Google Warns About Using Contests For Links

Feb 23, 2017 - 7:45 am 14 by

Google Contest

Google's John Mueller reluctantly explained in a live webmaster video this week on YouTube at the 31:22 mark that he would "watch out" when using contests to get links. He said the links might not be "clean" and if you are doing it to "exchange something" that is against their link guidelines.

So if you tell people to link to you as part of the contest, that would be against Google's guidelines. If they can win and part of the contest encourages or requires a link back to your site, that is against Google's link guidelines.

John said:

I think the situation where you're doing kind of a contest is something to watch out for. So, mostly with regards to whether or not these are actually clean links or not. In the sense of are you perhaps exchanging something for these links like do you require a link in order to take part of the contest.

But if the contest doesn't require this and you do it like maybe the SEO Hero thing, where they just get links because the contest is out there - then I assume that should be okay.

As the Google links schemes page says:

Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link.

So it can't get too close to that.

Here is the video embed:

Forum discussion at Google+.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 18, 2025

Jul 18, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google June Core Update Done, Local Ranking Update, AI Mode Updates & AI Calling Businesses

Jul 18, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

New Google Business Profile Check Edit Status

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Login Service Pages Are Hard To Rank In Search

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google AI Overviews For Movie Queries

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Rolling Out Smart Bidding Exploration To Some Advertisers

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: DuckDuckGo & Other Search Providers Respond To Google Site Search Closure