We Bought 15,389 Backlinks on Fiverr and Kwork. A Year Later, Only 3.7% Are in Google’s Index
Every link in this archive is a link we paid for ourselves on marketplaces. A year later we checked each URL the way Googlebot sees it and ran an index check: domains have expired, articles were deleted, pages carry noindex — and only 562 of 15,389 links are left in Google’s index. We paid for links — we got thin air.
TL;DR
- Only 562 of 15,388 links are in Google’s index — 3.7%. Live, open and indexed: just 1.8%.
- A year later only 21% of the bought links are live, open pages. The other 79% pass nothing.
- A third of all links are completely dead: the domain lapsed, the page was deleted, or everything redirects to the homepage.
- The older the package, the more dead domains: links older than a year fail DNS in 18.5% of cases — vs 2.3% for links aged 6–12 months.
- Fiverr and Kwork are not that different: 19.4% and 27.5% working links.
How this case study started
For years we bought link packages on Fiverr and Kwork: profiles, Web 2.0, crowd links, articles, “PBN packages”. Sellers sent reports — spreadsheets of links with the promise “all live, all indexed”.
A year later we merged all 15,389 URLs from those reports into one list and crawled them. No sampling, no cherry-picking — every URL we paid for.
What Google actually sees
On October 29, 2026 we checked all 15,388 URLs for Google indexing with SpeedyIndex (site:URL and URL queries). The result is worse than any forecast.
Out of every 100 links we bought, fewer than two actually work.
Index rate by group
Even technically clean pages are only 8.6% indexed. Every other group sits between 1.7% and 4.2%.
Popular package platforms: how many are indexed
The most frequent platforms in our packages. Even where a page is open for indexing, Google almost never takes it.
| Platform | URLs | Indexed |
|---|---|---|
| Diigo | 124 | 0 · 0% |
| Telegraph | 86 | 1 · 1% |
| 4shared | 81 | 0 · 0% |
| Google Sites | 77 | 7 · 9% |
| Pearltrees | 73 | 0 · 0% |
| 54 | 0 · 0% | |
| PasteLink | 50 | 0 · 0% |
| Wakelet | 47 | 0 · 0% |
| Medium | 46 | 0 · 0% |
| Quora | 44 | 0 · 0% |
Out of every 100 links we bought
Each square is 1% of 15,389 URLs. The color shows what we found at that URL a year later.
What exactly kills the links
The 12 most common diagnoses. Bar length is the number of URLs, color is the group from the chart above.
Time is the #1 link killer
Links that were 6–12 months old at check time versus links older than a year.
Fiverr or Kwork — is there a difference?
Outcomes split by the marketplace where the package was bought.
Even a “live” link can be empty
Of 15,389 URLs, 4,750 returned HTTP 200. But a 200 status does not mean the page can be indexed.
The seller shows you a page that opens — Google sees a block on it. Check directives, not just the status code.
Platforms that are closed by default
Several popular “package” platforms block user pages from indexing. Buying links there means paying for something Google will ignore.
Almost everything blocked
| Platform | URLs | Open | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blogger | 173 | 2% | 302 redirect |
| 4shared | 81 | 5% | X-Robots-Tag: noindex |
| 71 | 1% | 301 / Disallow | |
| Quora | 59 | 0% | 403 / Cloudflare |
| Anotepad | 51 | 0% | meta noindex |
| Evernote | 51 | 2% | 308 redirect |
| Medium | 50 | 0% | 403 / challenge |
| Strikingly | 49 | 0% | 403 Forbidden |
| JustPaste.it | 42 | 12% | meta noindex |
| Google Docs | 35 | 0% | 302 / X-Robots-Tag |
Where pages are technically open
| Platform | URLs | Open |
|---|---|---|
| PasteLink | 50 | 90% |
| SlideShare | 15 | 87% |
| Notion | 56 | 82% |
| Google Sites | 77 | 79% |
| Gravatar | 26 | 73% |
| Issuu | 23 | 70% |
| Telegraph | 96 | 68% |
| Pastebin | 28 | 68% |
“Open” is the share of URLs with HTTP 200 and no indexing block. Small samples (under 30 URLs) are a hint, not a verdict. Technically open — but open ≠ indexed: PasteLink has 0 of 50 in the index, Telegraph 1 of 86.
Check the links you bought the same way
Upload a list of URLs to Google Index Checker: it checks each link with site:URL and URL queries and shows what is really in the index.
How not to buy thin air: 8 steps
The checklist we use ourselves after this case study. Every tool is on SpeedyIndex.
Check the donor before you pay
If the domain or section is not in Google’s index, a link from it is worth nothing. 5 URLs can be checked for free.
Google Index Checker →Look for noindex and X-Robots-Tag
A page can open fine and still forbid indexing in its HTML or in the response header.
Noindex Tag Checker →Run the seller’s report through a 404 check
Deleted pages are the main loss in the first months.
404 Error Checker →Catch redirects
A 301/302 to the homepage or another URL is not the link you paid for.
Redirect Checker →Re-check at 3, 6 and 12 months
Links die gradually. Regular audits show what still works.
Backlink Checker →Submit live links for indexing
A working but unindexed link is money lost too.
SpeedyIndex indexing service →Method and limitations
- Source: 15,389 URLs from seller reports on our own orders on Fiverr (12,350), Kwork (2,886) and other marketplaces (153).
- Crawl on August 21, 2026: multithreaded crawler, Googlebot Smartphone User-Agent, Chrome TLS fingerprint.
- Redirects were not followed: 301, 302, 307 and 308 are logged as is. There is no HTTP 310 status, so none appears in the data.
- The Cloudflare JS challenge was not bypassed: 1,832 URLs count as unverified, not dead.
- Each URL is assigned one primary outcome. The “Blocked from index” KPI (14.8%) counts any block signal, so it is higher than that group’s share in the chart (8.1%).
- We measured technical indexability, not actual presence in Google’s index.
- Index check: October 29, 2026 with SpeedyIndex Google Index Checker (site:URL and URL queries); 15,388 URLs submitted — two links differing only in letter case were merged by the service.
Audit the links you bought
Upload a list of URLs — see which are in Google’s index and which have already died.