LinkThe short version
- A paid backlink is delivered when eight things are true, not one. "The article is live" is only the first.
- Check on the day it goes live, after 30 days, and then keep checking. Most changes happen quietly, later.
- Put the terms in writing before you pay: address, anchor, rel, how long, and what happens if it changes.
You paid for a link, the vendor sent a URL, you opened it and saw your link in the article. Done? Not quite. A link can be visible in your browser and still be worth nothing to your site: marked nofollow, sitting on a page that is kept out of search results, or added by a script that search engines may never run. And a link that passes every test today can fail one next month without anyone telling you.
A word on the rules. Google's spam policies count "buying or selling links for ranking purposes" as link spam, and say such links are not a violation "as long as they are qualified with a rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" attribute value". Many buyers pay for followed links anyway and accept the risk. This guide does not tell you which to buy. It shows how to check that you got what you agreed.
The eight checks
Work through them in this order. Each one can make the ones after it pointless.
1. The page loads
The address the vendor gave you should answer with the article, not an error, a login wall or a redirect to the home page. Open it in a private window so you see what a stranger sees.
2. The link is in the HTML
Use "View page source", not "Inspect", and search for your domain. Inspect shows the page after scripts have run. The source shows what the server sent, which is what a crawler reads first. Google says it "can only crawl your link if it's an <a> HTML element (also known as anchor element) with an href attribute" (source). A link that only appears after a script runs depends on Google rendering the page, and a link built from a button or an onclick may not count at all.
3. It points where you agreed
Check the full address: the right page, https, with or without www as your site uses it. Watch for links that go through a redirect or a tracking address on the publisher's side first.
4. The rel attribute
Look at the link's rel. nofollow, sponsored and ugc all tell Google about the nature of the link; its documentation says links marked this way "will generally not be followed" (source). noopener and noreferrer are harmless. If you paid for a followed link, none of the three should be there. The dofollow checker reads this for up to five pages at once.
5. The page is not set to noindex or nofollow
A page can carry instructions for search engines in a robots meta tag or in an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. noindex means "do not show this page in search results". nofollow at page level means "do not follow the links on this page", every one of them, whatever the link's own rel says. none means both. The header is invisible in the page source, so check it with the noindex checker or in your browser's network tab.
6. The canonical points to itself
The canonical tag names the address the publisher wants search engines to treat as the real one. Google describes it as a way to consolidate signals "into a single, preferred URL" (source). If the article's canonical names a different article, a category page or another site, your link sits on the copy that is set aside. The same address without tracking parameters is fine.
7. The anchor text
Compare the words of the link with what you ordered. A swap from your brand or keyword to "here" or "website" is common after an editor's pass. It is not fatal, but it is not what you paid for either.
8. Google can find the page
After a week or two, search for site: followed by the exact address. If the page shows up, good. If it does not, treat it as a warning, not proof: the site: search does not list every page Google has. A page that is still missing after a month, on a site whose other articles show up, deserves a question to the vendor.
When to check
| When | What you are looking for |
|---|---|
| The day it goes live | All eight checks. This is when you can still ask for a fix as part of delivery. |
| After about 30 days | The quiet edits: a nofollow added, the anchor changed, the page moved under a "sponsored" section with noindex. |
| Every week after that | Removal, a dead page, a redesign that dropped old articles. |
| Two weeks before a paid term ends | Whether to renew, renegotiate or let it go. |
How much changes over time? Linkody published numbers in June 2026 from more than 865,000 backlinks that its users chose to monitor: 89% were still live after three months, about 63% after one year and 46% after two to five years (source). It is a vendor's own data and the clock starts when a link was added to the tool, but it is the closest public sample to links that people built or bought on purpose. Ahrefs, looking at every link in its index, found that 66.5% of links to the sites it sampled had rotted over nine years (source).
Agree this before you pay
Most disputes come from things nobody wrote down. Put these in the order or in an email the vendor confirms:
- The page or the kind of page: a new article, an existing one, which section of the site.
- The landing page and the anchor text, word for word.
- The rel attribute: followed, or sponsored. Say it explicitly.
- How long: permanent, or a term with an end date.
- That the page stays open to search engines: no noindex, no page-wide nofollow, a canonical to itself.
- What happens if any of this changes: a fix within a set number of days, otherwise a replacement or a refund.
Doing it for every link
Eight checks on one link take five minutes. Eight checks on sixty links, every week, is a job nobody keeps doing by hand. You have three options:
- A spreadsheet and a reminder. Free, and fine up to a couple of dozen links if you are disciplined.
- The free tools here. The free check runs checks 1 to 6 on five pages at a time, with no account.
- A monitor. LinkRot runs the checks on every link each day, looks each page up in Google once a month, and emails you when something changes, with the price of the link and the next step. Setting it up takes about 15 minutes: see how to monitor the backlinks you paid for.
Frequently asked questions
How do I check a paid backlink?
Open the page source and search for your domain. Confirm the link is a normal <a href> to the right address, that its rel has no nofollow, sponsored or ugc you did not agree to, that the page has no noindex, and that its canonical points to itself. The dofollow checker does the first three in one go.
How long do paid backlinks last?
Less long than most buyers assume. In Linkody's 2026 data on more than 865,000 links its users monitor, 89% were still live after three months and about 63% after a year. Links you paid for are not immune: publishers redesign, clean up old posts and change their policy on paid content.
Are paid backlinks against Google's rules?
Google's spam policies list "buying or selling links for ranking purposes" as link spam, and say such links are fine when they carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". Whether to buy followed links is your decision and your risk. This guide is only about checking that you received what you paid for.
What should I do if a paid link was removed?
Confirm it by hand, then write to the vendor with the page address, what was agreed and a date by which you expect it back. The steps and email templates are in how to find and recover lost backlinks.
How often should I check paid links?
On the day the link goes live, again after about 30 days, and then regularly for as long as the link matters to you. Changes are silent: nobody emails you when a nofollow is added.