Definition
A link farm is a group of interconnected websites whose sole purpose is to create artificial backlinks to manipulate PageRank and search engine rankings. These sites typically have low-quality or automatically generated content, and link to each other or to client sites in unnatural ways. Link farms are a black hat SEO technique severely penalized by Google, particularly since the Penguin algorithm. They differ from PBNs (Private Blog Networks) in their lack of sophistication: link farms are often easily detectable by search engines due to obvious link patterns, shared hosting, duplicate content, and a complete lack of organic traffic.
Key Points
- Network of sites created solely to generate artificial backlinks
- Black hat technique severely penalized by Google Penguin
- Easily detectable by search engines (link patterns, poor content, shared hosting)
Practical Examples
Detecting a link farm
A backlink audit reveals 200 links from sites with incoherent content, hosted on the same server, with no organic traffic, all interlinking. This is a link farm whose links should be disavowed.
Difference from a PBN
A link farm is a crude network of spam sites, while a PBN attempts to simulate real sites. Both are risky, but link farms are far more easily detected by Google.
Frequently Asked Questions
Analyze your backlink profile with Ahrefs or Semrush. Warning signs: clusters of links from domains with no traffic, auto-generated content, same IP/subnets, generic domain names, and no topical relevance to your site.
Use Google Search Console's disavow tool to flag these links as unwanted. Document the situation in case a manual penalty is applied, and request a reconsideration if necessary.
Go Further with LemmiLink
Discover how LemmiLink can help you put these SEO concepts into practice.
Last updated: 2026-02-07