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Google has introduced the term “unnatural links” to refer to links meant to manipulate the search algorithm.
They also have been sending unnatural links warnings starting in 2012.
The messages usually meant that you got penalized on Google search.
Thus you potentially lost your rankings on Google and traffic to your website.
What else does it mean? “Houston, we have a problem!”
I also did. Many innocent publishers were affected on top of that!
Unnatural links can still harm your site. See below!
Unnatural link warnings appear on Search Console
One day warnings started telling website owners on Google Search Console that they have “unnatural links”.
Yet there was no way to detect those and Google also did not offer any help to determine the culprits.
There was no clear definition at first.
All links are unnatural in a way. They don’t grow in nature.
Google was simply scaring people – on purpose.
Then they seemingly backtracked later to say that these messages do not mean you have been penalized.
They even explained they don’t matter. Of course this was also just a temporary excuse.
What is the meaning and purpose of this term, concept and messaging?
Are unnatural links warnings confusing people for fun or profit?
Later Google spokespeople apparently again changed their mind!
How? They stated that of course such a “warning” message can mean a penalty and that they can’t be ignored.
All of this happened in July while many people were on vacation!
There is only one logical reason for making people panic in such a way.
It’s a so called FUD campaign by Google to discourage people from practicing SEO.
FUD stands for “fear, uncertainty and doubt”.
It is an unethical business tactic to make your competition appear untrustworthy by spreading disinformation.
Google calls that “transparency” but the corporation is known for its bizarre Orwellian newspeak.
Google does not even compete with anyone in search anymore.
They are effectively a monopoly controlling online traffic.
So no wonder they behave like some tyrannical regime with too much power.
What are unnatural links?
So apparently “unnatural links” are any links meant to obviously manipulate Google rankings by way of shady SEO.
By now there is a whole section on “link spam” on Google.
It is explaining the types of links that are unnatural without even using the term anymore.
Some obvious types are
- paid links (without using nofollow or sponsored attributes)
- exact match anchor text links
- site-wide footer links
As anyone could point such links to your site you were screwed.
Yet as of 2026 Google spokespeople say that they merely discount unnatural links instead of penalizing the receiving site.
Yet I’m not convinced.
You still risk a penalty when building spammy links.
A client site of mine got one back in 2013 and it was no fun.
So why did they do this?
Why not simply ignore the links (as they profess to do nowadays)?
Google, the advertising corporation
Google’s business model is selling ads and so called paid inclusion (hidden ads that can’t be distinguished as such) not search itself.
In short:
Google gets paid by advertisers so that they show up on top of so called organic search results.
These organic search results by now almost disappeared in most lucrative niches like ecommerce or travel.
There Google dominates most if not all of the visible screen real estate.
You have to scroll to even see the so called natural search results.
These in turn will most likely show either Wikipedia on top or other corporations you can’t compete with.
Most business owners have to pay to get included on Google.
Despite this over the years demand for SEO has grown steadily.
It grew as much as the demand for Google Ads the Internet giant shows above the real search results.
In early 2012 Google also enabled so called “negative SEO“. How?
They did by announcing that “it’s not impossible” to hurt a competing site by pointing bad links towards it.
Google makes SEO negative
After Google allowed sabotaging of third party websites in their search index a huge wave of “negative SEO” ensued.
Rogue businesses tried to hurt their competition by buying unnatural links to link to them.
Some scammers started also blackmailing publishers so that they pay them to get unnatural links pointing to them removed.
Case studies proved the impact of Google sabotage.
Due to such mistakenly called “negative SEO” Google has been sending out unnatural links warnings quickly to the victim sites.
- Let’s make this clear: a criminal could hurt your site by simply paying $10 to some hacker!
- This hacker would then spam thousands of blogs and forums so that they link to your legit site from their hacked pages.
- Then Google would penalize you (or take manual action as they call it in Google-speak) for being linked to.
- Then the same person could extort you so that you pay them to get those harmful links removed.
Google could easily end this insanity by simply discounting all “unnatural” links.
They could stop counting them altogether – neither as positive nor as positive links.
Instead Google offered a so-called disavow tool.
They also added it to Google Search Console.
By now you can only reach it directly, not from GSC.
There you have to manually add all the bad links pointing to your site. Only add those you don’t trust and consider “unnatural”.
This way Google gets an army of unpaid workers to clean up the Web.
That’s not the reason why Google first created the problem to later provide the solution though. It’s just a means to an end:
Danger, danger! It’s the Internet!
Google tried to convince people that links, the foundation of the Web, are dangerous!
Instead they wanted people to stay on Google and inform themselves inside their walled garden ad hoc “search” portals.
Link building – the most important SEO technique – became high risk and costly.
What were publishers left to do? They had to pay Google to get found. They needed to buy Google ads.
In the meantime SEO practitioners had to adapt to the new Web owned by Google.
Google also pushed proprietary Google technologies by promising a more visible placement in so called search results.
You had to create a separate site for Google using the AMP coding language e.g.
Then you would be rewarded by showing up on top in some specialized Google features like “carousels” e.g.
Once most people are afraid of links Google can easily take over the Web with their proprietary technology.
The SEO industry has to adapt by offering Google Ads and creating content to displayed on Google itself or get wiped out.
What is the purpose of such unnatural link warnings?
The “unnatural links” scare is not meant to improve SEO or the quality of organic search results.
Google wants to sell more ads and replace links with proprietary features.
The Web landscape has changed ever since.
Google claims to discount unnatural links.
Yet they still warn of “link spam”.
Also I have seem unnatural links reports as recent as from 2023.
* (CC BY 2.0) Creative Commons image by Steve Lodefink
