How to find site buying links?

There are several ways in which Google can identify sites buying links to manipulate SERPs on the Google search engine.

1. Unnatural links

   The site receives many unnaturally looking links. This can be an indicator that the links were bought or exchanged or part of a link building system. In good faith, Google will not penalize the site but will analyze the sites that link to you and see if they meet the criteria of link sellers (see How Google finds sites selling links).

2. High PR links on highly competitive keywords

   It’s highly suspicious if a PR8 site about computers links to your site with an anchor like “mortgage”. Again, this must be considered in relation to the site selling links.

3. A huge number of links at once

   This goes to the issue of popularity of your website. It should have a steady growth. You can’t have an influx of 100 links on a single day. This raises a red flag. Definitely there is something going on.

Detecting link buyers may not be a difficult thing to do. The real problem is how to definitely determined if a given set of links was bought or not. There is always a possibility that your competitor may be doing you some sort of nasty favor. It is extremely hard to state with 100% certainty that the site has bought some links. There is always an element of doubt. But any doubt can disappear if you go after sellers. Detecting buyers is closely related to detecting sellers. Hence it becomes impossible to go after buyers only. Once the Google SE gets its bearing on your site, it will analyze all the sites that link to you. It will try to identify various characteristics of links sellers and then will make a decision with respect to your site. You can be penalized the same way the seller is penalized.