Definition

A paid link is any link placed as part of a commercial arrangement — including advertising, sponsorship, paid reviews or affiliate placement — where value is exchanged for the link itself.

Google's spam policies acknowledge that buying and selling links "is a normal part of the economy of the web for advertising and sponsorship purposes". They become a policy issue only when paid links are not properly qualified. Google requires paid links to carry `rel="sponsored"` or `rel="nofollow"` so the link is not interpreted as an organic editorial endorsement. Unqualified paid links are listed as an example of link spam and can trigger ranking adjustments or manual actions.

Examples

• Affiliate programme placement

  A retailer pays publishers a commission on referred sales. Publishers wrap affiliate URLs in `<a href="..." rel="sponsored">` so the paid relationship is disclosed to Google.

• Sponsored banner advertisement

  A SaaS company pays a tech publication to run a sidebar banner for a quarter. The banner anchor uses `rel="sponsored"`, keeping the placement within Google's spam policies.

Sources

• Google Search Central — Spam policies for Google web search
• Google Search Central — Qualify your outbound links to Google

Related terms

• Sponsored Link
  A link marked with rel="sponsored" to indicate it was created as part of an advertisement, sponsorship, or other paid placement.
• Nofollow
  A link attribute (`rel="nofollow"`) telling search engines not to associate the source page with — or pass ranking credit to — the linked 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.
• Natural Link
  A link given editorially by another site without solicitation, exchange or payment, contrasted with link schemes Google treats as spam.
• Link Building
  The practice of acquiring inbound links from other websites, ranging from editorial outreach to schemes that Google classifies as link spam.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Where QueryCatch uses this

• SEO Audit
• Page Optimisation