Google’s John Mueller said that when it comes to links SEO make to manipulate search rankings and gain ranking position in Google, those links are mostly ignored by Google Search. This is a line Googlers have been saying since Penguin 4.0 came out in 2016 and continues to say.

John said on Twitter, “Of course — most of those links do nothing; we’ve spent many years ignoring that kind of thing.” This was when he was asked, “Most of the Seo practitioners make backlinks for just manipulating search results and gain positions. If private tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can detect those IPs which are building backlinks, doesn’t google track them?”

Here are those tweets:

Of course — most of those links do nothing, we’ve spent many years ignoring that kind of thing.

— johnmu likes 🥚 staplers 🥚 (@JohnMu) April 10, 2023

So there you have it again, Google says they are excellent at ignoring links that are links designed to try to manipulate Google Search rankings. But as a reminder, Google does not demote but rather devalues those links.

Forum discussion at Twitter.