Yesterday we covered how a link seller was trying to sell links to a Googler and we posted some advice around that not being the best idea. Well, later on Gary Illyes confirmed that Google is good at ignoring these types of links so it is a waste of effort and time.
He went on to say that even if the sites selling them are Forbes.com or Entrepreneur Magazine or other big publishers names, Google can and does ignore these types of links.
David Farkas asked Gary Illyes about it on Twitter:
First, I doubt they can actually pull that off. Second, we're pretty good at ignoring links, regardless of the site.
— Gary Illyes ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ (@methode) June 8, 2017
You and I all get all these emails from link sellers selling these types of links. Heck, even Googlers get these emails. It would be surprising to me if they are at least not on Google's radar. If you want to believe if Google is not counting them or not is one thing, Google is 100% aware of these types of link manipulation efforts going on.
Forum discussion at Twitter.