Link Scheme Risk Checker

Manual actions for link schemes do still happen, and you would see one in Search Console under Manual Actions. Far more common is the quiet version: Google's spam systems discount the links entirely, so you paid for nothing and never got told. Either way the fix is the same.

Writing a genuine article for a relevant publication is normal PR and always has been. Buying placements at scale for the links, with keyword-stuffed anchors, is what the policy names. The line is whether the link was earned or bought, and the honest marker for a bought one is rel="sponsored".

Deal with what is on your own site first, since that is the part you control and this tool covers it. For links pointing at you from elsewhere, Google says it usually ignores them automatically and that most sites should never use the disavow tool. Only reach for disavow if you have an actual manual action.

Any link a visitor cannot see but a crawler can: display:none, visibility:hidden, zero opacity, one-pixel text, white on white, or positioned thousands of pixels off-screen. Some are accessibility patterns used correctly, so check each hit rather than assuming the worst, but an unexplained one is serious.