Definition

A natural link is an inbound link placed by a third party of their own accord — for example, citing a source or recommending a product — rather than as part of a paid, exchanged or automated arrangement.

Google does not define "natural link" in a single dedicated document, but its spam policies describe link spam as links "created primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings" and list paid, exchanged, automated and widget-embedded links as examples. By contrast, a natural link is one that exists because the linking author independently decided the destination was worth citing. The distinction matters because Google's spam policies state that unnatural links can trigger ranking adjustments or manual actions.

Examples

• Editorial citation in a news article

  A journalist writing about a public health study links to the original research paper. The publisher has no commercial relationship with the researchers — the link exists purely as a citation, which Google treats as natural.

• Reader recommendation in a blog post

  A travel blogger writes about a holiday and links to a small accommodation provider they enjoyed staying with. No money or exchange is involved, so the resulting backlink is a natural link.

Sources

• Google Search Central — Spam policies for Google web search

Related terms

• Backlink
  A hyperlink on one website that points at another. Search engines treat backlinks as one signal of how the wider web vouches for a page.
• Link Spam
  Links created primarily to manipulate search rankings, which Google's spam policies treat as a violation that can affect a site's visibility.
• Paid Link
  A link created in exchange for money, goods or services, which Google requires to be qualified with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".
• Link Building
  The practice of acquiring inbound links from other websites, ranging from editorial outreach to schemes that Google classifies as link spam.
• Link Equity
  An SEO-community term for the ranking value that one page can pass to another through a link, related to what Google originally called PageRank.
• External Link
  An HTML link that points from one website to a different domain, also called an outbound link from the source site's perspective.
• Sponsored Link
  A link marked with rel="sponsored" to indicate it was created as part of an advertisement, sponsorship, or other paid placement.
• Manual Action
  A penalty applied by a Google reviewer when a site is found to violate the search spam policies, demoting or removing affected pages from results.

Where QueryCatch uses this

• SEO Audit
• Competitor Analysis