Parasite SEO
Parasite SEO is publishing your content on someone else's well-ranked website to borrow its standing in search results and AI answers.
Parasite SEO is publishing content on another website, one that already ranks well, so your content borrows that site's standing instead of earning its own. Think of a sponsored "best mattresses" list on a news site's coupons section, or a casino review hosted on a university's subdomain.
It comes up in AI search because the platforms often read the pages that rank for the searches they run. If a big site's page ranks, it can end up as a source in AI answers, whoever wrote it.
Why it's risky
Google treats it as spam. Its site reputation policy covers third-party content published on a host site mainly because of that host's ranking signals. Google says sites that break its spam policies may rank lower or not appear in results at all.
So any results tend to be short-lived. You pay for a placement, it works for a while, and then it's gone, along with whatever answers it was feeding.
For example, a mattress brand pays to place a page called "The 10 best mattresses of the year" on a local newspaper's site, with itself at number one. It ranks for a few months and shows up as a source in a few AI answers. Then the newspaper's section is dropped from search, and the brand is back where it started, minus the fee.
What's different from honest guest content
Writing for other people's sites isn't parasite SEO in itself. An expert article in a trade magazine, written for its readers and edited by its editors, is ordinary PR. The test Google applies is why the content is there: to serve the host's readers, or to use the host's ranking.
If you'd be happy for the page to carry your name at the top, and the host would publish it without payment, you're probably fine.
In AnswerOrbit
Our recommendations never suggest posts that hide who you are, or links you pay or trade for. When we suggest getting onto another site, it's a page that already names your competitors, found in your answers. See Recommendations.