Google: Unnatural Links By Humans Or Bots Are Your Responsibility

Jan 7, 2019 - 8:04 am 3 by

Google Machine Man

Google's John Mueller was asked if there is a difference between a human adding unnatural links on your web site compared to AI, algorithms doing it on their own. John responded that ultimately it is the responsibility of the site owner to make sure their site is clean no matter how the content or links get on it.

John said on Twitter "You're responsible for your own site, regardless if it's random internet users dropping links and writing text, or random algorithms doing that."

Here are the tweets:

So even if you have algorithms and machines writing your content, if they are linking in an unnatural manner (can robots link naturally?) then you got a potential issue.

Either way - Google has said that even when someone spams your content, hacks your content, you are responsible to make sure your content is good and clean. So it doesn't matter if it is done illegally, without your knowledge, by a machine or a human - the ultimately responsibility with your site's content and links are yours.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google

Google Sued SerpApi Over Scraping Search Results

Dec 19, 2025 - 3:50 pm
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 19, 2025

Dec 19, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Core Update Status, Gemini 3 Flash In AI Mode, Optimizing For AI Search & Bug Fixes Galore

Dec 19, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google

Google Product Reviews Bug On Product Detail Pages

Dec 19, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Search Testing New Sports Features

Dec 19, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Tests Video Assets From Merchant Center

Dec 19, 2025 - 7:31 am
 
Previous Story: Gary Illyes From Google Now Takes Speaking Requests Via Google Form