What Google’s policies, Brazilian law and AI citation data say about advertorials and buying backlinks, with a checklist for evaluating proposals.
By , founder and lead strategist at Flowup
Direct answer
Advertorials work as media, not as an SEO shortcut. Labeled as advertising and with the link marked rel="sponsored", an advertorial buys reach and brand visibility, which is legitimate. Paid for in order to pass authority to your site, it violates Google's spam policies. And for showing up in AI, it carries little weight: in the Muck Rack study of more than 25 million links, paid content accounted for 0.3% of citations.
Sources verified on October 3, 2026.
Anyone who runs a company's marketing regularly receives proposals for "an article on a news site with a link," a "backlink package" and, more recently, "guaranteed presence in ChatGPT." Almost always, the offer comes with a domain authority metric and a price per link.
Two things changed in 2026 and help with the decision. On August 28, Google updated its spam policies, which mention advertorials by name, and rewrote the part on site reputation. And citation studies showed what AI systems actually read: Muck Rack, a public relations software company, analyzed more than 25 million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini in its May report.
This guide separates the advertorial as media from the advertorial as a ranking shortcut, shows what Google and Brazilian law require of the same piece, and ends with eight questions for evaluating any proposal.
An advertorial is paid content in the format of an article: the outlet publishes a piece in editorial style, commissioned and paid for by a brand, and labels it as advertising. The name joins "advertisement" and "editorial." In Brazil, where Flowup is based, the format is called "publieditorial" (from "publicidade," which means advertising, and "editorial"), and the larger family is native advertising.
The format is old and legitimate. The problem starts when the same payment tries to buy something else: authority for the brand's site on Google. At that point the advertorial stops being media and becomes a bought link, and the rules change completely.
| Practice | What the brand buys | How it should run |
|---|---|---|
| Advertorial as media | Reach among the outlet's audience and brand visibility | Labeled as advertising; links with rel="sponsored" |
| Bought link | Authority for its own site on Google | There is no accepted form: if the link passes ranking credit, it is spam |
| Earned media | Nothing: the outlet publishes out of editorial interest | Like any other article; the link, when there is one, is editorial |
The full comparison between press relations, link building and editorial work with data is on the Data-Driven PR page. Here, the focus is the decision of the person who receives the proposal.
Google's spam policies define link spam as creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings. The list of examples, in the version updated on August 28, 2026, includes:
The same page says what is accepted: having paid links does not violate the policies, as long as they are qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". Google's page on how to qualify outbound links recommends sponsored for advertisements and paid placements.
And there is a cost that the link seller rarely mentions. According to Google's documentation on spam updates, when its systems remove the effects of spammy links, any ranking benefit those links had generated is lost, and that benefit cannot be regained afterward. The money spent on the link disappears with it.
Our reading
Google's criterion is not the format of the piece, but what the link does. An advertorial with a label and a sponsored link complies with the policy. The same piece, with an unqualified link and sold as an "authority backlink," is the example the policy describes.
The site reputation policy targets what the market calls parasite SEO: third-party content published on a strong site mainly to take advantage of its authority. In practice, the risk shows up in sections of news portals that sell space for pieces unrelated to their editorial line.
Google's own text draws the distinction: publishing third-party content is not a problem; it becomes one when the content is there mainly because of the ranking signals of the site that hosts it.
From the August 28, 2026 rewrite, Search Engine Journal, which summarized the update, highlighted four points that Google now lists for evaluating this content:
The change in enforcement applies only to Europe. According to Search Engine Roundtable, in its report of August 28, 2026, as of August 30, manual actions under this policy stopped affecting results for users in the European Economic Area, where the affected section may be separated and start ranking on its own. Outside the European Economic Area, which includes Brazil, the manual action still applies as before.
For anyone buying advertorials, the practical point is a different one: the risk is not only to your link. If the section of the portal that sold the space is treated as site reputation abuse, your piece goes down with it.
In Brazil, before Google, there is the law. Article 36 of Brazil's Consumer Protection Code (Código de Defesa do Consumidor, or CDC, in Portuguese) requires advertising to be presented in such a way that the consumer identifies it as such, "easily and immediately." Article 37 prohibits misleading advertising, including by omission.
