communication between both parties first. It takes a while. These reviews/backlinks always point to inner pages as well, so it's not like one product page has a lot of review backlinks.

              Thank you for your help!

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • EGOL
                EGOL @jampaper last edited by

                We're obviously targeting authoritative sites which do do reviews.

                OK... same crappy product getting no authentic reviews.  Suddenly a ton a reviews appear on "authoritative" websites.  Somebody did something to make that happen.

                So Google has real people just combing the web for these types of cases? No algo?

                They have a really simple algo that catches this stuff.

                jampaper 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                • jampaper
                  jampaper Subscriber @Kingof5 last edited by

                  That's what I thought. I believe the point of the article above was to more or less scare SEOs away from attempting to get paid links.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • jampaper
                    jampaper Subscriber @EGOL last edited by

                    We're obviously targeting authoritative sites which do do reviews.

                    "Engineers not required" is interesting. So Google has real people just combing the web for these types of cases? No algo?

                    EGOL 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • EGOL
                      EGOL last edited by

                      Product A exists for years and nobody is sayin' anything about it.  Then, BAM, a ton of crappy reviews appear on a bunch of crappy sites..... Somebody did somethin' to make that happen - especially when those reviews appear on sites that do not make a practice of reviewing products.   Engineers not required.

                      jampaper 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
                      • Kingof5
                        Kingof5 last edited by

                        Google probably doesn't know. There are probably some incredibly convoluted methods they could use to determine it, but in general they don't know. This is why Penguin causes collateral damage and they haven't updated it again - they can't really differentiate between a spammy link / naturally placed link / negative SEO / etc.

                        jampaper 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • 1 / 1
                        • First post
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        Browse Questions

                        Explore more categories

                        • Moz Tools

                          Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                        • SEO Tactics

                          Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                        • Community

                          Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                        • Digital Marketing

                          Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                        • Research & Trends

                          Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                        • Support

                          Connect on product support and feature requests.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • imjonny

                          How many links can you have on sitemap.html

                          we have a lot of pages that we want to create crawlable paths to. How many links are able to be crawled on 1 page for sitemap.html

                          White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | imjonny
                          0
                        • SwanseaMedicine

                          Would you disavow links that have a Moz Spam score of 5?

                          As the question suggests...

                          White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SwanseaMedicine
                          0
                        • Choice

                          Forcing Google to Crawl a Backlink URL

                          I was surprised that I couldn't find much info on this topic, considering that Googlebot must crawl a backlink url in order to process a disavow request (ie Penguin recovery and reconsideration requests). My trouble is that we recently received a great backlink from a buried page on a .gov domain and the page has yet to be crawled after 4 months. What is the best way to nudge Googlebot into crawling the url and discovering our link?

                          White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Choice
                          0
                        • BobGW

                          Internal Links to Ecommerce Category Pages

                          Hello, I read a while back, and I can't find it now, that you want to add internal links to your main category pages. Does that still apply? If so, for a small site (100 products) what is recommended? Thanks

                          White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW
                          0
                        • binpress

                          Are link directories still effective? is there a risk?

                          We've contracted a traditional SEO firm, mostly for link building. As part of their plan they want to submit our site to a large list of link directories, and we're not sure if that's a good option. As far as we know, those directories have been ineffective for a long time now, and we're wondering if there is the chance of getting penalized by google. When I asked the agency their opinion about that, they gave me the following answer - Updated and optimized by us - We are partnered with these sites and control quality of these sites. Unique Class C IP address - Links from unique Referring Class C IP plays a very important role in SEO. Powered by high PR backlinks Domain Authority (DA) Score of over 20 These directories are well categorized. So they actually control those directories themselves, which we think is even worse. I'm wondering what does the Moz community think about link directory submission - is there still something to be gained there, is there any risk involved, etc. Thanks!

                          White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | binpress
                          0
                        • NurunMTL

                          Hiding content or links in responsive design

                          Hi, I found a lot of information about responsive design and SEO, mostly theories no real experiment and I'd like to find a clear answer if someone tested that. Google says: 
                          Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device
                          https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details For usability reasons sometimes you need to hide content or links completely (not accessible at all by the visitor) on your page for small resolutions (mobile) using CSS ("visibility:hidden" or "display:none") Is this counted as hidden content and could penalize your site or not? What do you guys do when you create responsive design websites? Thanks! GaB

                          White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NurunMTL
                          0
                        • zorsto

                          Should I Do a Social Bookmarking Campaign and a Tier 2 Linking?

                          I don't see anything bad in manually creating links on different (about 50) social bookmarking services. Is this method labeled as White Hat? I was wondering if it would be fine to create Tier 2 linking (probably blog comments) for indexing of the social bookmarking links? Please share your thoughts on the topic.

                          White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | zorsto
                          0
                        • penn73

                          Penalised by Google - Should I Redirect to a new domain?

                          Last month my rankings dropped a couple of pages on Google and am no longer receiving as many visits from Google as I used to. It's coming up to summer which is the time my business naturally picks up yet I can't fix this problem. I have a crazy idea of redirecting my established site onto a new domain in hopes that the penalty would be removed. I have tried removing any manipulative links yet my ranking are not coming back. Anyone had success in redirecting to a new domain?

                          White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | penn73
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.