Gary Illyes from Google said at SMX Advanced on stage that buying links from sites that sell guest blog posts and the like is the same thing as throwing money out of the window. He said it is "literally throwing money out of the window," which means Google isn't counting those links anyway and you are wasting your money.
Gary added that they now are way better at ignoring these paid or manipulated links and don't penalize them as harshly or as much. But now people are complaining that people are buying links and Google isn't penalizing those sites. Gary said, you can't win - either you penalize and people say you should just ignore the links or you ignore and people want you to penalize the links. He personally likes the ignore method over penalty method.
Here are some valuable tweets from this topic from the SMX session:
If you are buying links, it's likely you are throwing money out the window. @methode #smx
— Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) June 13, 2017
If you are buying links, you are literally throwing money away. @methode #smx
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) June 13, 2017
Again, "If you are buying links you are throwing money out the window." @methode #smx
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) June 13, 2017
When you buy links from really big sites, i.e. Forbes "Those links are worthless." @methode #SMX Hmmmm....
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) June 13, 2017
So @methode says Google does a great job at ignoring links, and they manual actions are not as harsh b/c they are really good at it. #smx
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) June 13, 2017
Many of those big article sites people are selling links on? Those links are worthless. Ie Forbes / "high DA sites" @methode #smx
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) June 13, 2017
We can ignore links, we are doing a great job at ignoring links, but we are sending out link manual actions but not as harsh. @methode #smx
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) June 13, 2017
"I think we are doing a great job at ignoring links. We still send out man actions, but they're not as harsh." @methode #smx
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) June 13, 2017
When Google started ignoring, people complained that Google wasn't penalizing sites with those types of links. @methode #smx
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) June 13, 2017
Real time Penguin has the capability to ignore links. Ppl got upset that link buyers are not being penalized. @methode #smx
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) June 13, 2017
Forum discussion at Twitter.
