VercatusLink spam and paid links
Link spam — creating links to or from a site primarily to manipulate rankings — includes buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, excessive link exchanges, automated link programs, advertorials with followed links, and widely distributed footer or widget links. Paid links are acceptable when qualified with rel="sponsored" (or nofollow), and user-generated links should carry rel="ugc". Since the December 2022 link spam update Google uses SpamBrain to detect link buying and selling and to neutralise the credit unnatural links pass.
Sources
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- 3Google Search Central Blog · 2022December 2022 link spam update releasing for Google Searchdevelopers.google.com
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