Web 2.0 Backlinks: We Tested 29 Pages on 13 Platforms. The Followed Links Sat on Spam Pages
Web 2.0 backlinks are still sold as cheap, safe authority, and the 2026 lists name up to 285 platforms. So we merged three ranking lists, checked the 78 platforms that appear on more than one, and read the links on 29 real free-subdomain pages. The surprise isn't that the links are nofollow. Most aren't. It's what they're sitting on, and what Google has said about it.
Web 2.0 backlinks are links you place on free sites you build yourself on hosted platforms like Blogger, WordPress.com, Google Sites or Wikidot, usually a short blog on a free subdomain that links back to your main site. They're still sold as a cheap, safe way to build authority, and this year's lists name up to 285 platforms. So we took three lists that rank today, checked the platforms on them, and read the links on 29 real free-subdomain pages.
The short answer: the links mostly still work, technically. Of the 16 pages where we could see an outbound link, 11 were plain followed links, and 10 of those 11 sat on thin spam pages with anchors like "dental implants" and "buy website traffic". Google's John Mueller has said this kind of activity "has zero value for SEO".
So the problem with web 2.0 links isn't nofollow. It's that a link you wrote yourself, on a site you built that morning, is exactly what Google's link spam rules describe.
What we checked, and how#
On November 15, 2026 we took three lists that rank for "web 2.0 sites list": TheGuideX (121 sites it says still work), WayToIdea (285+ claimed, 241 we could extract) and W3era (20). Together they name 290 unique platforms. Only 15 appear on all three lists, and 212 appear on just one.
We did two checks:
- Platforms. For all 78 platforms on two or more lists, we fetched the homepage and recorded whether you can still make a free site there, whether it has become something else, or whether it's gone.
- Pages. On 13 platforms that still offer free sites, we found 29 public free-subdomain pages that link out, mostly by searching the platform for SEO and local-service topics, the way you'd find web 2.0 pages in the wild. On each page we read the outbound link's
relvalue, whether it ran through a redirect, and whether the page was noindexed.
Plain requests, one fetch per page, no JavaScript and no logins. We didn't create any accounts. Because we searched for pages that link out to commercial sites, our sample leans toward link-building pages. That's the point: those are the pages a web 2.0 campaign creates.
31 of 78 platforms no longer give you a free site#
Only 26 of the 78 platforms still let anyone build a free site, including Blogger, WordPress.com, Tumblr, Wix, Google Sites, LiveJournal, Strikingly, Jimdo, Site123 and Wikidot.
Another 31 are alive but no longer do. Some became trial-only: Webeden now says "Free to build. Pay £7.99/m to publish", and Squarespace is a free trial, not a free site. Others turned into something else: Xing is a jobs site, and Smore is now a "Newsletter Builder for Educators". Several on the lists, like LinkedIn, GitHub's main site and Instructables, were never site builders in the first place.
Two are gone: Typepad shut down on September 30, 2025, and typepad.com now redirects to Network Solutions. Soup.io closed in 2020, and its domain is now an unrelated news site with a "Write For Us" page. Eleven more blocked our checks (including Medium and Weebly), seven we couldn't confirm either way, and HubPages timed out.
The long lists are worse. Three of the 12 guides we read below still recommend dead platforms such as Soup.io, Typepad, Wikispaces and Storify. Posterous closed in 2013, and consumer Google+ shut down on April 2, 2019, yet both still turn up on older lists.
What the links on 29 pages actually do#
Of 29 pages:
- 11 had a plain, followed link: Blogger (2), Wikidot (3), Google Sites (2), Strikingly, Site123, WordPress.com and Tumblr (1 each)
- 1 was nofollow, set by the author on Blogger, not by the platform
- 2 sent links through a redirect: LiveJournal routes every outbound link through its own
livejournal.com/away?to=page and marks it nofollow, and one Google Sites page wrapped every link in agoogle.com/urlredirect - 2 pages were noindexed: a LiveJournal journal and a free Jimdo site both carried "noindex, nofollow" in the robots meta tag
- 5 blocked us (Weebly, Medium, Yola and two Tumblr subdomains)
- 8 had no outbound link in the body, mostly abandoned or default-template sites
So on most free builders, nothing technical stops the link. Blogger doesn't add nofollow: one spam post we read had 83 outbound links, and 82 were followed. Wikidot pages at subdomains like dentist.wikidot.com and bestvpn.wikidot.com were full of followed, keyword-anchored links.
