As you know, Google has a webmaster guideline against widget links (since 2016), despite what some SEOs want to tell themselves. But the good news, and we knew this, that Google will likely just ignore those links and not penalize your site for those links today.
In 2017, John Mueller said Google will likely just automatically just ignore links within widgets. So if Google ignores the links, Google basically means they treat them as nofollowed links and Google won’t count them in a good or bad way. It can feel like a penalty and it can be a waste of money to use widgets for a link building strategy but you likely won’t be penalized or get a manual action.
You may get a Google manual action if you go above and beyond with those widget links and Google needs to communicate that to you in some form. But most of the time, Google will just ignore the links in widgets.
John Mueller of Google said this again this morning on Twitter first saying “widget links are against the webmaster guidelines” then adding “it’s trivial for our systems to recognize these links.” He said “they’re links, you can count them, but that doesn’t mean they have any value.”
He then added “They’re against the webmaster guidelines and considered a form of unnatural link. We algorithmically work to ignore unnatural links, or to treat them appropriately. We may also take manual action on unnatural links. I wouldn’t see a broader link-scheme like this as “harmless”.”
Here is the full context of this:
Are your links generated via JS? I wondered if google treated dynamic backlinks differently. Also…I heard that google hates this tactic and actually penalises widgets that have “powered by” backlinks?
— Ryan Badger (@ryanseanbadger) March 9, 2022
On the one hand, widget links are against the webmaster guidelines ( https://t.co/I0xejnfXYu ). On the other hand, it’s trivial for our systems to recognize these links. They’re links, you can count them, but that doesn’t mean they have any value.
— 🐐 John 🐐 (@JohnMu) March 9, 2022
They’re against the webmaster guidelines and considered a form of unnatural link. We algorithmically work to ignore unnatural links, or to treat them appropriately. We may also take manual action on unnatural links. I wouldn’t see a broader link-scheme like this as “harmless”.
— 🐐 John 🐐 (@JohnMu) March 10, 2022
Forum discussion at Twitter.