Unnatural links
Unnatural links are links made to game search rankings, such as bought, swapped or mass-produced links, instead of links a site chose to give.
Unnatural links are links that exist to manipulate search rankings, not because the linking site chose to recommend you. Bought links, link swaps, links from networks of sites built for the purpose, and keyword-stuffed links in comments or footers are all unnatural. "Unnatural links" is also the phrase Google uses in the manual action it sends when it finds them.
It matters because a site with lots of them can lose rankings, and cleaning up takes far longer than building them did.
What makes a link unnatural
The test is simple: would the link exist if search engines didn't count links? A food writer who liked your coffee and linked to it gave you a natural link. A link you paid for, without marking it as paid, isn't. Google's spam policies list the kinds it calls link spam.
Watch for patterns, too. Hundreds of links with the same keyword text, links from sites in unrelated languages, or a sudden spike from sites nobody visits all look unnatural, even when each one alone might pass.
For example, Kestrel Roasters finds that an old agency built 300 links to its shop, all saying "cheap coffee beans UK," from blogs that post about everything from loans to slot machines. That's a pattern Google is built to spot.
What to do about them
Remove the ones you control or paid for. For the rest, Google mostly ignores links it judges unnatural. If you've had a manual action, fix what you can and ask for a review in Search Console. Then put the effort into links and mentions people would give you anyway.
Unnatural links and AI answers
AI platforms don't name you because of the number of links pointing at you. They name you because of what the pages they read say. A pile of junk links buys nothing there, while a single honest mention in a review the platforms read can.
In AnswerOrbit
We never recommend links you pay or trade for. Recommendations points to real pages and sites in the answers, where getting mentioned on the merits would help.