That's the catch. 14 of the 16 pages with a visible link were thin spam pages, and so were 10 of the 11 followed ones. They looked like what they are: a few hundred words written to hold a keyword anchor, on a subdomain nobody visits. The one followed link that wasn't on a spam page came from a WordPress.com post published in 2018, an ordinary blog post rather than a page built around an anchor. That's the version of a web 2.0 link that can carry some weight, and it's the one nobody sells. If you've read our PBN backlinks breakdown, the pattern is familiar: a network of sites you control, built to vote for your own site.
What 12 ranking guides say#
We read 12 guides that rank for "web 2.0 backlinks", "do web 2.0 backlinks work" and "web 2.0 link building".
Seven say web 2.0 links help rankings directly, five outright and two in part. Six recommend tiered link building, where you point web 2.0 links at other links to "power them up". Eight are published by companies that sell link building or SEO services, and one sells web 2.0 links outright: 1,000 for ₹500 a package. Ten warn about spam, often in the same article that sells the links.
Only one guide, TheGuideX, tested anything itself, and its live check agrees with ours: post links on Blogger, WordPress.com and a free Wix and Strikingly site carried no nofollow, while Medium and LiveJournal did. Four cite Google, but only one, eCorpIT, quotes the spam policy word for word, and it's one of the guides that doesn't recommend tiers.
What Google has said#
Google's spam policies (last updated August 28, 2026) define link spam as "creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings". Their examples include "Using automated programs or services to create links to your site". Under user-generated spam, the first example is "Spammy accounts on hosting services that anyone can register for", which is a fair description of a free web 2.0 blog built to hold a link.
John Mueller was asked about this directly in 2020, about posting links on Tumblr, classified sites and free posting sites. As reported by Search Engine Journal, he said: "this kind of activity has zero value for SEO" and "if you hire an agency and they go off and post links on Tumblr, on classified sites and free posting sites and they claim this is going to help your website then I would move to some other agency."
A followed link isn't the same as a counted link. Google doesn't need a rel attribute to ignore a link it recognises as self-made. (Our dofollow vs nofollow explainer covers what the attribute does and doesn't control.)
When a web 2.0 site is still worth building#
There's one honest use: a real second home for real content.
- Build one, not fifty. A genuine Substack, Medium publication or Blogger blog that people subscribe to is a channel, not a link. Most of the value is the readers, and a blog with a name, an author and a posting history looks nothing like the throwaway subdomains in our sample.
- Write for the platform's audience. Medium and Substack have their own discovery. A post that earns readers there can earn citations from people who write elsewhere, and those are links you didn't make yourself.
- Link home only where it helps the reader. One relevant link to a deeper resource on your site is fine. Keyword anchors in every post are the pattern Google describes.
- Skip tiers, wheels and packages. Pointing self-made links at other self-made links multiplies the footprint, not the value. A 1,000-link package for ₹500 is "automated programs or services" in Google's own words.
- Spend the time on links other people choose to give. That means finding sites that already write about your topic and giving them a reason to cite you. Our free backlinks guide lists the ones worth your time.
That last step is the slow one: finding the right sites and emailing each one personally. GenLink's backlink agent does that outreach for you, from your own mailbox, with follow-ups. You can start free.
Frequently asked questions#
Do web 2.0 backlinks still work in 2026? Technically, many are still followed links: in our test, 11 of 16 pages with a visible link passed a plain followed link. But 10 of those 11 were on thin spam pages, and Google's John Mueller has said this kind of activity "has zero value for SEO". Expect little or no ranking benefit.
Are web 2.0 backlinks dofollow? On many platforms, yes. We found followed body links on Blogger, Wikidot, Google Sites, Strikingly, Site123 and WordPress.com. LiveJournal routes links through a nofollowed redirect, a free Jimdo site we checked was noindexed, and other tests report Medium links as nofollow.
Are web 2.0 backlinks safe? Not in bulk. Google's spam policies list "Using automated programs or services to create links to your site" as link spam, and "Spammy accounts on hosting services that anyone can register for" as user-generated spam. A single real blog you maintain is fine. A network built to hold links is what the rules describe.
What are the best web 2.0 sites? For a real secondary blog with readers: Substack, Medium, Blogger and WordPress.com. Of the 78 platforms on two or more of the lists we checked, only 26 still offer a free site, and several list favourites, including Typepad and Soup.io, are gone.
What is tiered link building with web 2.0s? It means pointing web 2.0 links at your other backlinks to make them stronger. Six of the 12 guides we read recommend it, and none of those six quote Google's spam policy. It's self-made links pointing at self-made links, which is the pattern Google's link spam policy describes.
Should I buy a web 2.0 backlink package? No. Packages build the links automatically, at volume, on throwaway subdomains, which matches Google's link spam examples almost word for word. Put the money into content and outreach that earns links from sites you don't control.