Self-regulation points the same way. The Brazilian Advertising Self-Regulation Code (Código Brasileiro de Autorregulamentação Publicitária), applied by CONAR, Brazil's advertising self-regulation council, says in Article 28 that an advertisement must be clearly distinguished as such, whatever the medium. Article 30 deals with the advertorial: the paid journalistic piece, in the form of a news report, article or note, must be identified so that it is distinguished from editorial content. The text of the code is available, in Portuguese, on the website of Secom, the communications office of Brazil's federal government.
| Rule | What it requires of the advertorial | What it protects |
|---|---|---|
| Google's spam policies | Paid links qualified with rel="sponsored" or nofollow | Search rankings |
| Google's site reputation policy | Third-party content published on its merits, not for the portal's authority | Trust in the host site |
| CDC (Brazil), Article 36 | Advertising that is easily and immediately identifiable | The consumer |
| CONAR code (Brazil), Articles 28 and 30 | Paid piece distinguished from editorial content | The reader and the outlet's credibility |
The four rules point in the same direction: the advertorial done right is the one that runs labeled. The version "disguised as an article," which some sellers offer as a selling point, falls outside all of them. This text is not legal advice; if you have doubts about a campaign, consult a lawyer.
The market's latest promise is "showing up in ChatGPT" through advertorials. The available data tells a different story. In the May 2026 "What Is AI Reading?" report, Muck Rack analyzed more than 25 million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, across 17 industries. The full report and the company's press release give these figures:
There are limits to consider. The public report does not say how many questions were asked, or in which countries and languages, and does not detail what it classified as paid content. Even so, the sample is large, and the pattern has held for three editions.
Our reading
No outlet controls what an AI will cite, and the numbers show that paid content barely makes it into the answers. An offer of "guaranteed AI citation" promises what no one can deliver. The path that shows up in the data is a different one: being the subject of independent sources, which we explain in the guide on how to get cited by AI. Even the ad that OpenAI sells in ChatGPT sits below the answer and, according to the company itself, does not influence what the answer says. We explain that difference in the guide on ads in ChatGPT (in Portuguese).
The useful question is not "do advertorials work?" but "for which goal?" The table sums up our reading, based on the rules and the data above.
| Company goal | Does an advertorial make sense? | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| Speaking to a specific audience that reads that outlet | Yes | Outlet with a proven readership among your audience; content labeled |
| Supporting a launch or reinforcing the brand | Yes | As part of a media plan, with a goal and measurement |
| Generating qualified visits | It can | Link with rel="sponsored"; measure visits and conversions by source |
| Moving up in Google with the link | No | It is the case the spam policies describe |
| Showing up in AI answers | Not as a promise | Paid content was 0.3% of citations in the Muck Rack study |
| Building brand authority | Not a substitute | Authority comes from what independent sources say about the company |
For ranking, no. Buying links to move up in Google is the first example in the spam policies' list of link spam, and the benefit a bought link generates can be wiped out without warning and for good, as the documentation on spam updates says.
The search results do not help the person making the decision. In a Semrush query on September 30, 2026, half of the top ten results on Google Brazil for "comprar backlinks" (Portuguese for "buying backlinks") were, judging by the address, pages selling links or lists of offers, and another two were Reddit discussions about where to buy. Anyone who searches finds where to buy, not whether they should.
There is a legitimate use for the money: buying exposure in an outlet that your customer reads, with the link labeled, and measuring what it brings. That is a media decision, not an SEO decision. If the goal is authority, the investment goes further in content that deserves to be cited, which we discuss in volume SEO and in information gain.
Use the list before you sign. Each question comes from one of the rules or from the data in this article.
Warning signs in an offer
If 84% of what AI cites is earned media, the question becomes how to earn coverage without paying for it. Journalists offer clues. In Muck Rack's "State of Journalism 2026" report, with 897 valid responses, most of them from the United States, 86% said that at least some of their stories originate from PR pitches, and 88% immediately discard the ones that miss their beat. Among the things they value most are relevance to the beat they cover, access to sources, and original research or data, according to the company's press release.
