Google's John Mueller said that link wheels are against Google's webmaster guidelines, I mean search essentials, because Google would consider them link schemes and thus spam.
John said on Twitter when asked about link wheels, "Those are essentially link schemes, so they would be against our spam policies." He also noted that link wheels are super old. Here are those tweets:
Wow, that's a blast from the past :-). Those were popular ... late 1990's / early 2000's. Those are essentially link schemes, so they would be against our spam policies.
— 🦇 johnmu: cats are not people 🦇 (@JohnMu) October 25, 2022
Yeah, I don't mind so much that people are doing useless things, if it makes them feel better, but yes, it's a waste of time & energy. Go for a run instead, it'll make you feel better too, and give you more energy in exchange.
— 🦇 johnmu: cats are not people 🦇 (@JohnMu) October 25, 2022
Link wheels are an SEO technique that is against Google's guidelines where one creates several sites and link them to each other in a round-robin fashion. They are purposefully and solely built to manipulate the rankings of a website, to manipulate Google into thinking those links are natural.
In 2018, Google said link wheels do not work - by the way.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
