40% of their "links" were never indexed

40% of their "links" were never indexed

Here's a teardown that stings: a brand paid for 300 placements, Ahrefs showed all 300, and a site: check revealed barely half were in Google's index. An unindexed link is a tree falling in an empty forest — it counts in your tool, not in your rankings.

The mistake is trusting your backlink tool's "live" status as proof of value.

What the operators who measure ROI actually do —
— Spot-check placements with site: and an indexer. PBN and low-quality donors love to host links on pages Google never crawls.
— Prioritize donors whose linking page already ranks for something. A page with traffic gets your link seen.

Multiple link budgets quietly burn on pages Google forgot. The link has to be found to count. Watch this space.