That is the logic of Data-Driven PR: turning data of public interest into a story, with method, so that outlets publish because the information is good, and not because a payment was made. The link, when it comes, is editorial. The brand mention, with or without a link, joins the set of independent sources that search engines and AI systems consult, the same set that underpins the work of GEO.
The result is not guaranteed, and no serious company should promise publication. But the difference in nature is large: the money goes into producing information that keeps being cited, instead of renting a space that the rules require to be labeled and that AI barely reads. To track the effect, the indicators are in the guide on how to measure AI visibility.
What is not yet known
In short
An advertorial is paid content published by an outlet in the format of an article: text, headline and images in editorial style, but commissioned and paid for by the brand. In Brazil, the Consumer Protection Code requires advertising to be identified as such, and the advertising self-regulation code applied by CONAR requires the paid piece to be distinguished from editorial content.
No. An advertorial is media: the brand pays to speak to the outlet's audience, with the content labeled. A bought link is paying for a site to point to yours with the aim of moving up in Google. The same piece can be both: it becomes a bought link when the link runs without rel="sponsored" or nofollow and the intent is to pass authority.
Not as a ranking shortcut. Google's spam policies treat as a violation the paid advertorial with links that pass ranking credit, and the accepted link is the one qualified with rel="sponsored" or nofollow. An advertorial can help indirectly, through a new audience, brand searches and referral traffic, all of which need to be measured.
To move up in Google, no. Buying links for ranking purposes violates the spam policies, and Google's documentation warns that when its systems neutralize spammy links, the benefit they generated is lost and cannot be regained. Paying for exposure in an outlet, with the link labeled, is a different decision: a media buy, judged by audience and results.
With a visible label before the text, such as "Advertorial," "Sponsored content" or "Advertising," and with the name of the brand that paid. On links to the brand's site, the rel="sponsored" attribute tells Google that the link is paid. The label meets what Brazil's Consumer Protection Code (CDC) and the CONAR code require; the attribute meets Google's policy.
The available data says they help little. In Muck Rack's May 2026 study, with more than 25 million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, paid and advertorial content accounted for 0.3% of citations, against 84% for earned media. An offer of "guaranteed AI citation" has no basis in those numbers.
On August 28, 2026, Google rewrote the policy and began listing four points for evaluating third-party content: presentation, quality, authorship and repetition of the text across several sites. Within the European Economic Area, as of August 30, the affected section may be separated instead of demoted. Outside it, which includes Brazil, the manual action still applies.
It does, but not for ranking. The attribute tells Google that the link is paid, as the documentation asks. The value lies in what the outlet delivers: a qualified audience, visits, brand recognition and searches for the company's name. If none of that is measured, the advertorial becomes a cost with no known return.
Sources: Google, spam policies (August 28, 2026), spam updates and qualifying outbound links; Search Engine Journal, changes to the site reputation policy (August 28, 2026); Search Engine Roundtable, enforcement in the European Economic Area (August 28, 2026); Muck Rack, What Is AI Reading? (May 2026), press release on the study (May 7, 2026) and State of Journalism 2026 (March 19, 2026); Presidency of Brazil, Código de Defesa do Consumidor (Brazil's Consumer Protection Code, in Portuguese); Secom (Brazil), Código Brasileiro de Autorregulamentação Publicitária (the Brazilian Advertising Self-Regulation Code, in Portuguese). Search data: Semrush, Brazil database, queried on September 30, 2026. Sources accessed on October 3, 2026.
Backlink packages and advertorials tend to be renewed without anyone asking what they delivered. With the 2026 rules and the AI citation data, the question has become easier to answer, and the answer often points to another use for the same money. Ranking is not enough. Be the answer.
Data-Driven PR
Find out where your media and link budget goes further
In a conversation, Flowup evaluates the link and advertorial proposals your company has received and shows the alternatives: labeled media, owned content or a story built on data, with the risks of each path.
Founder and lead strategist, Flowup Agency
Guto Bertoncini is the founder and lead strategist of Flowup Agency, which he has run since 2011. He is the author of the B.I.N.A. Method, Novo SEO and the Base Informacional Semântica (Semantic Information Base), and leads the agency's SEO for AI, GEO and AEO practice, preparing companies to be found on Google and cited by artificial intelligence platforms. He writes about search and AI on the Flowup blog and on his official website.
