Link exchanges: what Google says, and what people actually do

Google's link spam policy names "excessive link exchanges" and describes them as arrangements of the form: link to me and I will link to you. It sits in the same list as buying and selling links that pass ranking, large-scale article campaigns with keyword-rich anchors, and automated link programmes.

Two words carry the weight. Excessive means the exchange is the point and the reader is not. And links that pass ranking means the policy is about ranking signals, not about the existence of a link.

One question separates the two cases: would this link exist if the other side removed theirs tomorrow.

The three-way version deserves a note because it is sold as the clever workaround. Site A links to B, B links to C, C links to A. It is a scheme with an extra step, and the extra step does not change what it is.

You will not get a message. The usual outcome of an exchange network is that nothing happens at all: the links sit there, nobody clicks them, and the rankings do not move.

• The links are live and indexed, and your positions are unchanged over months.
• The referring domains chart goes up while impressions stay flat.
• No traffic ever arrives from any of them, because nobody reads a page of outbound links.
• In the rare case of a manual action, Search Console's Manual actions report says so explicitly.

That flatness is the signal. It is also why the exchange feels harmless: nothing visibly breaks. The cost is the weeks spent and the pages of outbound links now sitting on your own site, doing nothing for your readers.

The impulse behind an exchange is sound: you know other founders, and you want to help each other. Keep the impulse and drop the accounting.

1. 1

   Build the integration

   If your products connect, document it on your side. Then ask to be listed on their integrations page. Both pages exist because users need them.

2. 2

   Cite properly

   When their study, tool or documentation is the best reference for a paragraph you are writing, link it. Tell them you did, once, without asking for anything.

3. 3

   Recommend to people, not to crawlers

   Introduce their product to a customer it suits. Recommendations travel further than links and often end up as one anyway.

4. 4

   Share an audience instead

   A joint study, a webinar, a newsletter swap that goes to human subscribers. The link that follows is a byproduct of something real.

Worked example. PingFox monitors uptime; a rival product publishes status pages. PingFox writes a guide on status page reliability and cites their documentation because it is the clearest explanation available. Their team notices, and later lists PingFox on their integrations page because customers ask for it. Two links, no negotiation, both useful to a reader.

You will get these emails weekly. A short honest answer takes ten seconds and keeps the relationship open.

Hi, thanks for the note. We do not do link exchanges, but I am happy to
link to your guide on retries if it is the best reference when we next
write about that, with no expectation either way. If our products ever
connect properly, an integration page on both sides makes more sense.

Thomas

• Do not argue about policy. Say no and offer the version you would do.
• If they are a genuine peer, the offer is real: add them to your reading when they earn it.
• If the email lists forty sites and a spreadsheet, do not reply at all.
• Never agree to a swap because the other site has a high third-party metric. That number is a tool's model, not Google's.

If you did this in the past, in small numbers, with real sites, the honest answer is that it is probably not worth unpicking.

• Remove the outbound links on your own site that exist only for the trade. They are your pages and they are not helping your readers.
• Leave the inbound ones alone. You cannot control other people's pages, and Google's systems ignore what they judge to be schemes.
• The disavow file is for a manual action for link spam, or a known history of paid links. It is not a routine tidy-up, and Google says most sites never need it.
• If you have a manual action, fix the cause, document what you removed, and file a reconsideration request.

Then spend the time on the things that compound: something worth citing, and the people who cite things in your category.